Escaping the echo chamber

Elizabeth Kolbert’s recent New Yorker article The Things People Say – a review of Cass R. Sunstein’s “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done“- brought up some fascinating examples of group polarisation.

The brief summary is that in the internet age, we are increasingly associating ourselves with likeminded people and opinions. This not only reinforces our original views, but strengthens them – whether through hearing an argument repeated back, feeling vindicated by hearing others in agreement, listening to alternative reasons for a viewpoint or simply competing with others to lead the line.

My favourite quote from the article is:

At the same time that [the internet] makes more news available, it also makes more news avoidable

The most nebulous effects of group polarisation are extremism and misinformation. One such example being the – ridiculous if it weren’t real – “birther movement” in the United States, regarding Barack Obama’s birth certificate (and nationality, and eligibility to hold office).

However, the effect I’m more interested in is an unwillingness to engage with alternative viewpoints. Through our emails, RSS feeds, Twitter streams and selections of articles to click through, we are self-selecting the news and views we read. We lack balance and nuance in our understanding of issues. This can in turn lead to close mindedness.

In 2006, Sunstein performed his own study of fifty political sites. He found that more than four-fifths linked to like-minded sites but only a third linked to sites with an opposing viewpoint. Moreover, many of the links to the opposing side’s sites were offered only to illustrate how “dangerous, dumb, or contemptible the views of the adversary really are.”

Reading the article has led me to consider the effect of group polarisation on me both personally and professionally.

On a personal level:

I feel that my job as a market researcher gives me an understanding of the mood of the general public on certain issues and this grounding (plus my natural cynicism) prevents me getting too carried away with certain thoughts or concepts. I note, for instance, that television is far from dead and that businesses without a presence in Second Life continue to thrive.

However, I do tend to source my news/opinion pieces from the same places. Therefore, I’m going to try a little experiment.

For around half an hour a day, I’m going to spend some time browsing the online edition of a newspaper. A different newspaper, each day of the week. The Sun, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mirror and The Independent. I’ll keep this up for a couple of months.

It will hard to gauge the effects this experiment has on me, since there is no “control” to measure how my views have been influenced or changed. Nevertheless, I do expect to experience different levels of agreement, anger, sympathy and incredulity depending on the source and the tone. Of course, the challenge will not be to skip the stories that appear to hold little interest to me. I’ll update on progress in a couple of months

On a professional level:

Tthe idea of group polarisation calls into question the suitability of focus groups as an accurate gauge of opinion. They are fine to pull out exaggerated opinions or caricatures to make a point, but for issues where nuance and balance are required?

This is where the strengths of the internet come back to the fore. Group discussions can be held online. But there is no reason for group participants to be mutually exclusive. Rather than a number of separate groups each recruited to a specific demographic or attitude but covering the same topics, different combinations can be recruited from a “parent group” for specific breakout discussions. For instance, if a discussion guide had five sections, different combinations of groups could be created for each sector.

This is only a thought at the moment, and there are multiple practical obstacles that would need to be overcome. But I like the idea of moving away from reciprocal relationships within research to asymmetrical connections. Moving from a Facebook relationship to a Twitter relationship, if you will.

Compartmentalising facets of our personality and emphasising elements for different audiences is much more akin to real-world interactions, and can also marginalise the threat of group polarisation.

I shall be spending more time mulling this over, but any thoughts on the subject are welcome.

sk

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paopix/3882291940/

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Research 2008: The Great Debate (Part 4 of 4)

Go to part 3 here

Part 4 contains (1) Web 2.0: Capitalising on communities, (2) Closing remarks and (3) My conclusions

Day 2 Session 3: Web2.0: Capitalising on Communities

The final formal session of the conference was also the most fun. There was little particularly relevant to my work, but it is a subject I am interested in and the passion of the speakers was obvious.

Mario Menti of GMI and Diana Derval of Derval Research opened the session with a look at research within Second Life.