Between the Poles

Cass Sunstein raises a credible point in his article "The Daily We" on the increased polarization that the growth of the Internet may represent. As individuals are given more choice in the communications they receive, their exposure to differing viewpoints will decrease:

If the public is balkanized, and if different groups design their own preferred communications packages, the consequence will be further balkanization, as group members move one another toward more extreme points in line with their initial tendencies.

I think his broader point is undeniably true, that as individuals restrict the sources of information they are exposed to in order to hear "what they want to hear," they will indeed become more extreme and will have a reduced sense of understanding for individuals in other groups.

However, the big question regards just how sealed off from others with differing opinions individuals may become. While the extreme examples of live-in cults do exist (and have since long before the Internet), most of us are exposed to a wide variety of viewpoints during the normal course of our daily lives--regardless of our internet communications preferences. Henry Jenkins argues in his reply to Sunstein that many individuals are members of multiple groups that cut across each other, and Peter points to one area where most of us lack the ability to choose the ideological makeup,

...when sitting at my desk in London, my colleagues would regularly discuss issues in the news, challenging any opinions I may have already formed.

The fact is that Americans share many experiences, whether it be items in the popular culture, the piece of news that editors across the country think is the top story because it was the biggest headline across the fold in the New York Times that morning, or a national or world event that grips our attention. We are hardly nearing a point where we will be completely segregated by ideology.

That said, I do agree with Sunstein that the Internet increases our ability to choose the communications we receive, and I think there is certainly an argument to be made that this leads to increased polarization. In my case, look at the sidebar on this blog. All of the Blogroll links and most of the Press links are to liberals of varying degrees. I read liberal blogs on a regular basis; I never go to conservative blogs on my own. The internet does increase the chance that I will reach across the aisle since it is so easy now: in the old days, I'd have to go and buy a conservative opinion magazine or even meet with a group of Republicans, but these days one link on a blog I read will usually send me across the great divide (for example, a link from Kevin Drum sent me over to The Corner today to read this post).

So I guess I'm in the squishy middle on this one. I don't think the world that Sunstein paints necessarily exists, but I think the rise of "Choose the facts you want to hear" via the internet and other narrowcast communications mediums does threaten to chart us on that course. But just as bloggers won't be replacing journalism (who's going to make the phone calls? Work the sources?), narrowcast media likely won't replace broadcast media but rather will work alongside each other and "interact in complex ways," as Jenkins writes. We as a society should certainly be on the watch for an increased in segmented media watching and increased polarization, but at the current point in time Americans share enough experiences that a major problem is hardly upon us.