There’s so much to reassess today. Here’s one relatively small — but to me, interesting — thing.
For the past eight years, beginning with the Florida recount and ending with Sarah Palin’s last-ditch culture war, we’ve heard about the intense partisanship of the divide between red and blue. And one common idea about that divide has been the notion that the Web has helped create it, with its “echo chamber” effect. We have become a nation of “confirmation bias” addicts; we only read what we already agree with; we construct our own reality according to our close-minded beliefs. And that is why America is so angry, so split, so impossible to govern.
If that were true, then how did the most Web-enabled presidential campaign in history lead to such an overwhelming, incontestible outcome?
We’ve now had an election that was — whether you choose to call it a “landslide” or not (I do) — not close at all. We had “rednecks for Obama” and “Obamacon” neoconservatives for Obama and Republican loyalists looking up in the voting booth and saying to themselves, “Oh my god, I’m voting for Obama.” We had the most potentially divisive candidacy in our lifetime — an African American liberal from an urban Northern state running on a peace platform! — produce a victory that was won with an almost shocking degree of calm and respect.
Obama himself and his campaign deserves most of the credit for this, of course. But perhaps we can also reserve a little mental space for a reevaluation of our assumptions about the role the Web plays in our political discourse.
It hasn’t been my practice to post writing from my new book here (it’s just a fuzzy draft right now!), but this is a short passage from a discussion about the “echo chamber” argument that I think is pertinent:
Yes, American politics had grown bitterly polarized in the 2000s. But were the angry arguments on the Web the cause of those divisions? More likely, they simply mirrored profound disagreements among the American people about the impeachment of President Clinton, the contested outcome of the 2000 election, the Bush administration’s tactics in its war on terror, and the invasion of Iraq. What kind of media environment that accurately represented the political pysche of the American population would not bristle with rancor under the pressure of such events?
Today, we have at least an opportunity to begin to reduce that rancor and rebuild a national consensus. We have the first president in ages who can legitimately claim a mandate and work with a Congress of his own party. And I think we will see that the Web has a part to play in fashioning such a consensus. It doesn’t have to be a force for division; using it as such is a choice, not a technologically determined inevitability.
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Scott,
I agree that we’re still in the process of understanding the balance between the web’s polarizing and consensus-building effects. But I wonder if you’re not oversimplifying when you imply that people have argued that the web is “the cause” of the political polarization of recent years. (It seems pretty clear that “the cause” is manifold and complex and that the polarization manifested itself in other media – talk radio, eg – before the web came along.) Let’s agree that the web’s divisions “simply mirror” existing divisions. The question then becomes: Does the web serve to amplify those divisions? That seems to me to be the interesting question, and I think the answer is: Yes, the web has certain characteristics, as a communication medium, that can serve to amplify, and exaggerate, the biases of users and groups of users. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t also countervailing consensus-building forces to be found on the web, but it does mean that there is an “echo chamber” effect at work. We certainly can and should debate the strength and importance of that effect, but to argue that we should “retire” discussion of it seems like a case of sticking one’s head in the sand.
Nick
I think we are in a cycle of divisiveness and I think it’s very similar to the years just after the civil war leading up the WWI (with various mini wars in the middle). I don’t think the internet makes us this way, I think various forces and behaviors encourage one or another type of behavior depending on what the collective consciousness has recently gone through.
As for echo chamber memes and internet discussions and politics, I think 2004 was the year for that and things have evolved. And that’s good.
“Today, we have at least an opportunity to begin to reduce that rancor and rebuild a national consensus. We have the first president in ages who can legitimately claim a mandate and work with a Congress of his own party. And I think we will see that the Web has a part to play in fashioning such a consensus. It doesn’t have to be a force for division; using it as such is a choice, not a technologically determined inevitability.”
Wait, so you mean building a national consensus among Democrats, right? Because having a heavily elected president representing the majority party in Congress isn’t consensus, it’s one party agreeing with itself.
National consensus means parties working together, conversing, and negotiating, which means give and take from both sides.
Call me cynical, but after eight years of Republican leadership, I don’t see elitist liberals sharing power with anyone. And unfortunately, of all the left-wing adherents I know, none of them seem particularly open minded about embracing classic conservative tenets as their own. The quasi-socialist illuminati have not yet begun to flex their muscles.
Nick — thanks for the nuanced take. Yes, the Web’s inherent dynamics are able to divide and unite, depending on how they’re used. My understanding of the orthodox “echo chamber” argument circa 2004, and as propounded by Sunstein et al., was that it declared conclusively that the Web left us locked in a spiral of increasing isolation from those we disagree with. By saying “let’s retire the echo chamber argument,” I don’t mean to say, “let’s assume that the only force the Web applies is a unifying one,” but rather, “let’s reject the one-sided picture of the Web that says that it can only divide us.”
I hereby attribute any confusion caused by my post to the effects of writing on too little sleep, post-election night!
If you really call a 52-to-46 race a “landslide” and “not close at all,” you’re holding the country to an embarrassingly low standard. One third of registered voters didn’t even vote.
Started with the Florida Recount? Not so sure — Clinton’s impeachment, Nader, Gary Hart, Ollie North, Newt Gingrich, Nixon, etc. It’s been a culture war all the way back to the Chicago Dem convention in ’68. Filibusters and scandals seem to be the tactics of choice.
I’m still getting over the fact the Martin Luther King (and other civil rights leaders) were Republicans. Talk about changes!