that radically diminishes the number of such experiences will create a number of problems, not least because of the increase in social fragmentation.
As preconditions for a well-functioning democracy, these requirements hold in any large nation. They are especially important in a heterogeneous nation, one that faces an occasional risk of fragmentation. They have all the more importance as each nation becomes increasingly global and each citizen becomes, to a greater or lesser degree, a “citizen of the world.”
An insistence on these two requirements should not be rooted in nostalgia for some supposedly idyllic past. With respect to communications, the past was hardly idyllic. Compared to any other period in human history, we are in the midst of many extraordinary gains, not least from the standpoint of democracy itself. For us, nostalgia is not only unproductive but also senseless. Nor should anything here be taken as a reason for “optimism” or “pessimism,” two great obstacles to clear thinking about new technological developments. If we must choose between them, by all means let us choose optimism. But in view of the many potential gains and losses inevitably associated with massive technological change, any attitude of “optimism” or “pessimism” is far too general to make sense. What I mean to provide is not a basis for pessimism, but a lens through which we might understand, a bit better than before, what makes a system of freedom of expression successful in the first place. That improved understanding will equip us to appreciate a free nation's own aspirations and thus help in evaluating continuing changes in the system of communications. It will also point the way toward a clearer understanding of the nature of citizenship and toward social reforms if emerging developments disserve our aspirations, as they threaten to do.
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GROUP POLARZATION IN GENERAL
The term group polarization refers to something very simple: After deliberation, people are likely to move toward a more extreme point in the direction to which the group’s members were originally inclined. With respect to the Internet and new communications technologies, the implication is that groups of like-minded people,
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engaged in discussion with one another, will end up thinking the same thing that they thought before—but in more extreme form.
Consider some examples of the basic phenomenon, which has been found in over a dozen nation.
After discussion, a group of moderately profeminist women will become more strongly profeminist.
After discussion, citizens of France become more critical of the United States and its intentions with respect to economic aid.
After discussion, whites predisposed to show racial prejudice offer more negative responses to the question whether white racism is responsible for conditions faced by African-American cities.
After discussion, whites predisposed not to show racial prejudice offer more positive responses to the same question.
The phenomenon of group polarization has conspicuous importance to communications markets, where groups with distinctive identities increasingly engage in within-group discussion. Effects of kind just described should be expected with the Unorganized Militia and racial hate groups as well as with less extreme organizations of all sorts. If the pubic is balkanized and if different groups are designing their own preferred communications packages, the consequence will be not merely the same but still more balkanization, as group members move one another toward more extreme points in line with their initial tendencies. At the same time, different deliberating groups, each consisting of like-minded people, will be driven increasingly far apart, simply because most of their discussion are with one another.
Note in particular that even if most of us do not use the power to filter so as to wall ourselves off form other points of view, some or many people will do, and are doing, exactly that. This is sufficient for polarization to occur, and to cause serious social risk. In general, it is precisely the people most likely to filter out opposing views who most need to hear such views. New technologies, emphatically including the Internet, make it easier for people to hear the opinions of like-minded but otherwise isolated others, and to isolate themselves from competing views. For this reason alone, they
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are a breeding ground for polarization, and potentially dangerous for both democracy and social peace.
There have been two main explanations for group polarization. Massive evidence now supports both these explanations.
The first explanation the role of persuasive arguments. It is based on simple intuition: Any individual’s position on any issue is a function, at least in part, of which arguments seem convincing. If you position is going to move as a result of group discussion, it is likely to move in the direction of the most persuasive position defended within the group, taken as a whole.
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The second mechanism, involving social comparison, begins with the reasonable suggestion that people want to be perceived favorable suggestion that people want to be perceived favorably by other group members, and also to perceive themselves favorably. Once they hear what others believe, they often adjust their positions in the direction of the dominant position. The German sociologist Elisabeth Noell-Neumann has used this idea as the foundation for a general theory of public opinion, involving a “spiral of silence”, in which people with minority positions silence themselves, potentially excising those position from society over time.
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GROUP POLARIZATION AND THE INTERNET
Group polarization is unquestionably occurring on the Internet. From the discussion thus far, it seems plain that the Internet is serving, for many, as a breeding group for extremism, precisely because like-minded people are deliberating with greater ease and frequency with one another, and often without hearing contrary views. Repeated exposure to an extreme position, with the suggestion that many people hold that position, will predictably move those exposed, and likely predisposed, to believe in it. One consequence can be a high degree of fragmentation, as diverse people, not originally fixed in their views and perhaps not so far apart, end up in extremely different places, simply, because can be a high degree of error and confusion.
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A number of studies have shown group polarization in Internet-like settings. An especially interesting experiment finds particularly high levels of polarization when group identity was emphasized. From this experiment, it is reasonable to speculate that polarization is highly likely to occur, and to be extreme, under circumstances in which group membership is made salient and people have a high degree of anonymity.
These are of course characteristic of deliberation via the Internet.
Consider in this regard a revealing study not of extremism, but of serious errors within working group, both face-to-face and more importantly online. The purpose of the study was to see how group might collaborate to make personnel decisions. Resumes for three candidates, applying for a marketing manager position, were placed before the several groups. The attributes of the candidates were rigged by the experimenters so that one applicant was clearly best matched for the job described. Packets of information from the resumes, so that each group consisted of three people, some operating on-line.
Two results especially striking. First, group polarization was common, in the sense that groups ended up in a more extreme position in line with members’ predeliberation views. Second, almost none of the deliberating groups made what was conspicuously the right choice. The reason is that they failed to share information in a way that would permit the group to make an objective decision. In online groups, the level of mistake was especially high, for the simple reason that members tended to share positive information about the emerging wining candidate and negative information about the losers, while also suppressing negative information about the emerging winner and positive information about the emerging losers. These contributions served to “reinforce the march toward group consensus rather than add complication and fuel debate.” In fact this tendency was twice as large within the online groups. There is warning here about the consequences of the Internet for democratic deliberation.
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PREPARING FOR AN AGE OF PARTICIPATORY NEWS
Journalism Practice, Volume 1, Issue 3 October 2007 , pages 322 - 338
Deuze, Mark , Bruns, Axel and Neuberger, Christoph
Participatory Journalism
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In online journalism as it is produced by professional/commercial news organizations, initiatives to implement interactive features are increasing—but journalists find it difficult to navigate the challenges this brings to established notions of professional identity and gatekeeping (Chung, 2007). Additionally, although people may express a general preference for more interactivity on news websites, when confronted with increasingly elaborate interactive options users seem confused, and indeed are less likely to be able to effectively digest or follow the news on offer (Bucy, 2004). It must be clear, then, that a more interactive, dialogical or participatory style of newswork is currently very much “under construction”; that it occurs in its most advanced forms on Net-native and generally non-mainstream online platforms; and that more or less traditional makers and users of news are cautiously embracing its potential—which embrace is not without problems both for the producers and consumers involved.
The twin or two-tiered developments of participatory news are part of a convergence process: a convergence between top-down and bottom-up journalisms. Such convergence is driven both by commercial pressures on existing news organizations to arrest their decline in audience numbers, and by the sedimentation of participatory journalism projects as serious alternatives to the established news industry. A third element to this equation is the emergence of news websites that operate in a “third space”, somewhere intermediating between top-down and bottom-up news ventures. Jenkins (2004) puts such initiatives in a broader context of an emerging convergence culture, signaling attempts by various media industries to blur the boundaries between users and producers of content in the creative process.
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Convergence culture serves both as a mechanism to increase revenue and further the agenda of industry, while at the same time enables people—in terms of their identities as producers and consumers, professionals as well as amateurs—to enact some kind of agency regarding the omnipresent messages and commodities of this industry. Convergence culture-based participatory news sites tend to emerge from institutions and organizations with a strong public service agenda or a strong connection to clearly defined local or interest communities, or are set up by commercial news organizations which see a thorough embrace of participatory journalism models as a clear competitive advantage in a shrinking market for journalistic work. Examples of such sites may include NowPublic, which acts as a platform for the aggregation and discussion of international news reports, the hub of Backfence communities in the United States serving as a DIY (“Do-It-Yourself”) platform of local news, the British BBC Action Network, where local communities are encouraged to submit and discuss information of public interest under the banner—within the brand—of the nation's public broadcaster, or the Dutch site Headlines, sponsored by public broadcast news organization NOS, inviting especially younger people to contribute to the news by uploading their own written, audio or video reports. In each instance a professional media organization (top-down) partners with or deliberately taps into the emerging participatory media culture online (bottom-up) in order to produce some kind of co-creative, commons-based news platform.
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