As I read this article I got the feeling that Sunstein was participating in the kind of snowball effect extremism he was writing about. He sees some biased web sites, seeks out examples to support his hypothesis, and then, at the very end, mentions a few examples of when something outside of normal society going mainstream was a good thing. To pass over the civil rights movement gave me the impression that Sunstein had blinders on. That movement is a perfect example of more and more people taking on the views of an extremist group. That the civil rights movement was “good thing” is obvious. More importantly, the movement transformed a fringe sentiment into a mainstream American value.

That doesn’t mean these biased websites aren’t dangerous, both physically and to our democratic discourse. I read my hometown newspaper pretty regularly and I love the coverage of local events. But the comments are disturbing. If someone who has a foreign-sounding name is involved in a car accident, horrible racist comments appear immediately. Suicide victims are named. Posters often write false information about events that later posters than rely on. It doesn’t seem democratic and it’s far from what we’d all like to imagine citizen journalism to be.

My feeling is that the internet and all the material on it is just a reflection of humanity. The good, the bad, the horribly ugly. And I find that I don’t self-filter any more online than I do in real life. I always used to throw away the business and sports sections anyway. Will some violent or hateful groups gain momentum because of the internet? Yes. But many good things will come of it as well.

Ignorance is bliss.

And because ignorance is bliss, many writers won’t pay attention to the other side of the argument they are championing. As a result, the reader’s can’t pay attention to the other side of the argument because the writer hasn’t one a good job of presenting the argument objectively.

I must, however, tip my cap to the presentation of the linking graphics provided by sunstein. It’s interesting to see that he cited websites that actually link to opposing viewpoints. I suppose these bloggers might be considered objective, but only if they were working in cooperation with the other blog, and writing about the same issues.

But, in line with this.. How many Republican blogs are going to be linking to Democratic blogs? And how many ignorant skinhead and anti-semitic blogs are going to give the people they hate a voice?

Certainly this trend of extremist communities continues to thrive at sites like stormfront.org or davidduke.com. Stormfront boasts more than 21,400 active members. I have a hard time believing that sites like this can ever really manifest into anything more than a collected archive of impotent ravings.

While its undeniable that the internet allows extremists to communicate in ways previously unavailable the same is true for voices of moderation such as tolerance.org

Extremists may be better organized but they’re still vastly outnumbered by moderates who will always have a need for “mainstream” media un-tempered by radicalism.

It’s useful to be able to find news stories about topics you’re particularly interested in with ease. I also use google alerts and have been using “stumbleupon” to let me stumble on a variety of sites I may find interesting.

While we could use filters to block out viewpoints we have no interest in, I doubt the average person does that. Like Christa and Adam pointed out, we all get links from family and friends that introduce use to things you may have never had an interest in. And like Erica pointed out, many of us still like to pick up the paper, too.

It is terrible, yet somehow unsurprising, that in the few cases a radical site did link to sites of opposing views, those sites tended to be ones that were easily discredited or shockingly inflammatory, thus bolstering the original web site’s validity in an even more insidious way than those that did not contain links to opposing sites.

The psychology behind it is pretty intuitive. People gravitate to what makes them feel secure, in this instance, reassurance of their own world view. The part about people who read an ad for the car they just bought made me laugh. The group polarization theory was very interesting to me, and one that I have found to hold true in my experience. It makes sense that if you identify with other people who also believe what you believe, you will believe it even more. Similarly, if you do not identify with a certain group of people, you will be much less likely to find their arguments convincing, and hold onto your own ideas even harder.

I’ve heard of people posing in chat groups and the like, for example, a guy might pretend he’s pro-guns in a pro-gun forum, and then slip in some thought-provoking argument against gun ownership. The anonymity of the internet is useful in disguising your motivations in such settings. There may be companies who pay employees to go on customer review sites and write up scintillating reviews for that company’s product and then write reviews that trash the products of their competitors. And how is the average guy to know who’s being straight and who has less honorable intentions?

I think it is important to remember that extremism is not something to be feared, for, as she pointed out, the civil rights movement in the 60s was extremism.

And after reading her article, I suddenly have the urge to search out web sites that hold views that challenge my own web blog, and not just the inflammatory ones, but ones that are written intelligently, and to link to them.

I love you both

-Sol

I think his point about how personal filtering on the Internet can narrow what they see and read to just what they agree with is valid is an issue. I think that it should be a concern, but I agree with Erin’s point about the crazies. The Internet might unite the crazies from around the world, but it opens them up to the world, makes the rest of us aware of them and how crazy they are. Just look at what the Internet is doing to Scientology.

Second, his assumption that the internet is fundamentally different from what we have seen before is flawed. As he notes, self-selectivity has always been an issue, but it is not entirely clear how what happens on the internet differs from, say, skipping over the day’s news for the sports scores, or picking up The New Republic rather than the National Review.

It seems that what he takes issue with is the fact that national discourse has slipped from the hands of the elites and can now be carried on by anyone with an internet connection, including hate and fringe groups.

So it is not self-selectivity then that’s the problem, it’s interactivity. And in order to prove this is a problem, he has to show, for instance, that membership in hate groups has actually increased because of the net. But, unfortunately for Sunstein’s theory, the Klan reached its peak in the 1920s, a period when people had few information options. He’d also have to show that groups become more homogenous over time. But as we see now with, say, the Democratic Party, there is fracturing and debate going on within the group.