The Net Effect and the Echo Chamber | On the Media
On a program called "The Net Effect," Brooke Gladstone talks with Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, among others.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: A worry that’s long plagued media watchers – like me – is the echo chamber phenomenon in which likeminded people huddle in bubbles in the blogosphere where they never have to confront a conflicting opinion or unwelcome fact, where in defense of the dogma of the tribe, moderates are sidelined and extremists exalted.
Rainie conducted a study of people’s politics on the Internet during the 2004 presidential campaign. He found that the echo chamber phenomenon is a byproduct of human nature, not the Internet. The Net merely amplifies what’s worst and best in us all.
LEE RAINIE: One of the surprising things we found in that survey was that those who are the most technologically adept and those who are the most engaged with information actually are not in the echo chamber pattern; they are actually seeking out and finding out more arguments opposed to their views than those who are less technologically adept and less interested in political information.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Wait a minute, wait a minute. You have just blown my mind. [LAUGHS] So what you’re saying is that regardless of their political persuasion, the more comfortable they were in cyberspace, the more likely they were to know views across the spectrum and views other than their own.
LEE RAINIE: Right. They essentially behaved like information omnivores. They were soaking up all kinds of information in all kinds of ways. The people who worry about the echo chamber worry that people are going to narrow their universe, as information becomes more voluminous, that people, just as a coping strategy, will only look at the stuff that agrees with their point of view and only deal with the people who support their ideas.
But, in fact, these omnivores, in particular, the most technologically adept people, are, you know, scanning every horizon they can, and they can't help but bump into stuff that doesn't agree with them.
There is also an mp3 of the uncut interview with Rainie.
