When I had first heard of Cass Sunstein's book Republic.com (I still haven't read it.), I was very suspicious of his claims that the Internet as a communications medium would be very detrimental on the effect of public discourse as people would take the easy way out and associate with sites that reflected their own views. These people would then enter into a sort of feedback loop where they would reinforce their positions and the group would grow more radical as a result. (Here are some notes from a Sunstein talk earlier this year.) Being a fan of the Internet, I really didn't buy into these claims and dismissed them. A few years later, after having been a visitor of political sites on the Internet, I'm really starting to think that Prof. Sunstein was right on the money.
Personally, I'm very interested in politics and the political process. I visit a disproportionately large number of political sites that encompass a wide range of the political spectrum. For the left-wing stuff, I visit The Daily Kos, while for the right-wing stuff, I visit a number of smaller weblogs.
One of the most distressing things that I've run into is the lack of communication that happens between these communities. Both groups (though there are a few exceptions) tend to self-segregate and through the "discourse" that happens, they end up becoming more sure of themselves and that their position is the "right" one. When challenged with an opposing view, a number of things can happen. First, you can be accused an enemy and member of the opposite camp and dismissed outright. My pointing out the absurdity of a particular Dean attack at Eye on the Left is a good example of this phenomena. In other venues, the dissent is simply edited out and the comment destroyed as if it never existed. There are allegations that this is rampant on The Free Republic. Finally, you can also be ignored and dismissed as I was when I responded to Aaron Swartz with respect to his Common Sense Party. (Aaron's original posting, a transcript of our e-mail conversation, and a later entry by Aaron claiming that no one called him on the Common Sense Party nonsense - his official excuse was that I challenged Michael Moore, and not him, nevermind that he was advocating many of Moore's ideas and evidence.)
In any case, it's hard to find a community of people on the Internet whose minds are not set in stone and are willing to discuss things on the merits of the argument. It seems that people are not interested in debate and discussion anymore, but rather seek out self-justification and communities that will reinforce their already adopted values.
Personally, and this may be me just whining, but I find the situation to be very discouraging. I'm a believer in the idea that one's ideas can't be always right all the time and that only by challenging these ideas can one reach an optimal set of ideas that are robust, well thought-out, resistant to criticism, and somewhat reflecting reality. I'll confess that my mind is not made up on a lot of things. One of the more valuable uses of the Internet is the connection to other people who may have ideas that challenge mine or information that I'm not aware of. My hope was that I could find a like-minded group of people who are interested in this sort of proving ground for ideas and would be interested in creating and testing ideas worth challenging. It appears that I'm in the wrong place as I can find sites that advocate every sort of idea imaginable, but none that are willing to engage in an honest back-and-forth to challenge those ideas. If I'm in a "Bush is the antichrist" mode, I can go to dKos to reinforce that. However, if I'm interested in having that assertion challenged in a persuasive manner, the right-wing blogs are not all that great as I'll be accused of trolling and not be taken seriously. Conversely if I'm in a mode where I'm asking "what's so bad about Bush", I can't go to dKos as I'll be accused of trolling there.
What's a guy to do? Should I give up on the Internet as a potential vehicle for political discussion? Am I just not finding the right sites? What's the deal? Was Sunstein right in saying that this medium will spell the death of rational discourse?
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