Attention, Anglican/Episcopal bloggers

Cass Sunstein in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“When people end up in enclaves of like-minded people, they usually move toward a more extreme point in the direction to which the group's members were originally inclined. Enclave extremism is a special case of the broader phenomenon of group polarization, which extends well beyond politics and occurs as groups adopt a more extreme version of whatever view is antecedently favored by their members.”

Read it all, with particular attention to the "Colorado experiment."

Hat tip, Arts and Letters Daily.

Posted by Jim Naughton on December 22, 2007 6:29 PM | |
Comments (1)

Reading his morning newspaper, my brother likes to say "I think I'll read {favorite columnist} to find out what I think about {current controversy of the day}." He says it in self-mocking jest, but he has a point. The internet has only made it easier to find words that, because they feel comfortable, reinforce our own zeitgeist.

So, should it be "attention bloggers"? or "attention blog readers"? If I want do not want to develop an unbalanced view of the world (or the Anglican slice of it) then the lesson, I think, is to read more widely. Or - as some have done - tune out the extremes altogether.

Posted by John B. Chilton [TypeKey Profile Page] | December 23, 2007 1:48 AM

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