Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Echo Chambers:
Bush v. Gore,
Impeachment, and Beyond
Cass Sunstein
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We can go much further. If you want to find information on specialized topics, or unusual points of view, the Internet is a terrific boon. Many people who might otherwise
think of their own complaints as unusual or isolated are able
to find like-minded individuals with whom they can share
their common concerns. In this way, the Internet is a great
friend of liberty. Television is in many respects a passive
medium: people receive information without really exchanging ideas with others. By contrast, the Internet can be an
active medium, allowing individuals to use e-mail, discussion
groups, and even Web sites to engage with one another. Daily
newspapers, weekly newsmagazines, radio talk show hosts,
and anchors of the evening news have their own biases and
limitations. To the extent that the Internet allows people to
bypass these sources, it not only increases diversity of opinion but also, in an important sense, it promotes liberty. For
people formerly limited to a few information sources, the
Internet is a remarkable liberation.
In most ways, the system of communications is better
now than it has ever been. But for all its virtues, the emerging system has vices as well. Many of these vices involve
the risk of fragmentation, as the increased power of individual choice allows people to sort themselves into innumerable homogeneous groups, which often results in amplifying
their preexisting views. Although millions of people are
using the Internet to expand their horizons, many people are
doing the opposite, creating a Daily Me that is specifically tailored to their own interests and prejudices. Whatever the
exact numbers, it is important to realize that a well-functioning democracya republicdepends not just on freedom
from censorship, but also on a set of common experiences
and on unsought, unanticipated, and even unwanted exposures to diverse topics, people, and ideas. A system of
gated communities is as unhealthy for cyberspace as it is
for the real world.
This does not mean that people should be forced to
have shared experiences, or to see things that they want to
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Group Polarization
Although it has received little attention in law and political
theory, group polarization is one of the robust findings in
social psychology. The central point here is that the outcome
of a group deliberation tends to be a more extreme version
of the initial predisposition of group members. Deliberating
groups thus move not toward the middle, but toward within-group extremes. For example, a group of people who tend
to oppose affirmation action is likely, after discussion, to
oppose affirmative action with more vehemence than
before. Those inclined to support gun control will, after discussion, do so with greater enthusiasm. People who tend to
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Cascades
As discussed in Republic.com, the empirical findings on
group polarization are closely related to theoretical work on
social cascades. The question here is why social groups
sometimes move quite rapidly in some direction or another
and why groups of like-minded people may move rapidly
toward or against an extreme outcome.
When individuals lack independent sources of information, they often rely on information provided by the statements or actions of others around them. If A does not know
whether abandoned toxic waste dumps are hazardous, he
may become fearful if B seems to think that fear is justified.
If A and B believe that fear is justified, C may end up thinking so too, at least if she lacks independent information to the
contrary. If A, B, and C believe that abandoned hazardous
waste dumps are hazardous, D will have to have a good
deal of confidence to reject their shared conclusion. The
result of this process is a cascade effect, in which large
numbers of individuals end up believing somethingeven
something that is falsesimply because other people seem
to believe it too.
We can see the effects of this phenomenon on public
discussions of political, legal, and moral questions: there can
be global-warming cascades, racism cascades, religion cascades, even pro-impeachment and anti-impeachment cascades. The same process may work for political candidates,
as a fad develops in favor of one or another candidatea
cascade up or down, with victory-producing or ruinous
consequences. Sometimes people are not entirely sure
whether affirmative action is a good idea, whether capital
punishment should be imposed, whether the Constitution
protects the right to have an abortion, whether it is wrong to
litter or to smoke, whether God exists, or whether perjury
counts as a high crime or misdemeanor. Many people lacking firm convictions of their own may end up believing what
other influential people seem to believe. There is an obvious
analogy here to the persuasive arguments account of
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Social Dynamics
How does all this bear on the Bush-Gore struggle and the
impeachment of President Clinton? And what are its general implications for intense political disputes, scandals, and
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Gore; but because I did not favor either side in the post-vote
controversy, many stations decided that it would be unhelpful to air my views. I was much more popular during the
impeachment controversy, simply because it seemed clear
to me that the Clinton impeachment was unconstitutional
and I was willing to say so.)
Here, then, is my basic account of the extraordinary
party-line judgments among the citizenry at large, and within
both the House and the Senate. These events were case
studies in group polarization. Those who sought or gave an
opinion overwhelmingly wound up fortifying one anothers
preexisting views, and made the views all the more extreme.
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largely because conversations tend to be internal, with likeminded people talking to one another. Modern technologies,
including the Internet, make this far easier, creating favorable conditions for group polarization. Indeed, group polarization has generally been studied under laboratory conditions, with isolated incidents. In real life, what we may call
polarization games are repeated, usually quite frequently.
It is in such conditions that movement toward extreme positions, and misunderstanding of what opponents actually do
and think, are especially likely.
Of course, nothing I have said here demonstrates that
group polarization necessarily moves people in bad directions. We can imagine many contexts in which it is entirely
appropriate for people to end up with a stronger version of
their initial position; perhaps discussion clarifies matters, and
perhaps the argument pool, limited though it is inevitably is,
makes people see things more clearly. But nothing in the
mechanisms that underlie polarization makes this inevitable.
The most serious problems are likely to arise when deliberating groups, insulated from one another, polarize to more
extreme positions partly because of their isolation. In these
circumstances, large groupswith initial tendencies that are
different but not greatly socan shift in opposite extreme
directions, with little understanding of how it is that they
have ended up in such different positions. It is in this setting
that group polarization carries a risk of balkanization, confusion, and even violence.
The nation managed to avoid the worst of these problems in connection with the 2000 election and impeachment, but in my view members of both parties suffered a
great deal from their failure to engage the arguments put
forth by the other side. If there is a warning here, there is a
lesson as wellabout the need to create institutions, and a
system of communications, that will ensure that deliberating
groups will avoid the isolation and homogeneity that can
lead them, by the laws of social interaction, to unjustifiably
extreme positions. The Internet is hardly the enemy here. It
can easily be used to allow people to overcome isolation and
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