TW: MSM's revenue models are shattered, blogs and cable outlets with overt bias are the future. This evolution will facilitate the normal human tendency to self-select into groups with similar biases thereby reinforcing the original biases. Self-selection bias is pervasive and a sublte polluter of one's perception of the world on many levels.
Re-connecting with high school associates in Facebook has focused me on the reality the folks with whom I associated with in high school were more diverse than the folks with whom we hang out with today. Today we are cocooned amidst those with similar educational and demographic backgrounds, back then one interfaced with the not entirely diverse but broader group of folks from a surrounding geography (I went to public school, private schools might have been a different story).
As technology permits us to customize our intake of media it will unfortunately permit us to insert our personal biases into the nature of that media. I know I fight the tendency to focus too much on progressive sites. I force myself to crack open National Review, Red State, Drudge and even Fox on occasion to try to keep things somewhat balanced, but it is not easy.
From Nick Kristoff at NYT:
"...When we go online, each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper. We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about.
Nicholas Negroponte of M.I.T. has called this emerging news product The Daily Me. And if that’s the trend, God save us from ourselves.
That’s because there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.
One classic study sent mailings to Republicans and Democrats, offering them various kinds of political research, ostensibly from a neutral source. Both groups were most eager to receive intelligent arguments that strongly corroborated their pre-existing views.
There was also modest interest in receiving manifestly silly arguments for the other party’s views (we feel good when we can caricature the other guys as dunces). But there was little interest in encountering solid arguments that might undermine one’s own position.
...The effect of The Daily Me would be to insulate us further in our own hermetically sealed political chambers. One of last year’s more fascinating books was Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” He argues that Americans increasingly are segregating themselves into communities, clubs and churches where they are surrounded by people who think the way they do.
Almost half of Americans now live in counties that vote in landslides either for Democrats or for Republicans, he said. In the 1960s and 1970s, in similarly competitive national elections, only about one-third lived in landslide counties.
...One 12-nation study found Americans the least likely to discuss politics with people of different views, and this was particularly true of the well educated. High school dropouts had the most diverse group of discussion-mates, while college graduates managed to shelter themselves from uncomfortable perspectives.
The result is polarization and intolerance. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor now working for President Obama, has conducted research showing that when liberals or conservatives discuss issues such as affirmative action or climate change with like-minded people, their views quickly become more homogeneous and more extreme than before the discussion.
...The decline of traditional news media will accelerate the rise of The Daily Me, and we’ll be irritated less by what we read and find our wisdom confirmed more often. The danger is that this self-selected “news” acts as a narcotic, lulling us into a self-confident stupor through which we will perceive in blacks and whites a world that typically unfolds in grays.
...So perhaps the only way forward is for each of us to struggle on our own to work out intellectually with sparring partners whose views we deplore. Think of it as a daily mental workout analogous to a trip to the gym; if you don’t work up a sweat, it doesn’t count."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/opinion/19kristof.html?scp=1&sq=nicholas%20kristof%20daily%20me&st=cse
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