“Unplanned, unanticipated encounters are central to democracy itself. Such encounters often involve topics and points of view that people have not sought out and perhaps find quite irritating. They are important partly to ensure against fragmentation and extremism, which are predictable outcomes of…”Tagged: Extremism, Freedom of Expression, Thought Catalog, Thought Catalog History
“As the experiment was designed, the groups consisted of 'liberal' and 'conservative' members — the former from Boulder, the latter from Colorado Springs. It is widely known that Boulder tends to be liberal and that Colorado Springs tends to be conservative. The groups were screened to ensure that…”Tagged: Diversity, Extremism, Group Polarization, Politics, Viewpoints
“If the public is balkanized, and if different groups are designing their own preferred communications packages, the consequence will be not merely the same but still more balkanization, as group members move one another toward more extreme points in line with their initial tendencies. At the same…”Tagged: Polarization, Tribalism, Why Polarization