Polarization - A Different Perspective (WIP)
Social media and its algorithms endure a lot of contempt for causing increased polarization. Is our blame justified? I attempt to provide an alternate cause for our fragmentation and division by building a model of information dissemination focused the sender (channel) and the receiver (individual) and their respective positions on issues. The idea is that we each hold views on any topic, and try to associate ourselves with messages that match our active perspective. This model, in the end, concludes that fragmentation will naturally occur (up to a point) when information is more widely disseminated through economical mediums, individuals consume more knowledge, and society is free. Social media algorithms act as a catalyst to the increase in polarization, but they also serve as a limiting factor. This model also draws some conclusions on how we can hold polarized views, but still maintain coherence in our society.
Laying the Groundwork
Throughout this essay, I’ll try to choose a non-controversial topic, best pet, so we can focus on the framework and concept instead of issues. Before we dive into explaining the model, we should be familiar with how we define certain terms.
Channel - The sender of information on any given topic or topics. A channel could be one person such as a columnist, commentator, or analyst—”Dee’s Dog Blog” for our “best pet,” topic. Or it could be a group or organization: The Kennel Club. More serious examples include: Piers Morgan, Anderson Cooper, Megyn Kelly, National Rifle Association, Change.org, Fox, MSNBC, etc. It’s a very broad idea, but essentially any entity that holds and shares opinion, views, and facts.
Individual - A person who consume information, and holds views and ideologies—every thinking human, essentially.
Overton Window (OW) - The range of ideas that are considered acceptable or mainstream within a particular society. In most cases we will look at Overton windows for individual topics. For our example, the Overton window in society might be anything from ants to llamas, but tigers, chimpanzees, and dolphins might fall outside the Overton window for acceptable pets.
Individual Overton Window (IOW) - A person’s range of acceptable views on a given topic. For example, Jack considers anything from insects to dogs as pets, while Jane thinks only dogs or cats could be pets.
Stance/View/Position - A belief or viewpoint within their individual Overton window. While Jack’s very wide Overton window accepts many animals as pets, he still prefers rabbits. Jill might be okay with a dog or a cat, but she still prefers a cat.
Unwavering IOW - A variant of the individual Overton window on a specific topic that when crossed, the individual is likely to disassociate with the channel. For example, if Jane has an unwavering IOW on the “best pet” topic, she is very likely to stop consuming any channel that treats insects as pets.
The Model
The premises of this model largely spell out how it functions—that is the combined corollary of all the axioms become self evident. So we’ll spend most of our time to ensure we hold well founded assumptions.
Premises
Confirmation Premise
The confirmation premise states that individuals desire to consume information that confirms their stance on an issue. Individuals seek out information and channels that support their active viewpoint and falls into their IOW. This holds true for most people, but personality traits can influence the IOW.
This premise only breaks for a minority of individuals who are high on the disagreeableness trait of the big five—these are the individuals who are looking for a conflict. For example, Jane might seek out channels that promote ants as pets to ridicule or troll them. Still, for the most part, Jane will probably listen to dog and cat podcasts. Individuals who seek out conflict would still consume like-minded one way channels (ones where they can’t attack). In this way, we can ignore this anomaly in our model for now.
For individuals high in openness—people who are willing to entertain different and sometimes contradictory views—their IOW simply widens. Guessing from Jack’s inclusive IOW, he most likely scores high in opennes. In this case, there is no contradiction.
There may be other exceptions for goal oriented infromation consumption like when an individual is performing research. Jane may consume the “Ant Farm Podcast,” only to research her paper on, “pets.”
For a majority of cases, the confirmation premise holds. Most individuals consume channels that confirm their active stance.
Stance Premise
Our brains evolved to hold positions, ideas, and opinions. There is no individual that doesn’t have a viewpoint on any topic. In fact, it’s probably hard to find a person who does hold a viewpoint on every topic. This premise simply acknowledges that individuals hold a stance within their IOW.
To see if we can hold this premise, let’s consider James who claims to have no stand on the “best pet” issue. This non-stance, might be a no vs. null stance—that is James might believe that no animal is acceptable as a pet (think PETA folks). That is actually a specific stance that equals the IOW. For the null case, let’s say James just never thought about it. By asking James to consider the question, you’re already forming some stance within him. His stance might be very generic like, “mammals are probably better as pets than ants,” which simply indicates as a very fuzzy viewpoint with a unstable IOW.
We can simply ignore the very rare cases where an individual truly doesn’t have a view on a topic, since they’ll hold many views of different topics. That is, even if James holds no viewpoint on the pets question, he still contributes to the model’s functioning by hold views on politics, economics, music, art…
The only time we will hold a true “null” stance on a topic is when we are not aware of it. This is a corollary to the premise.
Obscurity Premise
In most cases, the reason and foundation for an individual’s stance (and IOW) is complex to the point of obscurity. Many psychological experiments indicate that we do not even understand why we hold a certain viewpoint, but simply rationalize it post-hoc. Unlike the previous premises, this one is not as self-evident or intuitive. We may think we have a well-reasoned, solid foundation for any view we could name, but in reality a confluence of events, biology, and experience conspired to manifest the view.
For example, Jack might explain his acceptance of many species as pets because his parents kept birds as pets. However, that’s not the whole explanation because if he had hated those birds, he might develop a viewpoint and IOW similar to Jane’s. What makes any individual enjoy their parents obscure pet species? That’s a question I’m not prepared to answer, and it’s only one level lower in our analysis. The ultimate reasoning behind our choices, even if you believe in determinism, is near infinite.
The corollary to this premise is that it’s impossible to adjust an individuals view and IOW consistently—what works for one person may not work for another.
Knowledge Premise
As we gain more knowledge on any given topic, our views might shift and adjust, but we also become more entrenched in our stance. This is another intuitive and self evident, or rationally self evident, premise. In the extreme, if we aren’t aware of the existence of an issue, but then we learn about it, we start to develop a position on it. As we gain more knowledge, we may adjust our instinctual stand, but, since our views are now supported by new knowledge, our stance on the issue becomes sturdier. Individuals vary, but this general trend applies.
For our example, imagine Jane, who instinctually only believe cats and dogs are pets, learns about how goats develop a similar level of closeness to their owners as cats. Perhaps her view would start to adjust, and she’ll start including other pets that develop strong bonds with their masters. However, she’s likely to become solidified in her stand that only certain mammals could be pets, but insects can’t.
The corollary of this premise is that individual’s views might vary in how strongly they are held. James, who recently became aware of the “best pet,” topic, might hold a very flexible position—he doesn’t care too much about the subject. Jane who has two cats and three dogs, consumes a lot of “dog lovers” content, and sits on the Kennel Club board, on the other hand, gets very offended when someone treats lizards as pets. Jack, who also cares about the subject, might have a wider IOW to accept a variety of pets, but his stance on the subject could, also, be firm. That is, if someone suggests that a tiger could be a pet, he gets very angry and is not likely to consume that channel int he future.
Compromise Premise
Just like the perfect group identity boils down to the individual, so too is the match between channel and the individual. That is, no channel (except our inner voice) matches our stand on every issue perfectly. Since we are drawn to consume information that confirms our views (confirmation premise) we are likely to make compromises with channels that either match our strongly held views but mismatch on more loosely held stances, or channels that most closely match a multitude of our views, but misses on a few.
Let’s say that Jane, the cat and dog lover, deeply enjoys romance fiction novels. However, in her favorite “Dog Lover” podcast, the commentator went on a rampage about how romance novels ruin civilization. Whether she continues to consume that channel will depend on a variety of factors: how often this podcaster brings up his hatred of romance novels, how strongly the channels other positions match hers, and how many alternatives to that podcast exist. If for example the “Dog Lover” podcaster doesn’t mention his stand on romance novels again, Jane might consciously ignore his on off rant; however, if the podcast “Paw Podcast,” is a very close alternative but without the anti romance stance, Jane may switch her consumption habits.
Complications
Again, no model or abstraction, matches reality entirely. The best that we can do is construct a model that serves our purpose accurately without unnecessary complication. Sometimes, we can introduce these complications when we want to use our model to draw conclusions on them, but for now we’ll avoid various real-world details that do not serve our purpose:
Fidelity of Communication — We are avoiding the complication where a channel intends to send a particular message, but the individual misunderstands it. On average, we assume that message sent equals message received.
Hierarchy of Channels — This is a complication we may want to explore in the future, but there is a hierarchy in channels: Fox news is a channel and Sean Hannity is it’s subchannel. There is an interplay between how we view “Fox” based on its constituent channels. In other words, how we view MSNBC is partially influenced how we view on of its commentators: Rachel Maddow. There’s a lot to be said for this interplay, but for our purposes we’re ignoring it.
Platform vs. Channel — The distinction between platform (Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, Truth Social…) is becoming increasingly blurred. Some might consider “Truth Social,” a platform, while others might consider it a channel since there is a particular leaning to most of the folks on there. We’re going to ignore this whole mess. It doesn’t mean we won’t draw conclusions on platforms since they have changed the broadcast medium, but we’ll treat all platforms equally unless they force a particular stand on their users.
Fake News, Misinformation, — We’ll ignore the effect of fake news and misinformation because of the long term focus of this model. I believe that misinformation and fake news a short term strategies for channels that have a limited impact on the long run. I’m not saying that fake news and misinformation aren’t detrimental, but it’s not useful for our model—it doesn’t help or hinder us in drawing long-term conclusions.
News vs. Opinion — This is a tough one because News outlets draw an intentional distinction between their news room and their editorial, as they should. News organizations, for their news department, try to limit the opinion (stance) of it. This is an unreachable objective since there is always a stance on what to report on and how. A left learning news broadcast might aspire to only report facts, but their focus on stories that promote their position is a stance in itself. It’s still a worthy aspiration; however, for our model, we can ignore the distinction.
Conflict Intent Channels — A channel like Piers Morgan is complicated because they seek out conflict. Usually individuals will align themselves with the main host, but might align themselves with a guest or sub-host. On average, these types of shows are rare enough that we can ignore them for the development of the model. The model can still be used to analyse these specific cases.
Willing blindness/avoidance — Certain authoritarian regimes developed a strategy to disengage their civil society from certain topics. For example, China and Russia disengage their civil society from political engagement through various sticks and carrots. This is a wrinkle to our model, but we can ignore it on average unless we are talking about specific cases. In fact, our model, by ignoring this complication, can expose the strategies of some of these regimes.
There are other complications and details we’ll choose to ignore like paradigm shifting events. We’ll assume a ceteris paribus stance. Whenever we choose to ignore a detail, it’s only to make our model more feasible and useful, and not to obscure the truth.
