How People Like You Fuel Extremism
Discussing politics in groups of similarly minded people can be enough to stoke polarization—a frightening prospect in an era of social media.
For Cass Sunstein, a challenge that social media poses to democracy was clarified by a social-science experiment that he conducted in two different communities in Colorado: left-leaning Boulder and right-leaning Colorado Springs. Residents in each place were gathered into small groups to discuss their views on controversial topics, like climate change and same-sex marriage. Afterward, they were asked to report on the opinions of their groups as well as their own views on the subjects.
The results were the
