Polarization and the Internet

The Internet was supposed to breed greater understanding because it eliminated physical boundaries, and allowed anyone to post their views. Why didn’t that happen? Why did the opposite, i.e., extreme polarization, as seen on social media, happen instead?

A 1971 experiment by the economist Thomas Schelling might explain: he wanted to understand why racial segregation happened in residential areas of the US. After all, he felt, most Americans aren’t racists; and yet the residential areas seemed to indicate clear black and white regions. Why?

Schelling drew a grid of squares. He randomly placed black and white markers on the squares. He ended up with a more or less even distribution of black and white. No segregation. He then added a simple assumption and a rule based on that:

“Each family would prefer to have some nearby neighbors of the same color as themselves. If the percentage of neighbors of the same color fell beneath 50 percent, a family would have a tendency to move… to the closest unoccupied square.”

Where did things end up?

“He continued moving the pieces until no marker had neighbors that were more than 50 percent of the other color. At that point, to Schelling’s astonishment, the grid had become completely segregated. All the white markers had congregated in one area, and all the black markers had congregated in another.”

Mark Buchanan summarized the result:

“Slight and seemingly harmless personal preferences (can amplify) into dramatic and troubling consequences.”

That is exactly what happens on the Internet. Slight and harmless preferences amplified lead to extreme polarization. But, unlike the physical world, the amplification happens at warp speed since all it takes is a click and a Like. Social media and their “People who liked this also liked that” recommendations and algorithms make that schism even deeper. And so, as Nick Carr wrote:

“Like Schelling’s hypothetical homeowners, (we) end up in ever more polarized and homogeneous communities. We would click our way to a fractured society.”

Sad but true.