Comments on: Echo chambers: The meme that will not die

By: New Comm Biz » What’s in a name? New Communications Business

New Comm Biz » What’s in a name? New Communications Business — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:08:11 +0000

[...] Echo chambers: The meme that will not die [...]

By: plethaurus / Noted 4

plethaurus / Noted 4 — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:25:48 +0000

[...] David Weinberger ponders whether the Internet is improving democracy and concludes that it’s impossible to know — yet. “When all you can see of yourself is what the sanitised mass media show you and what you can see around you in your physical environs, the differences the Net makes visible unsettle us profoundly.” [...]

By: Falstaff Openshaw

Falstaff Openshaw — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:11:00 +0000

No, I prefer to think of the Internet as a medium, since nothing on it is ever well done.

By: links for 2008-09-15 « andrew golis

links for 2008-09-15 « andrew golis — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:04:12 +0000

[...] Joho the Blog » Echo chambers: The meme that will not die David Weinberger on the echo chamber debates. (tags: homophily new.media blogging) [...]

By: Karl

Karl — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:27:03 +0000

“Perhaps the persistence of the question is due to our shock at being shown who we really are. When all you can see of yourself is what the sanitized mass media show you and what you can see around you in your physical environs, the differences the Net makes visible unsettle us profoundly.”

So are you ready to move on from the idea that the Web is made of love and to finally come around to a belief that it mirrors human nature – the good, the bad, and the ugly?

If so, I congratulate you.

By: davidw

davidw — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:32:55 +0000

Bai initially raised this point as a way to explain why McCain can run as a reformer against his own party: The populace thinks of the candidates as their own person first and as a member of a party second.

By: jkd

jkd — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:48:22 +0000

“They also agree that the Internet is loosening party affiliation to the extent that in the next four or eight years we’re likely to see a viable independent presidential candidate.”

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, utter nonsense. Partisan identification is stronger now than it’s been in a long time, even as many voters do register as independents or unaffiliated. Whether that’s the Internet or not I can’t say, but people have been confidently predicting that this-or-that would lead to a viable independent presidential candidate justverysoonnow and it keeps… not… happening. Just like it hasn’t happened *ever* in American history. The few times when candidates from not-the-major-parties proved successful on a national stage have been as representatives of ascendant political parties that eventually took the place of one of the two existing political parties. And that hasn’t happened for a century-and-a-half-plus-and-counting.

The one way that one might be able to imagine a viable independent candidate emerging was if independent/unaffiliated voters together constituted some discernible political constituency going totally unrepresented by the major parties, and that candidate could bring them together as a bloc. E.g., if they really did occupy some center ground between parties each moving right and left on their sides. But that’s simply not the case.