Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Let us take another arena, like VoIP. What will be the reaction if I posted questioning some of the basic aspects of VoIP? The whole clique will react as if a memeber of flat earth society is speaking. Please honest to yourself. There is no echo chamber?

Why not give it a try, anonymous? Your prediction of what will happen is hardly evidence.

Heck, David, I'm not the anonymous poster above, but I'll put my name to similar sentiments:

The mainstream media are *an* echo chamber. Blogs are *another* echo chamber. Not in a silly way, not that every blog echoes every other blog in the world. Not that every blogger thinks alike.

But bloggers are human - a person typically will *get* *social* *points* for going along with the crowd, and lose points for not conforming to the crowd.

The key structural aspect is that in both blogs and mainstream media, THERE IS NO INCENTIVE TO BE ACCURATE RATHER THAN POPULAR! Both have the property that an appealing but wrong statement will be echoed over an unappealing but right statement.

Of course, "appealing" is relative to group norms. But social psychology isn't suddenly suspended for *bloggers*

Sethf, I still agree with what I wrote for Salon, and the Pew study seems to confirm it, to some limited degree.

To the extent that you are writing against a view that the mainstream media as full of tough, skeptical, investigators (vs. bloggers in pajamas), I think what you say is very true, I agree with you.

But bloggerdom is far more similar than different to other publications, in terms of echo properties, because people don't change their way of *thinking*.

Seth, I agree. We don't change our way of thinking. Or, more exactly, when we do change, it's not because of a conversation. It's because of a lifetime of experiences.