On Echo Chambers and Media Polarization

As we mentioned a couple of days ago, a Norwegian university professor named Jill Walker Rettberg has helped to establish a new academic fellowship whose purpose will be to investigate extremism on the Internet. The professor pointed out that web extremists are able to inhabit their own “echo chamber” or “filter bubble”. As far as I could determine, the only extremists mentioned by name in the interview with her were Anders Behring Breivik and Fjordman.

Nevertheless, Prof. Rettberg insists that the new position will look at all types of extremism, and not just “right-wing extremism”. She left the following comment on the post earlier today:

Hey, thanks for linking to the article — we hope to have applications from people interested in examining any kind of extremism, we’re not simply interested in right-wing extremism. If you look at the actual job advertisement you’ll see that we’re trying to be open.

The whole idea of an echo chamber or the filter bubble is that we’re ALL in echo chambers and we have to make an effort if we want to see and hear view points from outside of it. The internet appears to exacerbate that. You can use it to find anything, but studies have also shown that political debate, for instance, is more polarised in blogs than on television. So yes, of course I recognise that I’m also in an echo chamber.

In response to Prof. Rettberg, our longtime reader, commenter, and contributor Egghead left the following comment on the same post. It’s worth reproducing in its entirety:

Jill Walker Rettberg:

Your basic assumption that anti-jihad blogs are right-wing extremist blogs is insulting and incorrect.

Who are you to label an anti-jihad point of view — which is backed up by over 1,400 years of evidence of Muslim violence and jihad war — as right-wing extremism?

Anyone with a grasp of both past history and current events would understand that the real extremism is exhibited by well-documented actions of Muslims who have always used — and still use — torture, rape, kidnap, mass murder, poll tax, and dhimmi slave status to clear Muslim countries of all non-Muslims — and also to conquer non-Muslim countries for the ummah.

Your reference to the article that claims that…

1.		blog readers are more polarized than non-blog-readers or consumers of various television news programs, and
2.		left-wing blogs inspire more political participation than right-wing blogs

…is highly suspect.

First, the term ‘polarized’ has a negative connotation as if the preferred state of people is that people remain anesthetized rather than polarized — as if having no opinion — or a state-approved opinion — is somehow better than having a strong or conflicting opinion.

Second, the consumers of various television news programs are simply consuming state-approved and/or state-funded propaganda intended to keep people in the dark about major issues — thus calm and manageable for current leaders. To wit, television news programs are themselves polarized to reflect the goals of left-wing leaders. To claim that television news programs are non-polarized is to beggar disbelief in anyone who watches said shows.

Please note that former Obama czar Cass Sunstein reviewed the article that you referenced prior to its publication so said article can hardly be seen to be neutral.

“Sunstein gained notoriety on a number of fronts. He called for dispatching government agents to sabotage individuals and groups opposed to government — most notably those at odds with the official 9/11 narrative — and suggested the government hold people responsible for the information they post on the internet.”

Obama’s Authoritarian Adviser Sunstein Steps Down

Likewise, modern mass media is notoriously left-leaning rather than neutral.

Just the fact that reporters in the left-leaning mass media have omitted to question Obama about the many documented fraudulent activities of Obama and his many criminal cronies is an indication of the left-wing extremism of the mass media.

The best that we can hope is that you will learn something factual about Islam while you are reading about it.

Please, read the entire site from top to bottom until you understand that extremism is the actions of Muslims rather than the words of anti-jihadists. Extremism is the Marxist-Islamic partnership to overthrow Western civilization.

— Egghead