Filtering for group-think

HonestReporting's social media editor Alex Margolin has a thoughtful post on Backspin about the practical need to focus our attention on relatively few sources of information and opinion on the internet:

One popular form of filtering is known as personalization. This is one of the fundamental principles of sites like Facebook, where our "news stream” shows what our friends are doing, but nothing else. Personalization is appealing because it keeps us connected with the people we trust most. At the same time, it contributes to a different phenomenon increasing across the Internet - the atomization of audiences into narrow affinity groups, many of which never interact with one another online. The result is a form of echo chamber, where we hear our own opinions echoed back to us by like-minded people. The effect strengthens our convictions on many issues, but closes us off to alternative viewpoints.

Margolin then quotes a passage from James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds that warns against group-think:

Homogenized groups become cohesive more easily than diverse groups, and as they become more cohesive they also become more dependent on the group, more insulated from outside opinions, and therefore more convinced that the group’s judgment on important issues must be right. These kinds of groups share an illusion of invulnerability, a willingness to rationalize possible counterarguments to the group’s position, and a conviction that dissent is not useful.

Indeed - herd animals will bunch together; they can do no other. But as Margolin observes in conclusion, the web provides a range of opinions from the widest possible spectrum for those willing to think for themselves.

I know it's a hobby-horse, but that is why being taxed to pay for the supercilious propaganda of the BBC infuriates me. The tax was indefensible enough when only print and TV media were available. It is a monstrous anachronism in the internet era.