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#Republic.com. La democrazia nell'epoca dei social media
Capacità di ascoltare, apertura alla discussione, riconoscimento della legittimità di un'opinione diversa dalla propria, necessità di negoziare: sono altrettanti, inaggirabili, presupposti della vita democratica. Oggi il fenomeno della polarizzazione priva di contraddittorio non riguarda solo i cosiddetti populisti, ma contagia ogni comunità. Internet, grande promessa di democratizzazione e di accessibilità, si è trasformato, nei fatti, in una compartimentazione di individui e delle loro idee, più funzionale al loro profilo algoritmico e al mercato che alla crescita personale. Ma, al di là delle cybercascades e del marketing della profilazione, a minacciare la democrazia è soprattutto l'obsolescenza dell'idea di confronto. Sunstein propone rimedi pratici e strumenti giuridici affinché la rete diventi serbatoio di idee originali, non pre-confezionate, esattamente come avverrebbe nella vita.
337 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2017
73 people are currently reading
1403 people want to read
About the author
Cass R. Sunstein
167 books731 followersCass R. Sunstein is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics, who currently is the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration. For 27 years, Sunstein taught at the University of Chicago Law School, where he continues to teach as the Harry Kalven Visiting Professor. Sunstein is currently Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he is on leave while working in the Obama administration.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
October 3, 2017
It definitely had interesting points that are really relevant to the emerging and increasing role of social media. However, in short, this is a 262 paged essay on how we need to diversify our feed because it is causing echo chambers and destroying democracy. The remaining pages is the acknowledgment, Works Cited pages, and index so basically the format of an essay.
It was a very dry read where at some parts I had to read it aloud to keep me awake. If it were not for the fact that I had to read this for POSC, I really would have dropped this after the first few chapters. That is literally all you need to read (the first few chapters) to know how he is just going to say the same things in the remaining pages. If you want a sum up, read the first chapter than the last, you won't miss anything.
It was a very dry read where at some parts I had to read it aloud to keep me awake. If it were not for the fact that I had to read this for POSC, I really would have dropped this after the first few chapters. That is literally all you need to read (the first few chapters) to know how he is just going to say the same things in the remaining pages. If you want a sum up, read the first chapter than the last, you won't miss anything.
February 18, 2020
This book proposes that democracy cannot thrive in a fragmented society. Sunstein states that the the algorithms that filter what we see online is increasing the fragmentation in our society, and due to this fragmentation, citizens share less information and fewer experiences. This is an idea that requires more thought and discussion. Unfortunately, this book is not successful in developing this idea. It meanders through a few unrelated topics (there's a chapter on how ISIL recruited people through social media), and certain ideas seem to be repeated again and again. In the end, the recommendations that Sunstein makes seem toothless. For example, one of his solutions is for industries to self-regulate for the common good. It seems a bit idealistic to me. Another idea is for news media websites and bloggers to put links to sites with opposing viewpoints on their sites. That way, people will read about both sides of an issue. Again, it doesn't seem likely to happen or work if it did. I'd recommend finding another book if you are interested in this topic.
April 2, 2018
2/5
The premise of this long-form essay is interesting enough, but Sunstein writes in circles. His sentence structure is lackluster, he fails to realize what empirical evidence is actually relevant to his point, and his main arguments are lost within other multi-faceted arguments that do nothing to draw in a reader, whether they be reading this for class (like me) or for pleasure (like...some people, I suppose).
The premise of this long-form essay is interesting enough, but Sunstein writes in circles. His sentence structure is lackluster, he fails to realize what empirical evidence is actually relevant to his point, and his main arguments are lost within other multi-faceted arguments that do nothing to draw in a reader, whether they be reading this for class (like me) or for pleasure (like...some people, I suppose).
September 25, 2018
Whilst this book makes a couple of good points around the dangers of a personalised internet experience and how it closes us off to contrasting standpoints, it gets lost in theory and loses its way in the middle. Then it just keeps making the same point. Worth reading the first few chapters though - it is very relevant to today's post truth and passive minds society!
Want to read
January 1, 2018The Economist:
In praise of serendipity: Social media should encourage chance encounters, not customised experiences
It should be required reading for anyone who is concerned with the future of democracy—in Silicon Valley and beyond.New York Journal of Books:
[Despite some criticism], #Republic is an excellent assessment of how social psychology, technology, and politics are colliding to produce the extreme and polarized discourse that has come to dominate our contemporary political environment.
August 4, 2018
Sunstein does an okay job at providing the right approach to combating divisiveness and increasing political biases, but he could’ve made his point much quicker than he did. I get it, it takes a combined effort by the citizenry to combat self-imposed echo chambers and polarization for true deliberative democracy to take its desired effect. This doesn’t need to be said 100 times, however. Sunstein gives the reader good tidbits and stories to back up his message, but he always circles back to the same point in seemingly every chapter.
December 1, 2017
Impeccably researched, interesting, many important points. Could have been a long-form essay though or maybe an essay series - was essentially a litany of research findings, and tended to circle around and back to the same ideas. The format and repetition both got a bit wearisome.
October 27, 2017
Cass is back
Interesting thesis, a lot of really interesting studies on polarization online and how to increase and/or decrease it. Gets a bit fluffy in the last chapters though.
Interesting thesis, a lot of really interesting studies on polarization online and how to increase and/or decrease it. Gets a bit fluffy in the last chapters though.
February 26, 2018
Current communications systems, including social media, allow us to create a "Daily Me" by tailoring and filtering information that confirms what we already believe. This has laid bare the public square and diminished the social capital necessary for a well-functioning democracy.
May 10, 2018
1 – What Facebook Wants
p.14 – On June 19, 2016, Facebook made a significant announcement, under a post called “Building a Better News Feed for You.”
Adam Mosseri, “Building a Better News Feed for You,” Facebook Newroom, June 29, 2016, http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/06/b... (accessed August 29, 2016).
It didn’t exactly say that it had found a way to produce a Daily Me, but it came fairly close, and it made clear its aspirations.
The post emphasizes that “the goal of News Feed is to show people the stories that are most relevant to them.” With that point in mind, why does Facebook tank stories in its News Feed? “So that people can see what they care about first, and don’t miss important stuff from their friends.” In fact, the News Feed is animated by “core values,” starting with “getting people the stories that matter to them most.” echo chambers
Consistent with the spirit, Facebook says, “To help make sure you don’t miss the friends and family posts you are likely to care about, we put those posts toward the top of your News Feed. We learn from you and adapt over time. algorithms
Personalization matters: “Something that one person finds informative or interesting may be different from what another person finds informative or interesting.” The News Feed is designed so that different people get what they want. personalization
Facebook says it doesn’t play favorites. Its business is “connecting people and ideas – and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful.”
p.15 – the company appears to have altered its algorithm to ensure that the top of your News Feed, you will see items from your friends, thus increasing the likelihood that what you will see will be what most interests you.
In the 2016 presidential campaign, the News Feed spread a lot of falsehoods.
p.16 – I have a friend who has a rule: “You cannot be happier than you spouse.” Emotions are contagious.
It stands to reason that the emotional valence of what you read or see will have analogous effects. If your Twitter feed is full of pessimistic people, verging on despair about the economy or the fate of your nation, you’ll become more pessimistic as well.
One consequence of personalization is likely to be not only fragmentation with respect to topics and points of view but also fragmented feelings – perhaps in general, or perhaps with respect to specific objects and positions. Evidence to this effect comes from an important and controversial study by Facebook itself. In the study, Facebook worked with Cornell University to conduct an experiment in which the company deliberately fed certain users sad posts in order to test whether the sadness of those posts would affect the emotions of those users.
As it turns out, the users who were given the sad posts began posting sad posts themselves. If we measure the effects on their emotions by what they did next, we can fairly say that sadness proved contagious on Facebook pages, just as in families and workplaces.
p.17 – Facebook made a genuine contribution to science, producing as it did strong evidence that the emotional valence of what you read on social media will affect not only what you think but also how you feel. the power of echo chambers
4 – Cybercascades
p.98 – Social cascades occur within isolated communities, which develop a commitment to certain products, films, books, or ideas. Terrorists, rebels, and revolutionaries attempt to create and use them.
p.99 – We need to distinguish between two kinds of cascades: informational and reputational.
6 – Citizens
p.159 – Many people seem to think that freedom consists of respect for consumption choices, whatever their origins and content. Indeed, this thought appears to underlie enthusiasm for the principle of consumer sovereignty itself.
It is obvious that a free society is generally respectful of people’s choices. But freedom requires certain preconditions, ensuring not just respect for choices and the satisfaction of preferences, whatever they happen to be, but also the free formation of desires and beliefs.
Much of the time, people develop tastes for what they are used to seeing and experiencing. If you are used to seeing stories about the local sports team, your interest in the local sports team is likely to increase.
If you learn that most people like a certain movie, book, political candidate, or idea, you will be more likely to like them too, and this effect is increased if the relevant people are “like you.”
p.160 – If people are deprived of access to competing views on public issues, and if as a result they lack a taste for those views, they lack freedom, whatever the nature of their preferences and choices. The problem is most serious, of course, in authoritarian societies, which engage in the defining evil of censorship. But it can arise also in a world with a sea of choices.
It has long been widely believed that China has been paying civilians a small fee (about 50 cents per post) to go online using pseudonyms to rebut the claims of those who are critical of the government and its policies. That kind of “reverse censorship,” undertaken by a supposed “50c Party,” has been thought to be one of the government’s favorite strategies for combating dissent.
Checking their numbers through multiple routes, they estimate that the government fabricates an astonishing number of social media posts per year: 448 million. But there is no 50c party of ordinary citizens. The fabrications come mostly from government employees, contributing part time outside their regular jobs.
p.161 – The fabricated posts hardly ever engage with the government’s critics. On the contrary, they ignore them. For the most part, they focus on the wonderful things that the government is supposedly doing. King and his colleagues call this “cheerleading” and it includes “expressions of patriotism, encouragement and motivation, inspirational slogans or quotes, gratefulness, discussions of aspirational figures, cultural references, or celebrations.”
Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument” (unpublished manuscript, July 26, 2016)
The government’s goal, then, is not to meet criticism on the merits but instead to distract people by redirecting their attention in its preferred direction.
But one class of social media posts does alarm the Chinese government: discussions that, in its view, have real potential to give rise to collective action. Such discussions include information about imminent protest activity or specific plans to initiate some kind of uprising.
Because the government sees these discussions as threatening, it responds in two ways. First, it engages in censorship. Second, it coordinates identifiable and timely “bursts” of cheerleading, designed to focus people on what’s going well. In view of this pervasive pattern, King and his coauthors conclude that officials in the Chinese regime think that the main threat “is not military attacks from foreign enemies but rather uprisings from their own people.” (Ibid)
p.162 – Online attention and distraction – sometimes thought cheerleading – have much broader implications, because they tell us something about how preferences are formed (or deformed). If people are exposed to sensationalistic coverage of the lives of movie stars, only to sports, or only to left-of-center views and never to international issues, their preferences will develop accordingly. If people are mostly watching a conservative station – say, Fox News – or if their Twitter feed consists of conservative views, they will inevitably be affected by what they see. If people are mostly exposed to material that celebrates the current government – whether it is China, Cuba, France, or the United States – their preferences might well be changed as a result.
p.163 – The result can be a form of unfreedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of the effects f the institution of slavery on the desires of many slaves themselves that “plunged in this abyss of wretchedness, the Negro hardly notices his ill fortune; he was reduced to slavery by violence, and the habit of servitude has given him the thoughts and ambitions of a slave; he admires his tyrants even more than he hates them and finds has joy and pride in servile imitation of his oppressors.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835, reprinted New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 317.
If you join an echo chamber, or turn your Facebook page into one, you might well end up changing your own values and even your own character.
p.164 – Every tyrant knows that it is important and something possible not only to constrain people’s actions but also to manipulate their desires, partly by making people fearful, partly by putting certain options in an unfavorable light, and partly by limiting information. And non-tyrannical governments are hardly neutral with respect to preferences and desires. They hope to have citizens who are active rather than passive, curious rather than indifferent, engaged rather than inert. Indeed, the basic institutions of private property and freedom of contract – fundamental to free societies and freedom of speech – have significant effects on the development of preferences themselves.
Help to form good preferences – by producing an entrepreneurial spirit and encouraging people to see one another, not as potential enemies or members of different ethnic groups, but as potential trading partners.
p.167 – Citizens do not think and act as consumers. Most citizens have no difficulty in distinguishing between the two roles. Frequently a nation’s political choices could not be understood viewed only as a process of implementing people’s desires in their capacity as consumers.
The choices people make as political participants can be systematically different from those they make as consumers.
Why is this? Is it a puzzle or paradox? The most basic answer is that people’s behavior as citizens reflects a variety of distinctive influences. In their role as citizens, people might seek to implement their highest aspirations when they do not do so in private consumption. So too, they might aspire to a communications system of a particular kind – one that promotes democratic goals – and they might try to promote that aspiration through law.
And in their capacity as citizens, they might attempt to satisfy altruistic or other-regarding desires, which diverge from the self-interested preferences often characteristic of the behavior of consumers in markets.
Acting together as citizens, people can solve collective-action problems that prove intractable for consumers.
p.169 – A principal function of a democratic system is to ensure that through representative or participatory processes, new or submerged voices, or novel depictions of where interests lie and what they in fact are, are heard and understood.
p.172 – Robert Frank, is that the frame of reference is set socially, not individually. Our experience of what we have is determined by that frame of reference. What the internet is doing is to alter the frame of reference, and by a large degree.
Find themselves on a kind of “treadmill” in which each is continually trying to purchase more and better, simply on order to keep up with others and the ever-shifting frame of reference.
p.173 – When people have more leisure time, when they have a chance to exercise and keep in shape, or when they are able to spend more time with family and friends, their lives are likely to be better, whatever other people are doing. But when what matters is the frame set for social comparison, a society focused on better consumer goods will face a serious problem: people will channel far too many resources into the consumption treadmill, and far too few resources into goods that are not subject to the treadmill effect or that would otherwise be far better for society (such as improved protection against crime, environmental pollution, or assistance for poor people).
p.174 – When people’s past choices lead to the development of preferences that limit their own horizons and capacity for citizenship.
Consumers are not citizens, and it is a large error to conflate the two.
p.175 – as consumers, we seek “infotainments.” Within the democratic process, we are also able to act as a group and are not limited to our options as individuals. Acting as a group, we are thus in a position to solve various obstacles to dealing properly with issues that we cannot, without great difficulty, solve on our own.
9 – Proposals
p.232 – As of 2016, Facebook had 1.6 billion active users – a significant percentage of the 7.4 billion people in the world.
p.233 – The tyranny of the status quo has many sources. Sometimes it is based on fear of unintended consequences, as in the economists’ plea, “The perfect is the enemy of the good” – a mantra of resignation to which we should respond, with Dewey, that “the better is the enemy of the still better.” Sometimes it is grounded in a belief, widespread through palpably false, that things cannot be different from what they now are.
Sometimes proposed changes seem to be hopelessly utopian, far too much so to be realistic. And sometimes they seem small and incremental, even silly, and do nothing large enough to solve the underlying problems.
p.14 – On June 19, 2016, Facebook made a significant announcement, under a post called “Building a Better News Feed for You.”
Adam Mosseri, “Building a Better News Feed for You,” Facebook Newroom, June 29, 2016, http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/06/b... (accessed August 29, 2016).
It didn’t exactly say that it had found a way to produce a Daily Me, but it came fairly close, and it made clear its aspirations.
The post emphasizes that “the goal of News Feed is to show people the stories that are most relevant to them.” With that point in mind, why does Facebook tank stories in its News Feed? “So that people can see what they care about first, and don’t miss important stuff from their friends.” In fact, the News Feed is animated by “core values,” starting with “getting people the stories that matter to them most.” echo chambers
Consistent with the spirit, Facebook says, “To help make sure you don’t miss the friends and family posts you are likely to care about, we put those posts toward the top of your News Feed. We learn from you and adapt over time. algorithms
Personalization matters: “Something that one person finds informative or interesting may be different from what another person finds informative or interesting.” The News Feed is designed so that different people get what they want. personalization
Facebook says it doesn’t play favorites. Its business is “connecting people and ideas – and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful.”
p.15 – the company appears to have altered its algorithm to ensure that the top of your News Feed, you will see items from your friends, thus increasing the likelihood that what you will see will be what most interests you.
In the 2016 presidential campaign, the News Feed spread a lot of falsehoods.
p.16 – I have a friend who has a rule: “You cannot be happier than you spouse.” Emotions are contagious.
It stands to reason that the emotional valence of what you read or see will have analogous effects. If your Twitter feed is full of pessimistic people, verging on despair about the economy or the fate of your nation, you’ll become more pessimistic as well.
One consequence of personalization is likely to be not only fragmentation with respect to topics and points of view but also fragmented feelings – perhaps in general, or perhaps with respect to specific objects and positions. Evidence to this effect comes from an important and controversial study by Facebook itself. In the study, Facebook worked with Cornell University to conduct an experiment in which the company deliberately fed certain users sad posts in order to test whether the sadness of those posts would affect the emotions of those users.
As it turns out, the users who were given the sad posts began posting sad posts themselves. If we measure the effects on their emotions by what they did next, we can fairly say that sadness proved contagious on Facebook pages, just as in families and workplaces.
p.17 – Facebook made a genuine contribution to science, producing as it did strong evidence that the emotional valence of what you read on social media will affect not only what you think but also how you feel. the power of echo chambers
4 – Cybercascades
p.98 – Social cascades occur within isolated communities, which develop a commitment to certain products, films, books, or ideas. Terrorists, rebels, and revolutionaries attempt to create and use them.
p.99 – We need to distinguish between two kinds of cascades: informational and reputational.
6 – Citizens
p.159 – Many people seem to think that freedom consists of respect for consumption choices, whatever their origins and content. Indeed, this thought appears to underlie enthusiasm for the principle of consumer sovereignty itself.
It is obvious that a free society is generally respectful of people’s choices. But freedom requires certain preconditions, ensuring not just respect for choices and the satisfaction of preferences, whatever they happen to be, but also the free formation of desires and beliefs.
Much of the time, people develop tastes for what they are used to seeing and experiencing. If you are used to seeing stories about the local sports team, your interest in the local sports team is likely to increase.
If you learn that most people like a certain movie, book, political candidate, or idea, you will be more likely to like them too, and this effect is increased if the relevant people are “like you.”
p.160 – If people are deprived of access to competing views on public issues, and if as a result they lack a taste for those views, they lack freedom, whatever the nature of their preferences and choices. The problem is most serious, of course, in authoritarian societies, which engage in the defining evil of censorship. But it can arise also in a world with a sea of choices.
It has long been widely believed that China has been paying civilians a small fee (about 50 cents per post) to go online using pseudonyms to rebut the claims of those who are critical of the government and its policies. That kind of “reverse censorship,” undertaken by a supposed “50c Party,” has been thought to be one of the government’s favorite strategies for combating dissent.
Checking their numbers through multiple routes, they estimate that the government fabricates an astonishing number of social media posts per year: 448 million. But there is no 50c party of ordinary citizens. The fabrications come mostly from government employees, contributing part time outside their regular jobs.
p.161 – The fabricated posts hardly ever engage with the government’s critics. On the contrary, they ignore them. For the most part, they focus on the wonderful things that the government is supposedly doing. King and his colleagues call this “cheerleading” and it includes “expressions of patriotism, encouragement and motivation, inspirational slogans or quotes, gratefulness, discussions of aspirational figures, cultural references, or celebrations.”
Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument” (unpublished manuscript, July 26, 2016)
The government’s goal, then, is not to meet criticism on the merits but instead to distract people by redirecting their attention in its preferred direction.
But one class of social media posts does alarm the Chinese government: discussions that, in its view, have real potential to give rise to collective action. Such discussions include information about imminent protest activity or specific plans to initiate some kind of uprising.
Because the government sees these discussions as threatening, it responds in two ways. First, it engages in censorship. Second, it coordinates identifiable and timely “bursts” of cheerleading, designed to focus people on what’s going well. In view of this pervasive pattern, King and his coauthors conclude that officials in the Chinese regime think that the main threat “is not military attacks from foreign enemies but rather uprisings from their own people.” (Ibid)
p.162 – Online attention and distraction – sometimes thought cheerleading – have much broader implications, because they tell us something about how preferences are formed (or deformed). If people are exposed to sensationalistic coverage of the lives of movie stars, only to sports, or only to left-of-center views and never to international issues, their preferences will develop accordingly. If people are mostly watching a conservative station – say, Fox News – or if their Twitter feed consists of conservative views, they will inevitably be affected by what they see. If people are mostly exposed to material that celebrates the current government – whether it is China, Cuba, France, or the United States – their preferences might well be changed as a result.
p.163 – The result can be a form of unfreedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of the effects f the institution of slavery on the desires of many slaves themselves that “plunged in this abyss of wretchedness, the Negro hardly notices his ill fortune; he was reduced to slavery by violence, and the habit of servitude has given him the thoughts and ambitions of a slave; he admires his tyrants even more than he hates them and finds has joy and pride in servile imitation of his oppressors.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835, reprinted New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 317.
If you join an echo chamber, or turn your Facebook page into one, you might well end up changing your own values and even your own character.
p.164 – Every tyrant knows that it is important and something possible not only to constrain people’s actions but also to manipulate their desires, partly by making people fearful, partly by putting certain options in an unfavorable light, and partly by limiting information. And non-tyrannical governments are hardly neutral with respect to preferences and desires. They hope to have citizens who are active rather than passive, curious rather than indifferent, engaged rather than inert. Indeed, the basic institutions of private property and freedom of contract – fundamental to free societies and freedom of speech – have significant effects on the development of preferences themselves.
Help to form good preferences – by producing an entrepreneurial spirit and encouraging people to see one another, not as potential enemies or members of different ethnic groups, but as potential trading partners.
p.167 – Citizens do not think and act as consumers. Most citizens have no difficulty in distinguishing between the two roles. Frequently a nation’s political choices could not be understood viewed only as a process of implementing people’s desires in their capacity as consumers.
The choices people make as political participants can be systematically different from those they make as consumers.
Why is this? Is it a puzzle or paradox? The most basic answer is that people’s behavior as citizens reflects a variety of distinctive influences. In their role as citizens, people might seek to implement their highest aspirations when they do not do so in private consumption. So too, they might aspire to a communications system of a particular kind – one that promotes democratic goals – and they might try to promote that aspiration through law.
And in their capacity as citizens, they might attempt to satisfy altruistic or other-regarding desires, which diverge from the self-interested preferences often characteristic of the behavior of consumers in markets.
Acting together as citizens, people can solve collective-action problems that prove intractable for consumers.
p.169 – A principal function of a democratic system is to ensure that through representative or participatory processes, new or submerged voices, or novel depictions of where interests lie and what they in fact are, are heard and understood.
p.172 – Robert Frank, is that the frame of reference is set socially, not individually. Our experience of what we have is determined by that frame of reference. What the internet is doing is to alter the frame of reference, and by a large degree.
Find themselves on a kind of “treadmill” in which each is continually trying to purchase more and better, simply on order to keep up with others and the ever-shifting frame of reference.
p.173 – When people have more leisure time, when they have a chance to exercise and keep in shape, or when they are able to spend more time with family and friends, their lives are likely to be better, whatever other people are doing. But when what matters is the frame set for social comparison, a society focused on better consumer goods will face a serious problem: people will channel far too many resources into the consumption treadmill, and far too few resources into goods that are not subject to the treadmill effect or that would otherwise be far better for society (such as improved protection against crime, environmental pollution, or assistance for poor people).
p.174 – When people’s past choices lead to the development of preferences that limit their own horizons and capacity for citizenship.
Consumers are not citizens, and it is a large error to conflate the two.
p.175 – as consumers, we seek “infotainments.” Within the democratic process, we are also able to act as a group and are not limited to our options as individuals. Acting as a group, we are thus in a position to solve various obstacles to dealing properly with issues that we cannot, without great difficulty, solve on our own.
9 – Proposals
p.232 – As of 2016, Facebook had 1.6 billion active users – a significant percentage of the 7.4 billion people in the world.
p.233 – The tyranny of the status quo has many sources. Sometimes it is based on fear of unintended consequences, as in the economists’ plea, “The perfect is the enemy of the good” – a mantra of resignation to which we should respond, with Dewey, that “the better is the enemy of the still better.” Sometimes it is grounded in a belief, widespread through palpably false, that things cannot be different from what they now are.
Sometimes proposed changes seem to be hopelessly utopian, far too much so to be realistic. And sometimes they seem small and incremental, even silly, and do nothing large enough to solve the underlying problems.
February 21, 2021
A book from 2017 that seems even more relevant to today's social media landscape in 2021. The increasing influence of social media platforms on the polarisation of views, the development of 'fake news' and conspiracy theories.
June 2, 2017
I like to joke with my Facebook friends that future generations will not appreciate the catastrophe that is the Trump presidency until somebody makes a musical of it. Something like a cross between Phantom of the Opera and Evita. People shouldn't forget that America is a very advanced nation, and the boldest experiment in democracy since the Magna Carta. Cass Sunstein in "#republic" points the spotlight on a very real threat to the American Republic: the tendency of communications services to fragment the audience to the point where literally nobody is talking -- or more importantly -- listening to one another.
And Sunstein puts it so aptly, the continuity of American self-government will have less to do with "the decisions of its founders much less on the world of texts and authorities and ancestors than in the active participation and commitments of its citizens."
There is so much BS in American letters about the founding tenents of the Republic and so little compromise on the floor of the House of Representatives or the Senate. And the populace lets their leaders get away with it. Nothing, it seems, is more important in American society today than winning at all costs.
People live in the enclaves of their electronic worlds. They live and die by free speech, where speech is neither free nor without consequences. Just look at the appalling power of their firearms lobby.
Freedoms devoid of responsibilities.
The responsibility to take care of the citizenry.
The responsibility to care for the planet.
The responsibility to participate as a good citizen on the world stage.
The responsibility to address historical grievances.
This book is good learned debate even as people kvetch about the"eastern elites." Too much Trumpism debases and demeans learned debate. America has such terrific minds at work. Well, if they pack up and leave out of frustration, I hope they come to Canada.
We could use them.
And Sunstein puts it so aptly, the continuity of American self-government will have less to do with "the decisions of its founders much less on the world of texts and authorities and ancestors than in the active participation and commitments of its citizens."
There is so much BS in American letters about the founding tenents of the Republic and so little compromise on the floor of the House of Representatives or the Senate. And the populace lets their leaders get away with it. Nothing, it seems, is more important in American society today than winning at all costs.
People live in the enclaves of their electronic worlds. They live and die by free speech, where speech is neither free nor without consequences. Just look at the appalling power of their firearms lobby.
Freedoms devoid of responsibilities.
The responsibility to take care of the citizenry.
The responsibility to care for the planet.
The responsibility to participate as a good citizen on the world stage.
The responsibility to address historical grievances.
This book is good learned debate even as people kvetch about the"eastern elites." Too much Trumpism debases and demeans learned debate. America has such terrific minds at work. Well, if they pack up and leave out of frustration, I hope they come to Canada.
We could use them.
March 16, 2017
A thoughtful reminder about what we lose when we engage only with people who share our views. There's nothing particularly earth shattering here, but it's a well reasoned analysis that would make a terrific resource in a college communication or government course.
February 27, 2019
Texas A&M selected #Republic as this year's book that everyone is supposed to read. I read it, too. As a fan of some of Sunstein's earlier work, I was quite disappointed with this book. It is a sort of rant about how the internet is ruining democracy. Sunstein bemoans the demise of social exchange in public arenas -- things like running across a demonstration in the park, or running into people on your block (as in Jane Jacobs). Chance encounters that lead to greater understanding and acceptance of different beliefs and opinions, he argues, have been replaced by online echo chambers, which are bad, and lead to people not having discussions with those who are different from them, which is necessary for deliberative democracy to survive.
It is true that trust in government and mainstream news media have been declining for a long time (since the 70s at least) and declined rather precipitously after the last presidential election. Sunstein blames this decline on social media — the fact that people only talk to their ingroups plus the fact that social media can be manipulated to take advantage of that structure.
Several things make me think that Sunstein may be overly pessimistic. First, the most recent poll results show a rebound, especially among more educated people. (Edelman Trust Barometer 2019).
Second, my experience as a faculty member, teaching folks a lot younger than me, make me hopeful. the room, I can’t help but be hopeful. In my experience younger folks, including many of you here, Maybe it's just Texas but younger folks seem more optimistic and more trusting than we cynical older folks are, and, importantly, much more savvy about navigating the information flow from social media. Technology is also developing to make this kind of fact checking much easier, including tools that are integrated into sites you might read. I'm guessing there's a lot of fact checking going on among younger consumers of social media. Maybe the increase in weird nastiness we are seeing in online communities is a short term thing.
Third, social media can also enhance trust. For example, in my world, economics recently has had a wake-up moment about gender. Initially many of my male collegues reacted skeptically, but I watched as serious, contentious discussions on facebook and twitter changed people’s minds, and led to a lot more awareness on both sides. This seems like a situation where news of a gender problem could have reduced trust, but instead has had the opposite effect. This also gives me hope.
Finally, we need like minded groups (echo chambers). I think that Sunstein also misses something important about echo chambers or like minded groups, and that is, this is where we reach consensus and make progress WITHIN a field. There is a great deal of argument on sites that are topic-specific, and a certain amount of agreed upon consensus common knowledge is critical to making progress. (Think Anti-Vax or Climate Change). Conversations between believers and non-believers often seem like a waste of time because the nonbelievers, who are actually factually incorrect, don’t care about facts. Not that we don't need to talk about our science to non-scientists, definitely we do. But discussion among scientists and science believers has its own kind of value.
I should also mention that this is the third iteration of this book first written in the early 2000s. All have Republic in the title. The ideas he proposes as solutions have not really been adopted, and I wonder if he shouldn't just accept that and move on.
It is true that trust in government and mainstream news media have been declining for a long time (since the 70s at least) and declined rather precipitously after the last presidential election. Sunstein blames this decline on social media — the fact that people only talk to their ingroups plus the fact that social media can be manipulated to take advantage of that structure.
Several things make me think that Sunstein may be overly pessimistic. First, the most recent poll results show a rebound, especially among more educated people. (Edelman Trust Barometer 2019).
Second, my experience as a faculty member, teaching folks a lot younger than me, make me hopeful. the room, I can’t help but be hopeful. In my experience younger folks, including many of you here, Maybe it's just Texas but younger folks seem more optimistic and more trusting than we cynical older folks are, and, importantly, much more savvy about navigating the information flow from social media. Technology is also developing to make this kind of fact checking much easier, including tools that are integrated into sites you might read. I'm guessing there's a lot of fact checking going on among younger consumers of social media. Maybe the increase in weird nastiness we are seeing in online communities is a short term thing.
Third, social media can also enhance trust. For example, in my world, economics recently has had a wake-up moment about gender. Initially many of my male collegues reacted skeptically, but I watched as serious, contentious discussions on facebook and twitter changed people’s minds, and led to a lot more awareness on both sides. This seems like a situation where news of a gender problem could have reduced trust, but instead has had the opposite effect. This also gives me hope.
Finally, we need like minded groups (echo chambers). I think that Sunstein also misses something important about echo chambers or like minded groups, and that is, this is where we reach consensus and make progress WITHIN a field. There is a great deal of argument on sites that are topic-specific, and a certain amount of agreed upon consensus common knowledge is critical to making progress. (Think Anti-Vax or Climate Change). Conversations between believers and non-believers often seem like a waste of time because the nonbelievers, who are actually factually incorrect, don’t care about facts. Not that we don't need to talk about our science to non-scientists, definitely we do. But discussion among scientists and science believers has its own kind of value.
I should also mention that this is the third iteration of this book first written in the early 2000s. All have Republic in the title. The ideas he proposes as solutions have not really been adopted, and I wonder if he shouldn't just accept that and move on.
January 1, 2024
Book #17 of 2023. "#republic" by Cass Sunstein. 1/5 rating. This might've been one of the biggest let-downs of all time. I heard about this book a few years ago and was so intrigued, but I finally got around to it and it was boring and barely held a throughline.
The book talks about the problem of sorting caused by social media and other institutions creating personalized everything.
Cass introduces three different problems caused by today's social (and somewhat other types of) media environments:
- The idea of serendipitous meetings, and run-ins with different ideas and views has become less and less likely in today's world. This creates problems when we are locked within our echo chamber only hearing from those with like-minded views.
- A lack of common experiences
- Regulation and policies about speech and media
Cass also talks about the problems of group polarization. This phenomena explains that when we are exposed to other people with the same ideas as us, we become more ardent believers of our ideas. Shockingly, it's not even necessary for us to discuss those ideas with them; just by seeing similar ideas, it entrenches our own.
Some quotes:
- "Their judgments appear to be a product of their values or sense of identity."
- "Discussion is a way of combining information and enlarging the range of arguments."
This book was an absolute chore to get through. I only finished it in order to give it a true rating and say that I read another book. It included waaay too much random, disparate information about things that had nothing to do with the point of the book. I enjoy non-fiction and pithy books and I hated it. I can nearly guarantee that this book would be an absolute waste of your time!!!
The book talks about the problem of sorting caused by social media and other institutions creating personalized everything.
Cass introduces three different problems caused by today's social (and somewhat other types of) media environments:
- The idea of serendipitous meetings, and run-ins with different ideas and views has become less and less likely in today's world. This creates problems when we are locked within our echo chamber only hearing from those with like-minded views.
- A lack of common experiences
- Regulation and policies about speech and media
Cass also talks about the problems of group polarization. This phenomena explains that when we are exposed to other people with the same ideas as us, we become more ardent believers of our ideas. Shockingly, it's not even necessary for us to discuss those ideas with them; just by seeing similar ideas, it entrenches our own.
Some quotes:
- "Their judgments appear to be a product of their values or sense of identity."
- "Discussion is a way of combining information and enlarging the range of arguments."
This book was an absolute chore to get through. I only finished it in order to give it a true rating and say that I read another book. It included waaay too much random, disparate information about things that had nothing to do with the point of the book. I enjoy non-fiction and pithy books and I hated it. I can nearly guarantee that this book would be an absolute waste of your time!!!
August 1, 2020
A refreshing and sensible perspective about free speech, democracy, polarisation, media and the human condition. Although mainly US focused, a lot of the principles and examples probably apply elsewhere too.
The book is well balanced, it’s well researched and the author tries to give examples across the political spectrum which in theory should make this book appeal to a wide audience. The ideas are presented in a way which demonstrate respect and understanding for the diverse and complex view points (from climate change, gun control to abortion). There is a lot to learn from the author about how to debate very difficult topics.
On the specific solutions proposed I think the author takes a sensible approach and puts forward practical solutions. Despite this, I am personally not confident that these alone will bring about the change envisioned but they are a good starting point. Self-regulating and socially conscious corporations seems like a great ideal but part of me remains sceptical. Maybe the point is that we have to start somewhere and these are the best places to start. If this fails then additional measures should be taken.
The book is also very US focused and although some of the principles can be applied elsewhere, it’s not sufficient to be convinced whether this model is needed, or if it would indeed work, in less polarised countries. Although many countries in Europe show similar patterns of polarisation, the political landscape and cultural history might require alternative solutions. Would be great to see a follow-up of this book with more international focus.
The book is well balanced, it’s well researched and the author tries to give examples across the political spectrum which in theory should make this book appeal to a wide audience. The ideas are presented in a way which demonstrate respect and understanding for the diverse and complex view points (from climate change, gun control to abortion). There is a lot to learn from the author about how to debate very difficult topics.
On the specific solutions proposed I think the author takes a sensible approach and puts forward practical solutions. Despite this, I am personally not confident that these alone will bring about the change envisioned but they are a good starting point. Self-regulating and socially conscious corporations seems like a great ideal but part of me remains sceptical. Maybe the point is that we have to start somewhere and these are the best places to start. If this fails then additional measures should be taken.
The book is also very US focused and although some of the principles can be applied elsewhere, it’s not sufficient to be convinced whether this model is needed, or if it would indeed work, in less polarised countries. Although many countries in Europe show similar patterns of polarisation, the political landscape and cultural history might require alternative solutions. Would be great to see a follow-up of this book with more international focus.
July 29, 2020
I really enjoyed the central premise of this book: social media and technology allow us to filter the content we see to such a degree that it ends up fragmenting and polarizing our country. Many have realized they’ve created echo chambers for themselves online, and this sort of walks you through how that works, and also how our conceptualizations of freedom should differ if we view ourselves as consumers vs as citizens. All of this is wonderful...truly enjoyed it a great deal.
And yet, I felt like the book all too often dragged. Maybe it was just some of the underlying examples or supporting points that were more laborious than others. Maybe it’s the fact that, ultimately, the book could’ve probably been half as long and still hit the necessary points the author wanted to make. It seemed like a lot of repetition, BUT the author did do well to draw links throughout the material.
So, great message overall (and weighing the cons with the pros we all recognize about advances in technology), and some absolutely genius points and wonderful quotes, but just a bit of a chore to read at points, which detracts from the overall experience.
And yet, I felt like the book all too often dragged. Maybe it was just some of the underlying examples or supporting points that were more laborious than others. Maybe it’s the fact that, ultimately, the book could’ve probably been half as long and still hit the necessary points the author wanted to make. It seemed like a lot of repetition, BUT the author did do well to draw links throughout the material.
So, great message overall (and weighing the cons with the pros we all recognize about advances in technology), and some absolutely genius points and wonderful quotes, but just a bit of a chore to read at points, which detracts from the overall experience.
December 27, 2020
If I am being completely honest, I was hoping for this book to be a little more illuminating. Considering I read it for academic purposes (university coursework), I found it rather lacking in the comprehensiveness department. It is interesting if you’re looking to enhance your knowledge on filter bubbles and the online ecosphere, but incredibly repetitive and, thus, can become dull.
My main complaint is that Sunstein keeps reiterating the same principles (which I believe are her own personal beliefs) over and over and merely presenting the same perspective using different words.
I recommend the book if you’d like to gain some perspective on filter bubbles and echo chambers, but would suggest researching the topic further further. I, personally, realised how limited her book is by studying other scholarly articles on the matter, which presented it broader understanding of the online ecosphere. I fear the book merely underlines her own concerns of filter bubbles, as she promotes the very issues she talks about by not addressing the ‘other perspective’.
My main complaint is that Sunstein keeps reiterating the same principles (which I believe are her own personal beliefs) over and over and merely presenting the same perspective using different words.
I recommend the book if you’d like to gain some perspective on filter bubbles and echo chambers, but would suggest researching the topic further further. I, personally, realised how limited her book is by studying other scholarly articles on the matter, which presented it broader understanding of the online ecosphere. I fear the book merely underlines her own concerns of filter bubbles, as she promotes the very issues she talks about by not addressing the ‘other perspective’.
August 3, 2019
There was some good information and an important discussion about the concern of people curating (or being curated) a digital self that excludes all opposing viewpoints. He stops short of encouraging legislation but encourages tech companies to adopt ideas like an "opposing view" button so that people are exposed to ideas they otherwise would not. This encourages a wide range of common experiences. There are a number of filler sections such as defending regulation as an idea, the history of the internet, property rights and copyright law as well as an excessive (though interesting in its own context) discussion of free speech law. Ultimately it was much longer than it needed to be, and could have included more substantive evidence, but had some good points to get across.
May 7, 2024
While this book certainly has an interesting and relevant premise the execution was less than compelling. Unfortunately many of the examples and opinions expressed are incredibly dated. Additionally it’s exhaustingly repetitive and in what I can only assume was an attempt to add length to the book, the author tangents into a range of irrelevant topics. This book would be much more compelling as an essay.
March 4, 2018
I agree with Sunstein's assessment of the problem: He argues that the greatest problem facing our democracy is the intense and bitter polarization. His solution, though (reach out to those whose views you disagree with) seems naive. It seems to me, there is too much anger and hated fueling the divide. What is the solution? I wish I knew.
May 22, 2017
The book has its good moments, but my IMHO, felt it was redundant. It cites some detailed studies as examples of the author's viewpoint. Provides some historical references. Overall it was an okay read, but nothing earth-shattering.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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December 30, 2018Interesting in the opening, flopped after the first chapter. Couldn’t bring myself to read the entire thing. My subconscious was telling me to scrap it.
Diversify your news feed. Don’t fall into echo chambers. The end.
Diversify your news feed. Don’t fall into echo chambers. The end.
June 22, 2020
There are some excellent lessons on identifying bias and its contribution to group polarization on social media. Being able to identify bias helps me to be more reflective, and less reactive when I consume information, not just online, but everywhere.
December 17, 2020
An important topic with tons of emerging research, but the organization and message is muddled. Furthermore, this book desperately needs figures, graphs, and images to convey the message. Books like this should draw on the powerful template of long-form journalism coupled with high-quality images.
January 3, 2021
The idea is brilliant but it’s too simple for the author to elaborate for 270 pages. The takeaway from this book is ‘listen to other opinions instead of being stuck in your own echo chambers.’ He just keeps going on about the same idea over and over again.
June 22, 2023
5 stars for the intro & 1st chapter. The other 230 pages are a repeat of everything said in chapter 1 in a way that felt like filler to make it book length (reminiscent of a kid sitting in class hearing “Buehler....Buehler...Buehler....Buehler....”)
May 9, 2020
Could be much shorter.
October 16, 2020
La comunicazione politica al giorno d'oggi
August 29, 2021
An excellent read. Sunstein makes great points that are supported by research in several fields. The argument is cohesive and I came away knowing more than I did before.
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