The Internet has fostered communication between diverse people in a way that is completely unprecedented. One can speak to someone halfway across the world with the click of a button, and discover an entirely different worldview. But what happens when such opportunities are abused, and people use the Internet to locate self-affirming political echo chambers?
The Tea Party, a loosely-organized, vehemently outspoken, conservative movement that has been sweeping the nation in the past year, has certainly benefited from the Internet. The Web enables Tea Party members to organize, discuss, plan out their protests and promote their events. Yet looking at Free Repubilc.com, a forum of outspoken Tea Party supporters, one does not see much debate or dissent. Instead, a very strict “party line” is enforced (although there is no particular party to which they align themselves, the prevailing opinion is that the Grand Old Party is too liberal, and all its members are Republicans In Name Only) and anyone who dares to question this dogma is immediately “zotted,” or banned.
These opinions are not strictly harmless. Although Free Republic’s founder, Jim Robinson, claims to be sincerely concerned about the state of the country, the forum mainly trades in racist jokes about President Obama and speculations about how socialist the country is becoming. The group’s members even suggest that the best answer for any politician stepping out of line is “a lot of rope.” Strong undercurrents of homophobia, Islamophobia, and racism abound and are praised by its users. Anything wrong that is done by their folk heroes, such as Glenn Beck, Scott Roeder and James O’Keefe, is explained away, and anything that casts the Tea Party movement in a bad light is said to be the work of “liberal infiltrators.”
Everyone has a right to free speech. However, it is troubling that these sorts of echo chambers form and then influence real politics, by means of voting drives, protests, call-in campaigns and actual physical threats against politicians. The existence of sites such as FreeRepublic propagate certain intolerant views amongst its members, who are also led to believe that these views are held by the majority as normative and correct. In the past, this would have been more difficult—one couldn’t just seek out a site that held the exact same views as them. Newspapers demanded a consideration of different views. Arabic major Hannah Howard ’12, who hopes to enter a political career, puts it this way, “The Internet lets people think that just because they have an opinion, it means that it’s a valid, well-reasoned opinion.” This is doubly true for politics.
One of the most important factors involved in developing a clear political ideology is frequent, open conversation and debate with those who do not agree with you. In this way, your opinions are truly put to the test, and new things are learned. This is not to say that only conservatives are guilty of not doing this, as liberals certainly are as well (liberal forum DailyKOS, for example). A true downside to the Internet’s use for political action is its reinforcement of echo chambers.
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