Jones, M. I., Sirianni, A. D., & Fu, F. (2021). Polarization, Abstention, and the Median Voter Theorem. ArXiv:2103.12847 [Physics]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2103.12847

Lovari, A., Martino, V., & Righetti, N. (2021). Blurred Shots: Investigating the Information Crisis Around Vaccination in Italy. American Behavioral Scientist, 65(2), 351–370. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764220910245

Wenner, A. (2020, May 26). Our Democracy Depends on a Safe Election in November. Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/our-democracy-depends-safe-election-november

Helmus, Todd C., James V. Marrone, Marek N. Posard, and Danielle Schlang. ‘Russian Propaganda Hits Its Mark: Experimentally Testing the Impact of Russian Propaganda and Counter-Interventions’, 15 October 2020. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA704-3.html.

Krupenkin, Masha, Kai Zhu, Dylan Walker, and David M. Rothschild. ‘If a Tree Falls in the Forest: COVID-19, Media Choices, and Presidential Agenda Setting’. SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, 22 September 2020. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3697069.

A Wall Street Journal experiment to see a liberal version and a conservative version of Facebook side by side.

This is interesting because Montgomery essentially sacrificed a part of his community and his heritage in the name of peace and compromise without being certain of the results. This makes me consider the present day political climate, particular, the way that neither side is willing to make concessions (especially the people power).

Wang, X., Sirianni, A. D., Tang, S., Zheng, Z., & Fu, F. (2020). Public Discourse and Social Network Echo Chambers Driven by Socio-Cognitive Biases. Physical Review X, 10(4), 041042. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.041042

Wenner, A. (2020, October 28). Society Needs to Adapt to a World of Widespread Disinformation. https://Fsi.Stanford.Edu/. https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/society-needs-adapt-world-widespread-disinformation

Druckman, J. N., Klar, S., Krupnikov, Y., Levendusky, M., & Ryan, J. B. (2021). Affective polarization, local contexts and public opinion in America. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(1), 28–38. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01012-5

Stewart, A. J., McCarty, N., & Bryson, J. J. (2020). Polarization under rising inequality and economic decline. Science Advances, 6(50), eabd4201. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd4201

These words certainly didn't take into account the focusing factor that social media algorithms based on surveillance capitalism and attention seeking clicks and engagement would inflict in the coming decade.

u/nick_chater (2020) Behavioural Policy challenge: when does compulsion help? Reddit. Retrieved from: https://www.reddit.com/r/BehSciAsk/comments/hzci8g/behavioural_policy_challenge_when_does_compulsion/

KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) @KFF (2020) RT @KFF @DrewAltman discusses two fundamental policy decisions made by the Trump administration that set the U.S. on the controversial an…

Alec {@AlecStapp} (2020) Twitter.. Retrieved from: https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1309169079597621250

An interesting example with some inflamatory rhetoric, but coupled with his resignation which is all he has left...

Maia, H. P., Ferreira, S. C., & Martins, M. L. (2020). Adaptive network approach for emergence of societal bubbles. ArXiv:2010.08635 [Nlin, Physics:Physics]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2010.08635

Centola, D. (n.d.). Why Social Media Makes Us More Polarized and How to Fix It. Scientific American. Retrieved October 25, 2020, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-social-media-makes-us-more-polarized-and-how-to-fix-it/

Yong, S. by E. (n.d.). America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral. The Atlantic. Retrieved October 12, 2020, from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/pandemic-intuition-nightmare-spiral-winter/616204/

Houghton, J. P. (2020). Interdependent Diffusion: The social contagion of interacting beliefs. ArXiv:2010.02188 [Physics]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2010.02188

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Rodriguez, C. G., Gadarian, S. K., Goodman, S. W., & Pepinsky, T. (2020). Morbid Polarization: Exposure to COVID-19 and Partisan Disagreement about Pandemic Response [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/wvyr7

James O’Brien on Twitter. (n.d.). Twitter. Retrieved August 30, 2020, from https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1299248453416083456

Hurst, D., & Murphy, K. (2020, June 22). Trump’s misleading information enables China to sow discord among allies, research finds. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/23/trumps-misleading-information-enables-china-to-sow-discord-among-allies-research-finds

Pickup, M., Stecula, D., & van der Linden, C. (2020). Novel coronavirus, old partisanship: COVID-19 attitudes and behaviors in the United States and Canada [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/5gy3d

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Druckman, James, Samara Klar, Yanna Krupnikov, Matthew Levendusky, and John B. Ryan. ‘The Political Impact of Affective Polarization: How Partisan Animus Shapes COVID-19 Attitudes’. Preprint. PsyArXiv, 19 August 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ztgpn.

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Simchon, A., Brady, W. J., & Bavel, J. J. V. (2020). Troll and Divide: The Language of Online Polarization. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/xjd64

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Ekstrom, P. D., & Lai, C. K. (2020, June 18). The Selective Communication of Political Information. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/pnr9u

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Young, V. A. (2020, May 20). Nearly Half Of The Twitter Accounts Discussing ‘Reopening America’ May Be Bots. Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science. https://www.scs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-discussing-%E2%80%98reopening-america%E2%80%99-may-be-bots

Grubbs, J. B., Warmke, B., Tosi, J., & James, A. S. (2020). Moral Grandstanding and Political Polarization: A Multi-Study Consideration. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/k3ynj

Tomohiro, I. (2020, May 8). Consensus among group members’ shared leadership ratings polarizes group performance. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/psjeu

And important: the role media plays in political polarization. On this topic, I've found works from the Pew useful, like "U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided":

"As the U.S. enters a heated 2020 presidential election year, a new Pew Research Center report finds that Republicans and Democrats place their trust in two nearly inverse news media environments."

Also useful are works from Data & Society like "Media, Technology, Politics: six new pieces on the networked public sphere"

"Although many people are anxious to understand how much influence old and new media had over the US presidential election, the reality is that we will never know comprehensively. We can, though, seek to understand how different cultural and technical factors are shaping the contemporary information landscape."

I chose this article, because it is timely, relevant, easy-to-follow (because it is intuitive), and innovative (using data sources, Twitter, and an innovative method, textual analysis). I hope you enjoy the reading. Please follow my annotations (comments + questions) and respond to the questions I pose. Try to answer them in your own words.

The deregulation of the 90s, consolidating ownership, had consequences. unintended and unanticipated or not.

Polarization Can Be Good

Gruber had linked to Michael Tsai’s roundup of the backlash, calling it “must-read stuff”. In this case, though, Gruber is “throwing his hat in the ring”. And the ring now feels like the site of a burgeoning flamewar. Issue is, here, that the “war” is happening about people who actually enjoy Apple’s products. This isn’t the “religious wars” between Macs and PCs or between Fandroids and Apple fanbois. It’s a whole argument between people who have been purchasing Apple computers and wanted updated ones. A well-known lesson from social psychology is that group polarization deepens divides by encouraging extreme positions. Chuq Von Rospach’s piece contains several comments which could be qualified as “extreme”. And it puts the blame on those who disagree. There are similar pieces on the other side of the equation, surely. Tsai’s roundup should make it possible to identify them. But Gruber has yet to link to them (apart from arguing about specific points like Tim Cook’s quote on the irrelevance of “PCs” and trying to set the record straight on Apple and Intel sharing responsibility for the 16GB limits on new top-of-the-line MacBook Pro desktop replacements).

As an example of the effect of group polarization: my own perspective is that disappointment is real. Wasn’t impressed by what transpired from last week’s announcement. Feeling a bit more excited about the Microsoft Surface Studio than about the Touch Bar, but will likely not buy either any time soon. Because polarization forces me to take sides, my vote would go for the “there’s a serious problem, here”. Not saying Apple is doomed or that each of the problems discussed is a tragedy. But, to me, what is being thrown around sounds quite reasonable, not “trivial and petty”. Can’t be on Von Rospach’s side if that’s where the line is drawn. “You’re either with us or against us.” If you force me to choose, well, bye bye!