The trouble with blogs.

We are told that blogs are the future and since I plan on spending considerable time in the future I very much want to like the chatty Internet websites. But I don't.

In fact, I find them disturbing. And that was before I tracked quite a number of them through the election. Now I am beginning to think that if blogs are the future, meaningful public debate is history.

What scares me is the extremism so common in the political blogosphere. The tone of absolute certainty. The disdain for anyone who thinks differently. The refusal to acknowledge the existence of uncomfortable facts. The minds encased in the hard amber of ideology.

Last November, on what was once October Revolution Day, I stood outside Red Square in Moscow with a group of grey and wrinkled Communists who shook their bony fists at bored police officers and shouted "the victory of socialism is assured!" I didn't realize it at the time but the old Bolshies were blogging without computers.

Yes, there is value in the medium. As bloggers say -- over and over and over again -- the great thing about blogs is that they democratize the media. Mass communication was once something only done by a lucky few. Like, um, me. But today, anyone with a computer and a couple of bucks can publish anything and distribute it around the world.

In theory, that's a magnificent thing. More voices, more ideas, more perspectives should produce a richer public dialogue. And certainly there are corners of the Internet, including a few blogs, that are delivering on that promise.
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But the explosion of voices on the Internet also made it possible for people to obtain all their news, analysis and opinions exclusively from like-minded sources. Buchananite conservatives can spend all day every day with people equally convinced the West is sliding into the abyss. Anti-globalists can stay up all night getting the latest on the perfidious doings of trans-national corporations.

Democrat or Republican. Millennialist or atheist. Whatever your bent, there is a whole universe of information produced by your kind for you.

You need never hear a different perspective. Never read a contrary view. Never be challenged by facts that don't fit your conclusions.

And that is precisely how most of the political blogosphere is developing. A recent study of 40 American political blogs -- 20 conservative, 20 liberal -- found the sites were densely linked to others within their ideological camp but had virtually no contact outside. Blogs aren't so much adding voices to public debate as they are luring people away from public debate into parallel universes where the faithful gather to sip Kool-Aid, nod heads and congratulate each other for being so clever.

That's frightening in its own right. But it isn't the end of the bad news.

Social psychologists have long known that when people inclined to think a certain way get together they become more inclined in that direction. This is called "group polarization." It is caused by two factors.

First is the simple fact that a person who speaks with like-minded people will hear arguments in support of her views she wasn't aware of. With more reasons in hand, her convictions will grow stronger.
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The other factor at work is "social comparison." People tend to think their views are not only correct, they are more correct than others who think along similar lines. A liberal sees himself as more liberal than other liberals, a conservative as more conservative, and so on. But when people get together in a group of like-minded people, they compare their views to others and most -- by mathematical necessity -- discover their self-perception is wrong. To recapture that warm feeling of superiority, they become more extreme.

Neither of the factors generating group polarization requires face-to-face contact to work. Research has even found that simply giving someone a list of other people's views, without supporting arguments, is enough to make someone take a more extreme position.

The implications for blogs are obvious. The Bush-bashing liberal who enters the parallel universe of Bush-bashing bloggers not only discovers a trove of new reasons to loathe George Bush, he discovers that he is not the biggest Bush-basher on the block. So his loathing of Bush becomes more extreme. Angry conservatives enter the blogosphere and get angrier. Anti-globalizers despise corporations more.

The only thing they all agree on is that those who disagree are dupes, fools or traitors whose opinions and arguments are valueless and can therefore be dismissed with nothing more than a sneer.

It is no more possible to have a reasonable discussion and debate with people locked into that mind-set than it is to suggest to the old Communists in Moscow that perhaps the victory of socialism is not assured and maybe they should go home, have some tea and take a nap.

The difference is that the Bolshies are relics of the past. But blogs, so they say, are the future.

Dan Gardner*'s column appears Wednesdays and Fridays.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com

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