Does the Internet Balkanize Political Attention? A Test of the Sunstein Thesis.

In Republic.Com, Cass Sunstein argued that the Internet posed a threat to American democracy. Although the Internet vastly expands the scope of the political opinions to which citizens have access, it also increases users' ability to find information sources with viewpoints that match their own. Because the politically attentive tend to seek out information consistent with their existing views, Sunstein argued, the Internet threatens to polarize political attention and discourse. This paper uses data from the 2000 General Social Survey "Internet module" to test the Sunstein thesis. Among the minority of Americans who sought political information on the Internet, we find little evidence for the Sunstein thesis. As many politically attentive users went to sites that challenged their views as to sites that reinforced them, even more went to sites they perceived as politically neutral, and a plurality visited a combination of sites. Fewer than 10 percent focus primarily on opinion-confirming sites. Although few respondents aver that it is "very true" that Internet political sites lead them to change their minds about public issues, many report that such sites help them form initial opinions or lead them to view issues as more complex. Although caution is appropriate in interpreting self-report data, these results suggest that Americans who go on-line for political information are relatively open to discrepant political information and relatively disinclined to limit themselves to views similar to their own. Thus far, then, the Internet has not contributed to a balkanization of political discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]