Waggener Edstrom recently published a study on how young Internet voters (those 18 to 25 years old) are using digital communications to gather information on the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
I am deeply uninterested in politics so nearly ignored the study but was glad I did take a quick look. The interesting question was down in the survey results which you can download as a pdf.
The statement ‘I choose online sources rather than traditional news sources because traditional news sources attempt to control and shape the news and I want to make up my own mind independently’ – which 76% of the respondents agreed with – simply doesn’t ring true.
The problem is that with politics, supporters polarize very quickly and there is no real middle ground where people can debate issues rationally. Take a quick look at comments on sites like Little Green Footballs and the Daily Kos. Both are well trafficked blogs representing the core left and right of the political spectrum but are not the place for reasoned debate – simply because politics is emotional.
‘Echo chambers’ is the common criticism of blogs because they tend to attract likeminded people. The other factor is that people generally hide behind their tags and tend to be much less considerate and restrained as a result. I know a few sites that are considering only allowing comments if your full name is shown.
To illustrate the political polarity point there are two interesting visualization sites that are definitely worth a look. The first is http://www.orgnet.com/divided.html which shows an update of the famous 2004 Amazon political book analysis. The image shows two distinct clusters with very few books bridging the gap.
Taking that concept into the political blogosphere, have a look at http://presidentialwatch08.com/index.php/map/. Set the maximal link slider about 25% in from the left and you see a very similar distribution with most of the linking between like-minded blogs and very few links crossing the political divide.
Any surprises or wild conclusions? Not really. This is common human behavior across any interest group – including your product set. Changing prevailing thinking and opinions needs a long term, well thought out strategy that has to be true to the company and your underlying set of beliefs. And know what you are getting into because you are engaging on your customers’ terms, not your own.
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