Social media polarises and radicalises – and MPs aren’t immune to its effects | The Guardian

Tangentially, see The Dalai Lama and Arthur Brooks: All of us can break the cycle of hatred | Washington Post

"What if using the WhatsApp messaging service means the European Research Group is in effect radicalising its Brexiter Tory members, so they egg each other on to take more and more extreme positions in pushing for no deal? What if groups on Facebook are giving people the chance to say things they wouldn’t consider saying aloud in public – so that members of the Tory party make overtly Islamophobic comments, leading to suspension? Or encouraging even the leader of the Labour party to post in support of retaining an antisemitic mural (he subsequently said: “I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image”). What if being on Twitter leads to MPs who make provably incorrect statements to stick to them, because to admit error is to lose face publicly and – more importantly – with your peers? Or leads to others pushing Islamophobic content on Facebook?

The dynamics of closed groups have been understood for years. The clearest finding is that they tend towards the most extreme position of their participants, something known as “the law of group polarisation”, described in a seminal paper in 1999 by Cass Sunstein, then at the University of Chicago. As Sunstein observed, it “helps to explain extremism, ‘radicalisation’, cultural shifts, and the behaviour of political parties and religious organisations”. And, he added, “it is closely connected to current concerns about the consequences of the internet”– which was not then nearly as pervasive as it is now."

Social media polarises and radicalises – and MPs aren’t immune to its effects | The Guardian