Jeremy Stangroom

Regular readers of this column will have noticed that I make frequent reference to Gordon Graham's book, The Internet: a philosophical inquiry. I originally reviewed this book in the Winter 2000 issue of TPM. I liked it, but thought that he didn't know quite enough about his subject matter for it to be a really good book. I stand by that judgement, but in retrospect think that I underestimated the significance of at least one of his arguments, namely, his analysis of "pure confluences of interest".

Graham's argument is that the internet is a medium which enables people to seek out exclusively kindred spirits and to avoid ever being exposed to views which are contrary to their own. He claims, for example, that:

"the self-made philosopher with a grand but completely vacuous 'theory of everything' will sooner or later find a coterie of people whose knowledge and critical acumen is even less, but who are willing to be impressed." (p. 99)

He thinks that this is a bad thing, because it encourages moral fragmentation, a descent into a kind of moral anarchy.

My objection to this argument was that it rested on a misunderstanding of the internet. The internet, I claimed, is a critical and self-reflexive community, and I noted that whilst it is possible to find self-proclaimed philosophers on the net, it is also the case that when they venture onto public forums they tend to be chased away mercilessly. I now think that this objection is mostly wrong.

At first thought, it seems obvious that the internet is an aggressively argumentative place. If you have a look at the various newsgroups, for example, you'll find that peace only rarely breaks out. And even the myriad special interest discussion forums which have sprung up in the last few years are characterised as much by dissent as by agreement. However, what I failed to recognise when I originally reviewed Graham's book is that the simple fact of dissent is not enough to guarantee that people's preconceptions and prejudices are properly challenged. The reason why has to do with the nature of group dynamics, and particularly with a kind of virtual world "groupthink".

The term "groupthink" was coined by psychologist Irving Janis to describe how decision-making in groups can be distorted by various pressures to conform. He argued that groupthink is characterised by a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment. Specifically, groupthink can result in: shared stereotyping; a denigration of non-members of the group; intolerance of dissent; moral certitude; a reluctance to examine preconceptions; and a resistance to new and countervailing ideas.

Janis was interested in the specific question of how groupthink can result in bad policy decisions, as in the case, for example, of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. However, it is quite possible to see a kind of groupthink at work in internet communities. For obvious reasons, this is most evident in those communities dominated by people who share pre-existing religious, moral or political beliefs. In such communities, one does find dissent and argument, but it tends to be circumscribed in two important ways.

First, amongst the most active members of the group, whilst there might be disagreements over matters of detail, there is normally very little disagreement about fundamental beliefs. For example, if you visit the discussion board of the extreme right-wing UK political party, the National Front, you'll find that whilst there are arguments about how the repatriation of non-white people should be achieved, there is no disagreement that repatriation is a good thing.

Second, on those comparatively rare occasions that somebody does question the more fundamental beliefs of the community, it provides an opportunity for its core members to reaffirm their commitment to the group by means of their condemnation of the interloper. Moreover, it is in their responses to this kind of challenge that group members will most often manifest the characteristic signs of groupthink.

It is primarily for these two reasons that the ubiquity of argument on the internet is no guarantee that people's preconceptions and prejudices will be properly challenged. Does this matter? On occasions it probably will. For example, consider the case of the "Heaven's Gate" cult. Thirty-nine of its members committed suicide seemingly because they believed that the Hale-Bopp comet was a sign that it was time for them to "leave" the Earth to be transported by means of a spacecraft to another world. The interesting point about this cult was that its isolation was facilitated by the internet. It was financed by a web design business, which meant that members had no need of contact with anyone but other members. Indeed, as Martin Rees points out in Our Final Century, the core beliefs of the cult were continually reinforced by selective transcontinental electronic contact with other adherents of the cult.

Of course, this is an extreme case, one that might not ever be repeated. Nevertheless, there is something slightly disturbing about the idea that the internet allows people to filter the kinds of inputs which they receive so that they largely avoid material which challenges their worldview. Although the internet is trumpeted as a great force for bringing people closer together, it might yet turn out that in many aspects it tends to encourage moral fragmentation and group polarisation.