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Twitter, Groupthink and the Election

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-trending-on-twitter-groupthink/2012/10/23/130f6208-1d54-11e2-9cd5-b55c38388962_story.html

 

Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs as a result of crowd following. It describes when a group of people try to reach a consensus decision with minimum conflict, and as a result, they often do not challenge the consensus decision and do not fully evaluate alternative ideas or viewpoints. While this may result in a more harmonious process for reaching a decision, groupthink may also result in a loss of individual creativity and individual thinking.

 

In the context of Twitter and the upcoming Presidential election, this means that journalists are using twitter and other social media to copy the opinions of other journalists rather than provide their own original opinion on the election. This is most evident in debate coverage. In the past, journalists were required to carefully watch the debate and take careful notes of the arguments. Afterwards, they might collaborate with a few of their peers before publishing their opinions of the debate. Now, journalists will try following both the debate and Twitter, where they will monitor other journalists’ tweets and test which ones receive the best response. They then echo those tweets and soon conventional wisdom sets in. Dana Milbank gave an example in his article of how public opinion of the third Presidential debate quickly snowballed in Obama’s favor when one respected journalist made claimed that Obama was winning the debate after 30 minutes. He was immediately followed by a wave of other respected journalists sharing his opinion.

 

Groupthink has existed since humans were first expected to make a group decision, however, with modern technology like Twitter, the speed at which information spreads can cause quick and powerful momentum changes in public opinion. Following crowds has many benefits, but it should not be applied to journalism and coverage of the Presidential election where opinions can vary so dramatically. It would be unhealthy if people begin to base their opinions based on what is popular or trending on Twitter rather than listening to carefully constructed arguments both for and against political issues.

 

-m.o.

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