Densely Clustered in the College-Educated Bubble
As we all know by now, the U.S. election has generated an uproar of conflict and turmoil throughout the country over the past week. Although there exist the usual differing opinions about the policies and plans of each candidate, this particular election encompassed prejudice and intolerance towards more than simply the candidates themselves. What turned this election into such an upsetting and hostile occurrence for many strong Democratic Hilary supporters was not simply the fact that the opposition won the election. What was most upsetting about this outcome was the utter shock and unanticipated reality that Donald Trump actually had the potential to emerge as the winner. As a majority of the east and west coast, college-educated youth of the country have seemed to place themselves vehemently against Trump. As a result, we come to realize the thickness of the bubble that encloses this set of U.S. citizens into an legitimate densely connected community.
In class we have been discussing the progression of information cascades and the effects they have on people’s decisions. This is extremely applicable to such decisions as citizen’s votes during this election, in addition to what different people expected as the ultimate outcome. Because people are easily swayed by the decision of the majority before them, it is reasonable to assume that the general population would have seen Trump’s victory coming. However, we can now see more clearly than ever that in our country the “elite,” those who are college-educated, and people who are generally younger and more liberal, live in an incredibly isolated environment. This bubble effect that encompasses much of the east and west coast can be seen as a dense cluster and as we claim in class- new technology, or new ideas remain outside of the dense cluster and no node within the cluster will “switch” or be affected. Essentially, those who were utterly shocked at the outcome of the election have been surrounded by others of similar, homogeneous opinions that agreed with one another in that Trump had a low chance of winning the election. Therefore, his victory was quite upsetting to a great number of college students and it really shows how densely compacted we are in our own bubble from the rest of the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016