How social media drives a 'regression to the extremes'

[marmar]

How social media drives a ‘regression to the extremes’
By Abdul El-Sayed


(Detroit Metro Times) Earlier this month, we commemorated the somber day one year ago when thousands of Americans tried to ransack our democracy. That came on the backdrop of a global pandemic's fifth wave, despite now having a safe, effective vaccine that nearly 40% of Americans still refuse to take.

Meanwhile, America is just, well, angrier.

Videos of airline passengers assaulting flight staff, shoppers harassing other shoppers over masks, or road rage incidents populate our newsfeeds. It doesn't just offend our sensibilities. It's deadly — traffic accident fatalities have spiked over the past two years.

Though each of these offers substrate for a complex sociological analysis, there is a clear thread that binds them. I've written quite a bit about the way that social media has corrupted our public discourse. But here I want to hone in on a particular mechanism, which I'll call "regression to the extremes."

In statistics, "regression to the mean" is the phenomenon by which if one sample of a certain variable tends toward the extreme, the next sample is more likely to to tend to the mean average of that variable. The regression to the extreme that I'm describing here is the phenomenon by which engaging in social media discussions will tend to drive opinions to one of either extremes on an issue. ..............(more)

https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/how-social-media-drives-a-regression-to-the-extremes/Content?oid=28991518#.YegqfYDAYa4.link

[ShazamIam]

1. One thing is obvious, yes the online dialogue is being deliberately driven by huge operations to

extremism and to generate angry responses.
It is amusing that someone is studying the effect of a now known to be paid for effort that was visible by the late 90s on the internet, along with rumors and reports, such operations in the U.S. where paid commenters flooded the message and chat forums especially on the at the time largest, AOL.