🎙️Is this thing on?🎙️New #openacess piece from @kreissdaniel & I in NM&S. “A review and provocation: On polarization and platforms” argues that the analysis & normative conclusions of much polarization research, especially work on platforms, are wrong. 1/x journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14…
Our foundational claim is that polarization might not be bad for democracy—it might in fact be a necessary outgrowth of efforts to achieve democracy. Simply put, we cannot sacrifice equality and justice on the altar of social cohesion. 2/x
Any consideration of the harmful democratic effects of polarization must address the fact that political inequality, especially in the context of White racial supremacy in the US, has had far greater and more long lasting, de-stabilizing and anti-democratic effects. 3/x
We build our critique by reviewing the vast body of work on platforms & polarization. Next in reviewing work on race & justice, we show that concerns w/ solidarity largely evacuate questions of power & equality. Our concerns should center on extremism, not polarization. 4/x
Our central theoretical claim is that political identities map onto social groups & groups are located in social structures. As such, scholars must analyze groups as they are embedded in relations of power to meaningfully evaluate the democratic consequences of polarization. 5/x
Scholars who abstract polarization away from social structures and social differentiation see the primary democratic concern in terms of the lack of social cohesion and social solidarity. But ... 6/x
Scholars who proceed from an analysis of social, political, economic, or cultural inequality, in contrast, see polarization as the outcome of struggles for justice because it arises from challenges to dominant groups. 7/x
Why does all this matter? Because the normative conclusions of polarization researchers spawn narrow research & policy agendas, including abt platforms’ role in exacerbating sectarianism & searches for elusive technological shifts that might promote greater social cohesion. 8/x
From this work stem tech policies solving for solidarity, not equality. We argue that these powerful arbiters of the public sphere should be solving for democracy, not polarization. We intend this piece to offer a new normative and conceptual focus to guide future work. 9/x
We hope you'll read it. To close, I want to leave you with two chef's kiss writing moments 10/x 
How we close the piece /fin
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
