The internet was supposed to democratize the news. That didn't really happen.

Liberal media.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

One of the great virtues of the internet, conventional wisdom has long held, is that it will diversify and democratize the news media, exposing the news consumer to a broader range of viewpoints by making it easier to hear from people with different backgrounds, philosophies, and locations than our own.

But in an analysis that examines why President Trump's win was so "unthinkable" for many — and especially many on the left — in the run-up to the election, statistician Nate Silver notes that new media has actually tended to "amplify the groupthink" by making ideological echo chambers. "Once a consensus view is established, it tends to reinforce itself until and unless there's very compelling evidence for the contrary position," Silver writes.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.