Lovely data, Cheers.

What thought provoking read. I love it!

Homophily is ‘love of the same’ – so it means our tendency to gather in specific groups. Polysemy refers to our tendency to interpret messages in different ways. So they are two separate concepts. To my knowledge, there hasn’t been that much done about the relationship between homophile and polysemy – it’s something I’d be quite keen to do in the future (if my reading continues to take me down this route).

I’m interested by your last comment – what’s your definition of ‘democracy’ – do you mean in terms of being exposed to different points of view? If that’s the case, then there is some great work being done by Webster (there’s a book called the Marketplace of Attention) which kind of disputes the idea that lots of people have no exposure to different points of view online and offline. I think that’s why the theory needs updating. Apologies if I’ve misunderstood what you meant ?

My two cents:

Whats’s the relationship between polysemy and homophily? I’m a novice in this area but very much intrigued. Historically, is there evidence of polysemy in homophily societies (apologies if I’m getting the unit of analysis mixed up)? Does the desire to share an identity (in this case by what you look like) trump the desire for shared meaning? Fascinating to think they could be separate!

I wonder what role choice plays in all this? I can imagine communities before the internet not having a great deal of social or physical mobility, whereas after the internet both of these sped up (whether due to the internet or to congruent technologies). So before the internet, it was more important to share an identity with those around you than to share meaning. Put another way, people had to put up with their neighbours more before the internet. Nowadays, it’s so much easier to hold true to your own values without exposing them to questioning because you can jump online and find a community who shares your values so easily. Framed this way (hat-tip to Moira’s comment), the internet protocols as they are seem more undemocratic than democratic.

George Lakoff on framing:
Book – Don’t think of an elephant;
Podcast – Framelab Podcast and he also appeared on We can talk about podcast Ep12

John Naughton new writing on 95 theses in the Guardian newspaper and other places. You’ll also find him on some episodes of Talking Politics podcast. A really nice one with a colleague of yours from OII who won the 9 dots prize.

Have fun; this sounds fabulous!!

Events as ‘factually indisputable’ is an interesting point, too. I mean, 9/11 happened, but speak to a 9/11 truther and that’s about all we’ll agree on. The facts of the case are far from factually indisputable.