Causes are advanced by their most divisive and least defensible cases, because those are the ones that provoke enough opposition to get shared.
The argument is selective amplification: a clear-cut case produces agreement and no discussion, while an ambiguous one produces argument, and argument is what circulates. A movement therefore ends up represented in public by its weakest instance, not through any decision, and its opponents and supporters cooperate in promoting it.
In practice
- A policy debate conducted entirely through its hardest edge case was never steered there by anyone.
- An organisation known publicly for its one contested decision made a thousand uncontested ones nobody shared.
- Possible explanations
- The proposed explanation is selective amplification: a clear-cut case produces agreement and no discussion, while an ambiguous one produces argument, and argument is what spreads, so the least defensible cases become the movement's public face.
- In its favour
- The mechanism is specific, it fits the observed prominence of contested cases in several campaigns, and it is consistent with research showing that content provoking disagreement travels further.
- Against it
- It is argued from examples rather than measured, no study has compared the spread of clear-cut against ambiguous cases directly, and it was published on a blog rather than in a reviewed literature.
- Standing
- Published on a blog rather than in a reviewed literature, and spread by linking. A mechanism argued from examples rather than measured. The general claim that controversy drives sharing has support in the diffusion literature; the specific selection story does not.
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- Theories of what stands between an event and its audience