The Divided States of America

In the US, states are often referred to as either red or blue: Texas is most definitely red; New Hampshire is certainly blue. And so, it would seem, are readers. During the build-up to the 2004 US Presidential election I came across a curious book-related diagram.

Click to see the full picture. What I’d found was a network map of best-selling political books based on purchase patterns from major online booksellers. The diagram had been made by Valdis Krebs, a social-network analyst who had wondered what book buying patterns could reveal about readers’ prejudices – and had set out to present it visually.

What he discovered was that readers of political books in the US were far far more polarised than he had imagined. Books in the network were linked if the same person purchased them. These results were quite easy to obtain, simply by observing features such as “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought …” on Amazon.

The red dots in the map above represent books from the political right, or those with a more Republican agenda. The blue dots represent books with an agenda more in tune with the liberal left. (This categorisation was based on Krebs’ own opinion and analysis.) So customers who bought Bill O’Reilly’s The No Spin Zone also bought Ann Coulter’s Slander. And the same thing happens with the blue dots. Only three books that fell into neither cluster occupy the middle of Mr Krebs’ diagram.

What might this tell us about the US? Well, the map appears to reflect a country we already know is politically split down the middle – but perhaps suggests that there is also a deficiency of intellectual cross-fertilization.

Readers are very much sticking to books that reinforce their prejudices. It hasn’t always been this way; there is a trend away from engagement and a move towards creating political “echo chambers” on both sides. This hostility to engage in a more progressive debate is being reflected in the bestseller lists and, acutely, in the blogosphere.

On this more up-to-date network map there is a new group of books in purple. Krebs noticed how this purple group began by occupying a middle ground, but has gradually moved to the left, connected to the blue books. The purple books also seem to be splitting into two smaller clusters: one around books that address religion and the other around books about economics.

Far from encouraging debate, it seems that many Amarican bestsellers might actively be engendering a disgust for proper discussion. But then look at it this way — at least political books make it higher up the best-seller lists in the States than here in the UK.

And it is for that reason I’m rather endeared to the American reader. To quote Stephen Colbert, one American who knows his right from his left, perhaps “ignorance is bliss — Oedipus ruined a great sex life by asking too many questions.”