In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam hunts for the causes of declining American social capital and civic engagement. He fingers two suspects: TV and ethnic diversity. Television is supposed to keep us away from our neighbours and ethnic diversity is supposed to make us trust them less.
Both of these supposed links have been scrutinized, but ethnic diversity seems to have spawned a much bigger literature. Here are some rough numbers to back that up:
Search Google scholar hits Cites to top hit
Television +
"social capital" 43,300 403
Ethnicity +
"social capital" 88,500 6,714
Ethnic +
"social capital" 101,000 6,714
Television
[within BA cites] 5,750 190
Ethnicity
[within BA cites] 6,310 491
Ethnic
[within BA cites] 9,260 150
Television + trust 555,000 194
Ethnicity + trust 312,000 72
Ethnic + trust 887,000 59
Apart from the "trust" searches, television seems to have fewer articles. I also tried using "TV" or "race", with similar results. More qualitative data - with more insight but maybe more bias - is that I can name many well-known articles in economics on ethnicity, trust and participation, but far fewer on TV and the same. Plus, there is unmistakably much, much more public controversy about ethnicity and multiculturalism than there is about TV. (Just read the comments pages of any UK news website... though not if you want to keep your faith in humankind.)
If this is true, why is it? I suspect that ethnicity is just naturally more controversial. The topic raises our primal hackles against "the other"*; and then, at least for some people, brings out the better angels of our nature to defend diversity and tolerance.
Perhaps this is a shame. After all, ethnic diversity impinges on most of our lives rather little. It is something we observe while walking down city streets. TV is inside our homes, for four hours a day on average. Has the controversial topic obscured the truly important one?
* I find this phrase pretentious, vague and overused, but it does seem hard to avoid here.
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