Why hasn't geopolitical polarization decreased in the age of the widespread internet?

[ProgressiveModerate]

I often hear this idea on this forum and in media that the rise of technology has reduced the social consequences to having beliefs out of line with the mainstream in a community. This makes sense, and there have been studies done to show how the internet fosters extremists echo-chambers, and how there's generally been a rise in conspiracy theories and extremism.

Yet over the past 2 decades, we've generally seen geopolitical polarization increase, with red areas largely getting redder and blue areas largely getting bluer. One might expect the internet to have produced more liberal Ds in rural white Alabama, or more Rs hiding in deep blue Portland, but if anything we've seen the opposite.

Why hasn't geopolitical poliariation decreased in the age of the internet?

[wnwnwn]

Internet helps to create niche media and communities.

[Oryxslayer]

Put simply, the factors you have identified haven't exactly fostered political conversion, just retrenchment.

Say someone opposes the dominant identities within their local community. They now feel more likely to defend those beliefs thanks to finding communities through online news or forums, things that are not necessarily political. But that is just them. The majority are still attached to the beliefs cherished by their community, and will still push pack against an oppositional small minority. The minority just is unlikely to change, and perhaps more likely to move - if viable - since they know where they can find their community instead.

The minority here isn't going to get larger. Its just going to exist with others of its kind, and shift if it gets pushed in one way separately from the majority. The majority are meanwhile going to their online communities' which are seperate from the minority, and therefore going to hold fast to their beliefs. But the majority may perhaps be more fractured these days into more specific groups by said identified processes, and is only a majority in elections. This makes the task of that majority party harder than in the past, which leads to base-focused campaigns, which leads to increased attachment from those majority groups and increased returns from them and where they overlap with others.