I have been to several meetings lately that are amazing engines for thought about hub vs node approach. While I won't get into the specifics of the meetings, there has been a serious debate on "reachout out" vs. "reaching in".
Do Americans want custom opinion and issue sites for each issue or do they what sounding chambers where they know they will find giant pools of like minded materials (maybe the answer is both). However, Valdis' work Divided We Stand (Krebs is a wizard.) or Political Patterns on the WWW -- Divided We Stand Still? add some fuel to the reaching into the community approach.
These finding suggest that book readers really enjoy reading "like" minds and reinforcing materials. Valdis suggests (by selection of supporting quotes) that the "opinion" leaders use these "like " books to bolster status as opinion leaders. Alternatively, people may buy "like minded" books because they don't want to be challenged by countering opinion or that is the way we study.
I can think that when I jump on a topic I'll grab a handful of books in the same subject area. I went through a biographies stage, historical novel phase, tufte phase, science literature or classic phase. If I were going to jump into the subjects on either side of the divide I am looking for a cluster and it may have nothing to do with my personal choices or opinions. I really tried to figure out Rove and "W" and ended up grabbing a handful of conservative cluster books at the time and I can not be considered conservative by most definitions.
I need to wade through the topic and links a little more but I thought Valdis' summary pages were great, relevant to discussions at my meetings and possibly useful to web site planners and coalition networks.
