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Through the Grapevine: Socially Transmitted Information and Distorted Democracy

Online ISBN:
9780226834160
Print ISBN:
9780226834153
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

Through the Grapevine: Socially Transmitted Information and Distorted Democracy

Taylor N. Carlson
Taylor N. Carlson

Associate Professor

Washington University in St. Louis
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Published online:
23 January 2025
Published in print:
6 July 2024
Online ISBN:
9780226834160
Print ISBN:
9780226834153
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

What does it mean when Americans rely on family and friends to stay on top of politics? For decades, researchers interested in how information is disseminated have focused on mass media, but the reality today is that many Americans do not learn about politics from direct engagement with the news; rather, about one-third of Americans learn chiefly from information shared by their peers in conversation or on social media. How does this socially transmitted information differ from that communicated by traditional media? What are the consequences for political attitudes and behavior? Drawing on evidence from experiments, surveys, and social media, Taylor N. Carlson finds that, as information diffuses from mass media to the actively informed to the casually informed, it becomes sparse, more biased, less accurate, and more mobilizing: the result is what Carlson calls "distorted democracy." Although socially transmitted information does not necessarily render democracy dysfunctional, Through the Grapevine shows how it contributes to a public that is at once underinformed, polarized, and engaged.

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