Description: "Accurate information about politics is at the heart of democratic functioning. For decades, those concerned with the information environment have understandably focused on mass media, but many Americans do not learn about politics from direct engagement with the news. Indeed, about one-third of Americans learn about politics from socially transmitted information they acquire from conversations with others and social media. How does socially transmitted information differ from information communicated by mass media? And what are the consequences for political behavior? Drawing on evidence from experiments, surveys, and Twitter, Taylor Carlson finds that, as information flows from the media to person to person, 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, it does contribute to a public that is at once underinformed, polarized, and engaged"--
Brief description: Taylor N. Carlson is associate professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis. Her previous books include Talking Politics and What Goes Without Saying.
Review Quotes: "Through the Grapevine is one of the most important books written on public opinion formation in some time. Carlson convincingly argues that as an engaged public discusses politics via word-of-mouth, they distort it, make it less accurate, and more polarizing. This turns decades of conventional wisdom about the role that informed news consumers play in a democracy on its head and sheds light on how most Americans form their political opinions."--Kevin Arceneaux author of "Changing Minds or Changing Channels?"