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By: Anand Edward Sokhey

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If you study American politics or political behavior, you should absolutely read Taylor Carlson’s recent book about information, interpersonal communication, and democratic functioning in the United States. However, if you tell others about the book (and you should), Through the Grapevine would suggest that you should be mindful about the message you pass along—after all, many of us have experienced some version of “the telephone game” at some point in our lives. In the context of Carlson’s book, we might expect that as people’s summaries of the work traverse their academic circles, those narratives could change in meaningful ways. To wit, the reports might evolve to exclude or misrepresent some important details, and they could shift to incorporate individuals’ personal characterizations, political opinions, and their own professional academic agendas. Indeed, given all too familiar communication dynamics, it would probably not surprise us to observe different colleagues coming to different conclusions—all through this secondhand talk—about what the book’s findings mean for the future of American democracy.

Just as we cannot escape rumor, gossip, and other forms of “chained” communication in our everyday (online and offline) lives, Carlson calls our attention to a ubiquitous and persistent feature of our politics: that the information the public relies on is, fundamentally, socially transmitted. Information flows from various sources to the “actively informed,” and then finally to the “casually informed.” She presents a wealth of evidence that this multistep transmission matters because (1) it changes the content and nature of the information, and (2) this altered information influences people’s opinions and propensity to participate in politics.

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