Five Questions with Taylor N. Carlson author of “Through the Grapevine: Socially Transmitted Information and Distorted Democracy”
While US citizens prepare for the 2024 Presidential Election, important questions have arisen concerning how we discuss politics. In Through the Grapevine, political scientist Taylor N. Carlson examines what it means when Americans rely on family and friends to stay on top of politics. In previous eras, Americans relied on mass media to keep abreast of politics; now, most Americans learn about political happenings through discussions with peers, whether in person or via social media. This timely work begs the question: How does socially transmitted information differ from that communicated by traditional media? What are the consequences for political attitudes and behavior?
In this post, we chat with Carlson about her research and how the average citizen can be more aware of the information they share with their peers.
What role do everyday people play in spreading misinformation?
Most research on misinformation focuses explicitly on fake news, social media, and politicians as the key sources of creating and spreading that misinformation. There have been recent investigations into which types of people are more prone to sharing misinformation (intentionally or otherwise) on social media. But, one thing that I highlight in Through the Grapevine is that misinformation can also spread conversationally in ways that we haven’t really considered as much before. Even if we start with accurate information, sometimes people misremember and subsequently miscommunicate the details. Analyzing data from thousands of messages written by study participants essentially tasked with summarizing news articles for others, I found that about 3.5% of messages added misinformation that was not initially present. This tells us that everyday people can add misinformation to the information environment, but most of the information transmitted socially remains accurate. In the book, I try to carefully consider whether we should view these findings as normatively good or bad, but I think it’s ultimately up to the reader. I hope that the findings here turn some of our attention toward considering how we could be contributing to the spread of misinformation (intentionally or unintentionally) through everyday conversations so that we can all be more thoughtful about what we share with others.
How do political conversations affect polarization?
Across the social sciences, scholars have been interested in how group conversations and social influence can affect polarization. Most work, especially recently, focuses on how cross-cutting conversations between people who disagree can reduce polarization, with several experimental studies demonstrating that they can. However, most of this research does not examine the content of the conversations themselves to evaluate how the information people are exposed to in conversations could impact polarization. In the book, I first show that even when people read unbiased, balanced news content, their summaries of that content become biased in favor of their preferences. What happens when people are exposed to this biased socially transmitted information? I answer this by randomly exposing people to either no information at all, news articles, or summaries of those news articles written by other people who are either from the same party (co-partisans) or the opposite party (out-partisans). I find that even in the absence of a full conversation, exposure to information from a co-partisan can lead people to have more extreme policy preferences that are more sorted along party lines, two common indicators of polarization. Political conversations are surely not the only cause of polarization, but the pieces are in place for the information exchanged between like-minded people to play a role in the process.
What are some of the benefits and consequences of political discussion? For individual people? For democratic functioning?
Although I’ve shown in other work with Jaime Settle that most Americans prefer to avoid discussing politics – and other scholars, such as Yanna Krupnikov, Samara Klar, and John Barry Ryan, have shown that many people dislike politics and partisanship more generally – the social experience of political discussion does indeed permeate American day-to-day experiences. There are many benefits of political discussion that other scholars have highlighted, such as increased political engagement and political knowledge, and reduced affective polarization in some cases, even if discussion also comes with some risks of exposure to misinformation, increased polarization, and potentially radicalization. In Through the Grapevine specifically, I focus on how the information transmitted socially could both help and hurt an individual’s ability to navigate politics effectively. On the positive side, socially transmitted information from people who are more knowledgeable and come from the same party can increase political knowledge – that is, people are indeed able to learn from others. Socially transmitted information from co-partisans can also increase the likelihood that someone will engage in politics. However, socially transmitted information can also increase beliefs in misinformation and lead to more extreme policy preferences. I also show that increased reliance on socially transmitted information is associated with being less likely to think that votes are counted fairly and being more likely to contact legislators to express concerns about election integrity, but these relationships are not necessarily causal. Putting my findings in conversation with the wealth of knowledge we have accumulated about political discussion over the past several decades suggests that political discussion is not – in and of itself – good or bad for democratic functioning. I think future scholarship across the social sciences should focus on how we can harness the benefits of political discussion while limiting the costs.
How does social media help and hinder democratic functioning?
This is a question that people have grappled with since the advent of social media. I think the answer to the question really depends on the core outcome of interest – are we considering polarization, misinformation, political engagement, fair elections, or something else? Answering this question involves engaging thoughtfully with a large body of evidence from across the social sciences. That said, I can highlight what I think my book adds to this conversation. As I have discussed in response to other questions, I think the costs and benefits of socially transmitted information are quite nuanced – it can increase the spread of less accurate, biased, and mobilizing content in our information environment, which can, in turn, affect beliefs, polarization, and engagement. But, the effects in any of these cases are relatively small and might be concentrated at the individual level. We can take these nuanced findings and think about them in a social media context – much of the content that spreads on social media is indeed socially transmitted information! Social media can therefore be a distinct context in which socially transmitted information can spread and potentially impact political behavior, perhaps on an entirely unprecedented scale. This suggests again that we need to pay more attention to how we can harness the benefits of social media and reduce the costs when it comes to maintaining democratic functioning.
What should citizens bear in mind when speaking socially about politics? What can the average citizen do to mitigate the spreading of misinformation?
I think a key lesson from Through the Grapevine is that we need to consider how others might interpret what we share with them. In many cases, I think that people who read or watch the news regularly assume that others are doing the same, without realizing that they might actually be a key information source for other people. Thinking about the role we might play in providing information to others suggests that this is an important responsibility we need to consider carefully. In addition to being cautious with the news we consume, we need to also be cautious with the information we share with others – and what we hear from others.
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.
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