Category: Social Movements / Social Change

Political & Economic Sociology / Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

britannica is putting customers to work

by nathan jurgenson The very idea of Wikipedia -the open-source encyclopedia that anyone with an internet connection can edit- has sparked many discussions about knowledge construction, such as the politics behind truth, the social construction of knowledge, the tyranny of epistemic expertism or populism, and so on. In these discussions, the Encyclopedia Britannica is often posed as the antithesis to Wikipedia. So it came as big news earlier this year that the Encyclopedia Britannica, the model of old-school expertism, is...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

“Cerebral Celebrities” – Coming Down to Earth

 by ishein1 “It takes tremendous courage to think for yourself and examine yourself, this Socratic imperative requires courage.”  This quote is taken from the trailer of the second documentary from Astra Taylor and is spoken by Cornel West in the back of Taylor’s car.  Taylor’s first film, Zizek, was a documentary in which the ‘intellectual rock star’, Slavoj Zizek, is shadowed on his lecture circuit.  Taylor’s new film “Examined Life”, set to open in New York City, once again attempts...

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

“I Missed the Joke”: Race, Rupert Murdoch, and the NAACP

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4mBRYueMss] by NickieWild Last week, a very racially charged cartoon appeared in the New York Post, featuring a couple of police officers having killed a chimpanzee, with the caption, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” The cartoon was supposedly a somewhat weak joke about an animal that attacked a woman, and was shot by police in Connecticut, linked tenuously with commentary of a sort about President Obama’s economic plan. Civil rights leaders weren’t laughing....

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The Facebook Privacy Fiasco of 2009

by nathan jurgenson All over the news the past few days has been the outing of Facebook for changing its terms of service so that it could keep its user’s data for whatever it pleased for as long as it pleased. Even if the user deleted their account. Next came the vast uproar to this move followed by Facebook’s backtracking, arguing that the wording was harsher than what they would actually do in practice. Under continued pressure, however, Facebook backed...

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture

Awards Season

Later this week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is scheduled to hold their 81st Academy Awards in Hollywood, California.  While the Oscars is the premiere awards ceremony for the United States film industry, in recent years a variety of other awards ceremonies have begun to proliferate across the calendar to recognize members of the film industry in a variety of similar categories to the Oscars. Recently, sociologist Joel Best has written an article describing the proliferation of...

Peace, War & Social Conflict / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Colonizing the New Frontier: Bloggers Beware

 by ishein1 Newly elected president, Barack Obama, held his first official press conference on Monday evening.  This historically rich press conference on the surface was isomorphous with press conferences of the past.  This fact was accentuated by the presence of Helen Thomas, currently a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.  As she has done for the past four decades, and despite attempts by President Obama to lighten the moment, Thomas asked her usual critical and pertinent questions.  Obama responded as most past...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Is this person gay?

by kiddingthecity … Is s/he British? Is this person happy? Intelligent? These are some of the strong questions participants were asked to cast their vote about when faced with the anonymous picture of a stranger in latest Christian Nold‘s provocative installation. Over 14,000 people in one month cast their vote in the ‘Community Metrics’ in  Nottingham (UK) and decide ‘live’ who of the volunteers should be deported: a sort of ‘friendly fascism’, a dystopian version of Facebook, a tease out...

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Video Resources

Of the People, By the People, For the People — Linux for Human Beings

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFacRsGWZqQ&feature=related] “Are we creating world peace or fundamentally changing the world? No,” he (Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu and Canonical) said. “But we could shift what people expect and the amount of innovation per dollar they expect.” — New York Times Most people’s impression on Linux is something mythical which only computer geeks are involved with, if they have even heard of the operating system before. In recent years, volunteers and tech professionals had devoted major effort in developing...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change

Transnational Migration and Conflict

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtzl5BZFRPI] by socanonymous Ongoing fighting in Sri Lanka has brought together about 45,000 Tamils from across Toronto, to protest what they call the genocide of Tamil people. They came together to form a human chain in Toronto’s downtown city core. The powerful emotions shown in the video give a glimpse of the struggles that many transnational migrants have gone through and escaped from. Globalization has facilitated diasporas to maintain political and social ties transnationally, in spite of geographical proximity. These...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Entering the New Frontier, There is no Turning Back

by ishein1 As the first week of Obama’s presidency passes, a top priority, set forth prior to his election, is to transform “the internet based machinery”, that helped him get elected, into an agenda setting tool.  The millennial generation tools within a new frontier of political interaction, i.e. social networking sites, like facebook, twitter, and YouTube are still in their embryonic form, particularly with regard to their impact on the political process.  It is clear, however, that if one wants...

Class & Stratification / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Conflict, Propaganda, and “Homeland Security”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6akE9YDEUo] by NickieWild A new television show on the U.S. broadcast network ABC called “Homeland Security USA” has been stirring up controversy within the immigrants’ rights community. Ostensibly a Homeland Security Department version of the long-running show “Cops,” this version includes border and port security activity. Critics ask, is this just another reality show, or an elaborate piece of propaganda? Some civil rights groups believe the latter, and one has organized a protest and boycott directed against the show. They...

Gender & Sexuality / Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Transphotography

by kiddingthecity Transsexual people are willing to become invisible, international acclaimed photographer and researcher Sara Davidmann maintains, in order to be accepted in the social norm, which wants a strict binary distinction between genders.  The issue of safety in public space here, I guess, is crucial – hence, the urge to comply to the visual stereotype of the male or of the female. As it is the issue of ‘medicalization’, that is, the tendency of western culture to push ‘deviance’...

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work

‘The Sailor’s Lament:’ Royal Navy’s ‘Binge Drink’ Culture

by paulabowles Binge drinking has long been identified as a social problem. Vast amounts of column inches, as well as government and independent agency policy documents have been produced, in an effort to tackle the problem. Until recently the spotlight has been firmly focused on civilian life, but recent research findings may change that view. Research carried out by King’s Centre for Military Health Research has concluded that binge drinking is “significantly more prevalent” in the Royal Navy, than within...

Social Movements / Social Change / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

prosumers of the world unite

by nathan jurgenson Lately, we have been doing lots of work, for others. For free. Millions of users of sites like Facebook and MySpace are clicking away at their profiles, adding detailed information about themselves and others. “We” are uploading content to sites like Flickr, YouTube, the microblogging service Twitter and many others, and our labor creates vast databases about ourselves –what I previously described as a sort of mass exhibitionism. Facebook’s profit model is built upon an ownership of...