Category: Sociology of Media & Communication

Opinion / Science & Technology / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Media & Communication

How to make sense of the debate on “study drugs”?

“Medicalization“ as a theoretical concept has received much attention in sociology throughout decades and people’s drug use is a social phenomenon investigated from different perspectives in the social and life sciences. Research on “study drugs” is an area where many of these perspectives converge – not only because it prompts us to reconsider the treatment/enhancement distinction. In this article, Stephan Schleim describes how the topic of (allegedly) performance-enhancing drugs has fascinated him since high school. When scholars started discussing this...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Media & Communication

The Hero Fallacy Paradox

February 2021, American President, Donald J. Trump became the first U.S. President to be impeached twice. Donald Trump was impeached a second time for inciting his followers to attack the United States Capitol in January of the same year in his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election to remain in power. What is now referred to as the January 6th Insurrection, represents a reactionary attempt to thwart democracy by ending the peaceful transition of power, based on a disproven...

Black man raising fist in protest amidst crowd

Opinion / Peace, War & Social Conflict / Research Brief / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Tweeting Abolition in an Age of Mass Incarceration and Social Unrest, Part II: From the Margins to the Mainstream

Abolition, from police abolition to prison abolition, is largely thought about as being a pretty radical theory. Even amongst critical criminologists who argue against mass incarceration, the torture of solitary confinement, or the racist nature of the over surveillance, policing, and sentencing of Black and Latinx folks, abolition is often seen as an extremist or unrealistic response to a broken system. Identifying concrete ways of fixing problematic aspects of the system is for many preferable than wanting to tear the...

Opinion / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Globalization / Sociology of Media & Communication

Local Contexts, Global Movements: How Place Shapes Online Social Movements

These days, it is almost impossible to imagine what our daily lives would look like without social media. Platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram have all come to shape our society in fundamental ways – not least in the ways in which we communicate. On the most fundamental level, social media usage has introduced new words to our language that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago (for example, Merriam Webster now lists a Twitter-specific definition for...

Opinion / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Media & Communication

Where are future generations in newspaper coverage of climate change?

Climate change is accelerating – and will impact most on children and those yet to be born.  The failure to halt the relentless rise in global temperatures is an act of intergenerational injustice in which the UK is centrally implicated.  It is among the top national contributors to global fossil fuel emissions and, as the first industrialising country, has made the largest per person contribution to climate change.   While today’s children and tomorrow’s generations will be hardest hit, they...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Media & Communication

Vaccine frictions – one rationality does not fit all

This blog piece highlights some points of my on-going multi-sited research project on HPV vaccination in Finland. The findings presented are based on my open access research article, What kind of ‘a girls’ thing’?, published in Sociology of Health and Illness. When you are vaccinated, you get protection against the cancer‐causing HP virus. On the front page of the Finnish HPV vaccination campaign site. That vaccine protects from papillomavirus (not directly even from cervical cancer), which is very effectively prevented...

Opinion / Peace, War & Social Conflict / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Media & Communication

How do refugee organizations communicate about forcibly displaced people?

© DFID – UK Department for International Development published under Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) http://bit.ly/33MnkXX  70.8 million. That is the enormous number of people who were forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2018. Many of them are confronted with hostility, xenophobia and/or increasingly popular far-right movements.[1] While states have the basic legal responsibility to protect and assist these displaced people,[2] in recent decades, several states worldwide have implemented increasingly restrictive asylum policies.[3] In protecting refugees’ rights and...

Research Brief / Science & Technology / Social Welfare / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Media & Communication

Digital Health: Sociological Perspectives

Digital technologies are increasingly being developed, implemented and used in the delivery of health and care, contributing to potentially disruptive changes in how healthcare is practised and experienced by health professionals, patients and those within their wider care networks. The following extract is from the introduction to a new special issue of Sociology of Health and Illness, edited by Flis Henwood and Benjamin Marent, now free to access until the end of 2019: ‘Digital health’ is both easy and hard...

Opinion / Social Movements / Social Change / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Media & Communication

How to understand social change and stability through discourse and communication?

This is a summary of a paper, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, that presents a theoretical proposal for integrating two (historically estranged but often combined in practice) social psychological frameworks, as well as a methodological strategy for analysing discourse and communication, developed from this integration. The goals pursued with it are those of advancing a more socially relevant Social Psychology, more capable of comprehending how meanings are constructed and transformed in discourse and communication, as a way...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

In the digital ‘culture war’, left wing politics must capture online spaces – not just try to regulate them

It is tempting to see in contemporary digital political communication nothing more than too many people, saying too much, too loudly. Or, as Plato put it when complaining of the Athenian Assembly, people ‘shouting or hammering their disapproval and approval, grossly exaggerated in either case, of the things that are said and done’. That temptation is to be avoided. Our choice is not between acquiescence to elite authority on the one hand, and acceptance of our cacophonous public sphere on...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Science & Technology / Sociology of Media & Communication

Sexed up online: Instagram influencers, harassment, and the changing nature of work

Kylie Jenner is estimated to earn $1 million per sponsored online post. Scrolling through her Instagram feed shows plenty of examples of how lucrative – and sexualized – the online attention economy has become. From poolside parties and bikinis, to fast cars and crop tops, and from motherhood to makeup tips, branded products are peppered among the mix of idealized selfies, professional headshots, and candid (or made to seem candid) snaps. Jenner is touted as the highest paid influencer on...

Opinion / Social Welfare / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of the Family

Marketing Children: Overcoding Indigenous Children with Colonial Happiness in the Child Welfare System

In 1964, the Today’s Child column began in the Toronto Telegram, written by Helen Allen at the behest of then-Deputy Minister of Welfare in Ontario, Dr. James Band. In 1972, the column moved to the Toronto Star. The Today’s Child ran weekly until 1982 and featured over 4,000 daily advertisements of children who were available for adoption. Each column would feature a photo of the child or multiple children and offer descriptions of each child’s appearance and disposition. A television...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Identity / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Religion

Creationism, anti-intellectualism and education

For decades academics, educators, and policy makers have butt heads with creationists (i.e. people who believe in intelligent design over evolution).  Evolution is incompatible with strict religious beliefs that God created the universe.  Religious families have historically contested education on evolution in classrooms, believing that their children are being fed false information that infringes on their religious practice. Longest and Uecker [1] have recently added to this conversation by illuminating the salience and importance of these beliefs.  The authors argue that...

Class & Stratification / News / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Social Theory / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The British Journal of Sociology: New Design Volume 70

As an editorial team we are keenly aware of the momentous changes that are taking place in the world of journal publishing, and fully intend to keep our own practices as a journal and as editors – everything from what we publish to how we review, and how quickly – under constant scrutiny in order to ensure that we stay as up to date and as relevant as we can be. So, it is with great pleasure that we announce...

Opinion / Peace, War & Social Conflict / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Identity / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Religion

Radicalization: Interview with Kevin McDonald

In his recent book, Radicalization (Polity, 2018) Kevin McDonald unpicks the term radicalization, showing that this term is little understood, and is problematic in that it does not articulate the very different experiences of those involved. New violent actors, whether they travelled to Syria or killed at home, range from former drug dealers and gang members, to students and professionals, schoolgirls, and mothers with young children. The book sets out to explore radicalization not as something done to people, but...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

What not to watch: #MeToo and contemporary popular culture

In light of #MeToo, one of issues I have found myself thinking about on a daily basis is how to come to a decision as to whether or not a piece of culture is irredeemably tainted by the involvement of men accused of abuses and if I, as an ethical subject, should continue to consume them. The most significant factor in assessing whether or not to consume a piece work in which so-called ‘bad men’ feature prominently is individual experience....