Category: Sociology of Media & Communication

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

The Law & Social Movements: Six Months after SOPA & PIPA

Six months ago today the U.S. Congress was in the midst of a debate over legislation that would fundamentally alter the relationship between the state, intellectual property holders, and the Internet. In opposition to the legislation, known as SOPA (House version) and PIPA (Senate version), thousands of web sites – including major sites such as Wikipedia and reddit.com – voluntarily blacked themselves out in protest. A closer examination of this incident and events that have transpired since provides insight into how...

Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Toward a Quantified Life?

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about how much of our lives are being captured and translated into numbers, percentages, and statistics. It seems that no matter where one turns, some aspect of our social life is being measured quantitatively. Of course, this is not a new phenomenon – things like age, weight, body mass index, intelligence quotient, height, and physical aptitude scores have been with us for some time now. However, it appears that this movement to quantify...

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Contradictory Trends Influencing School Operations: A Case of Cell Phones

In 2010, MSNBC published an article written by Alex Johnson entitled “Some schools rethink bans on cell phones: Bans don’t work, so administrators explore using mobile devices”. In the report, Johnson notes that 100 plus students were suspended – not for cheating, smoking, or bullying – but for having cell phones. While presented here as merely an anecdote, there can little doubt that the use of cell phones, and mobile technology more generally, is an issue that has caught the...

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Media & Communication

Occupy’s Mic Check: A Tactic to Disrupt Power, Not Free Speech

Author’s Note: This piece was originally posted to Sociology Lens on December 10th. On December 13th, the piece was temporarily removed and I was asked to make revisions to make more explicit the conventional sociological themes in this piece. This request was made as the result of pressure from a senior professor who deemed this piece too “polemical” and not “sociological.” While I and many others in the discipline have epistemological objections to very concept of value-free social science, and...

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Media & Communication

Occupy What?

Since the Occupy movement began in September, my sociological imagination has been churning with questions. I initially thought: Is this the beginning of a revolution, or is it an anti-tea party left wing group? But most of all, I wondered more broadly: What is it? Seemingly, I am not the only one in the realm of confusion. The Occupy Movement has been criticized for not being a cohesive movement. It has likewise been lauded as unstructured, lacking of a clear...

Sociology of Media & Communication

Live Webcast of Noam Chomsky's #ICA11 Closing Plenary – May 30 at 12pm EDT

Watch the live webcast of Noam Chomsky’s ICA 2011 Closing Plenary session on Monday 30th May at 12pm EDT! “Democracy, the Media, and the Responsibility of Scholars“ Go to http://www.wiley.com/college/wfn/breeze/index.html?icaonline Chair Larry Gross, U of Southern California, USA Participant Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Linguist Noam Chomsky is a trenchant critic of the mass media, which he tackled memorably in his 1988 book with Ed Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. In the years...

Sociology of Media & Communication

Live Webcast of ICA 2011 Opening Plenary – May 26 at 6pm EDT

Watch the live webcast of the ICA 2011 Opening Plenary session today from 6pm EDT! “Communication as the Discipline of the 21st Century” Go to http://www.wiley.com/college/wfn/breeze/index.html?icaonline. Chair Larry Gross, U of Southern California, USA Participant Craig Calhoun, SSRC/ New York U, USA Respondents Susan J. Douglas, U of Michigan, USA Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics, UNITED KINGDOM John Durham Peters, U of Iowa, USA Joseph N. Cappella, U of Pennsylvania, USA Georgette Wang, National Chengchi U, TAIWAN The 20th...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Media practice analysis and the evaluation of cultural impact: Misconnections as missed opportunities

In a new study from the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, it was revealed that women are both underrepresented and sexualized in the mainstream motion picture industry. The study, headed by Dr. Stacy L. Smith and Marc Choueiti, evaluated 100 films released in 2008 though survey and content analysis methodology and focused on the gender of all speaking characters, behind-the-scenes employees, and the hypersexualization of on-screen characters. Overall, their findings show that only...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Gender disparity in global newsrooms: New findings and continued concerns

On March 25, The International Women’s Media Foundation revealed its two-year study, “Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media” during its Leaders Conference in Washington, revealing that – not surprisingly – there is gender disparity in newsrooms worldwide. According to the final report (2011), “More than 150 researchers interviewed executives at more than 500 companies in 59 nations using a 12-page questionnaire” (p. 7). Although the report offers a regional breakdown of findings, the global results...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Sexting and the Criminalization of Teen Desire

The New York Times recently ran an expose on teen “sexting” as a part of a slew of recent articles on the topic. Unfortunately, this article failed to take into account the fact that teens, especially girls, have sexual desire. A couple of quotes from the article: “Having a naked picture of your significant other on your cellphone is an advertisement that you’re sexually active to a degree that gives you status,” said Rick Peters, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney...

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

Lessons learned from Hollaback!: On the development of social networking sites for qualitative research

While social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have gained global notoriety for their influential stake in recent political movements, a recent article in the New York Times has shed light on another form of new media praxis that includes neither a “like” button nor a hashtag. The article, titled “Keeping Women Safe Through Social Networking,” brings attention to the success of an organization called Hollaback!, a project that, according to the website, “is a movement dedicated to ending...

Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Lara Logan, agenda-setting, and the politics of sexual assault coverage in mainstream media

After CBS released a statement (15 February) that their chief foreign correspondent, Lara Logan, had been, “surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers,” news of the unfortunate event (which occurred on 11  February, the day Mubarak stepped down) instantly spread to various mainstream news media outlets, including BBC News (“CBS’s Lara Logan attacked by Egyptian mob in Cairo”) to The Huffington Post...

Sociology of Media & Communication

Personal Attacks on a leading Sociologist: How Should the Sociological Community Respond to the Attacks on Francis Fox Piven?

Sociologists have known about the work and viewpoints of Francis Fox Piven throughout her career. She is a leader in the field; she has taught at CUNY’s Graduate Center since 1982, helping begin the careers of numerous sociologists; in 2006/07, Piven was the president of the American Sociological Association, and she has won the ASA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Political Sociology. She is widely published and respected throughout the field, but her renown outside the field of sociology was scant...

Class & Stratification / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Media & Communication

New issue of Sociology Compass out now! (Vol 5, Issue 2)

Sociology Compass © Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 5, Issue 2 Page 134 – 178 The latest issue of Sociology Compass is available on Wiley Online Library Communication & Media New Media, Web 2.0 and Surveillance (pages 134–147) Christian Fuchs Article first published online: 1 FEB 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2010.00354.x Political Sociology Positivism and ‘Functional Theory’ in the Thought of Karl Polanyi, 1907–1922 (pages 148–164) Gareth Dale Article first published online: 1 FEB 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2010.00348.x Social Stratification The Role...

Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Professor gives away course…for free

Nathan Palmer, creator and author of SociologySource.com, has recently launched the Soc101 Class Pack, an entire set of introductory sociology course material including syllabus, PowerPoint presentations, class activities, and assignments in an easily customizable, freely downloadable file. Why would anyone give away something like this for free? What does he hope his site accomplishes? And where did he get all these great ideas for the classroom?  I had Nathan sit down for an interview to get some answers. “I believe...

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

Al Jazeera English and the United States: The beginning of a beautiful friendship?

In the midst of escalating events in Egypt – including the recent announcement from President Hosni Mubarak that he will not run for another term, yet will remain in office until fall elections – an interest in bringing Al Jazeera English (launched in 2006) to American television sets has begun in reaction to data that nearly half of the 2,500% increase in online traffic (since 28 January) – which includes video of its television feed –  has been due to...