social networks

The Daily Mississippian reviewed Amy McDowell’s (Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Chair at the University of Mississippi) new book Whispers in the Pews: Evangelical Uniformity in a Divided America. The book is based on an ethnographic study of group culture at an evangelical church that describes itself as welcoming and inclusive. McDowell observed that people within the church community often refrained from speaking about social issues: “People don’t express their doubts, opinions or their disagreements in church spaces,” McDowell said. “People really try not to talk about that stuff.”

Amy McDowell

New research from Christopher M. Pieper (Senior Lecturer of Sociology at Baylor University) examines the ways the foundation of social life may be reshaped by the rapid advancement of generative AI, mixed‑reality platforms and the global Metaverse. To investigate the shifts in societal morality, relation, and culture Pieper worked with Justin J. Nelson (Associate Professor of Sociology at Campbell University) to develop the theory of “gamism”, a “dominant ideology of our digital future – one that makes all experiences competitive, quantifiable, commercialized and entertaining for the individual user.” This theory operates on the idea that game-like interactions will influence our understanding of self and engagement in social institutions leading to four possible outcomes: utopian, dystopian, balanced, and wild card. This story was covered by Baylor University News.

Christopher M. Pieper & Justin J. Nelson

James Densley (Professor of Criminology and Criminal justice at Metro State University) and Jillian Peterson (Professor of Criminology at Hamline University) wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times about the shift in mass shooter profile and the connection to online platforms. The profile of a typical mass shooter has shifted from a middle-aged isolated man to a younger person highly connected to online social networks. Densely and Peterson explain that both profiles are in deep despair, but younger people have been convinced “that in acting violently he or she is carrying out the only meaningful act possible in a world otherwise devoid of meaning.” Their investigation led them to a trail of online platform activity that celebrates mass murders on Tumblr, Telegram, Discord, TikTok and Roblox. The same algorithm that adjusts to your preferences now leads boys and girls to true crime communities. True crime communities take despair and turn it into a mass shooting performative script. Online platforms have flagged and taken down many of these forums, but their constant resurfacing requires more intentional change to divert attention away from mass shootings and interrupt this destructive performance.

James Densley & Jillian Peterson

In a recent public lecture, Zeynep Tufekci (Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University) discussed how artificial intelligence, good or bad, will bring destabilizing change. She highlighted three AI advancements that society is not prepared to handle: machines that speak like humans, AI photos and video, and AI imitating human speech. Tufekci encourages young students to start asking “tough questions” and think deeply about this age of rapid advancements in AI and the disillusion it will bring. This story was covered in Today at Elon.

Zeynep Tufekci

Tressie McMillan Cottom (Professor at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) appeared on an episode of The Opinions – a New York Times podcast – to discuss how Donald Trump has become America’s first “meme President.” McMillan Cottom commented on how Trump’s use of humor and embodiment of internet mediums has had his communication style politically effective: “We have really struggled with this in polite, elite discourse, where we associate humor with being a low form of communication, but humor resonates deeply with a cross section of people, and especially among younger people.”

Tressie McMillan Cottom

Martin Eiermann (Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) published a new book, The Limiting Principle: How Privacy Became a Public Issue, tracing the evolution of the concept of privacy and discussing conundrums of privacy in the digital age. Eiermann notes that “institutions that know a lot about our personal lives are able to comply with the letter of the law without offering informational privacy in a more substantive sense” and that people “suffer different consequences when their data is collected and analyzed.” This story was covered by UC Berkeley News.

Martin Eiermann

In response to the Department of Justice’s push to investigate the Open Society Foundations (philanthropies funded by the billionaire George Soros), several sociologists discussed the state of civil society in the United States:

Christopher Justin Einolf (Professor of Sociology at Northern Illinois University) wrote an article for The Conversation on the impact of civil society, ”the dense network of groups, communities, networks and ties that stand between the individual and the modern state”, on democracy. He explains that America has had a historically strong civil society, which helps account for our success of long term democracy. However, authoritarian leaders tend to crack down on or defund civil society organizations.

Dylan J. Riley (Professor of Sociology at Berkeley) was interviewed in Dissent Magazine. Riley highlighted the differences between the current period and interwar Europe, such as the size of civil society networks, the role of social media, and leader’s approaches to foreign policy.

Christopher Justin Einolf and Dylan J. Riley

Laura Hall’s (Associate Professor of Sociology at Carlton University) new book, Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes: Settler Colonialism in Horror!, examines the influence of settler colonialism on common tropes of the horror genre. “Who, and where, are Indigenous people in horror?,” Hall writes. “The answer: everywhere and nowhere at once. Both disappeared but also obsessed over, the imagined Indian is projected to reinforce settler colonialism.” This story was covered by Quill & Quire.

Laura Hall

The college admissions scandal has brought concerns about meritocracy to the fore, but sociologists know that the myth of meritocracy also extends beyond college and into the workplace. Recently Daniel Laurison talked to The Atlantic about his new book, The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays to Be Privileged.  Laurison and his coauthor, Sam Friedman, studied how elites in London profited from their privilege. In addition to being able to rely on financial assistance from parents when they were starting out in their career, Laurison and Friedman found that the culture and personnel of professional firms benefited upper-class workers.

One way that affluent workers get a leg up is that they are more likely to be similar to those who are already in the workplace, and informal systems of “sponsorship” often operate as workers helping out others who are similar to them. Laurison said,

“One of the big ideas of the book, for me, is it’s really hard for any given individual in any given situation to fully parse what’s actual talent or intelligence or merit, and what’s, ‘Gosh, that person reminds me of me, or I feel an affinity for them because we can talk about skiing or our trips to the Bahamas.’ Part of it is also that what your criteria are for a good worker often comes from what you think makes you a good worker.”

Another challenge for non-elites in the workplace are the unwritten rules. Laurison and Friedman pointed out how the culture of “studied informality” of one television studio actually functioned as an unwritten dress code, with right and wrong ways to be informal. Laurison told The Atlantic,

“There were all kinds of things, like who puts their feet up on the table and when they do it, when they swear—things that don’t seem like what you might expect from a place full of high-prestige, powerful television producers. But that was in some ways, I think, more off-putting and harder to navigate for some of our working-class respondents than hearing “just wear a suit and tie every day” might have been. The rules weren’t obvious, but everybody else seemed to know them.”

Laurison and Friedman advocate for shifting workplace culture to be more similar to codes of conduct familiar to middle and working class individuals, not simply trying to teach upper-class codes to those who are trying to climb the ladder. And, of course, they note that if wages weren’t so stratified both within and between workplaces there wouldn’t be such extreme economic consequences to these systems of informal knowledge and networking.

Around this time of year — when many people are focusing on their romantic partners — it’s easy to forget how important our friendships are. In fact, spending more time with friends may actually improve romantic relationships. In a recent article in The New York Times, Stephanie Coontz reviews social science research demonstrating that a flourishing social life can lead to a better marriage. Coontz writes,

“Socializing with friends and family and participating in clubs, political organizations, teams, unions and churches are essential components of what sociologists call social integration. And health researchers report that maintaining high levels of social integration provides as much protection against early mortality as quitting smoking.”

There are multiple ways social integration can be beneficial. For example, sociologist Kristi Williams suggests that difficulties of those divorced and widowed may be based in their lack of self-reliance skills and smaller social networks, rather than the end of their marriages. Additionally, one experiment showed that couples who went on double dates reported more passionate feelings toward their partners than those who went on a date only as a couple. So, when you’re planning your next date night, consider inviting your friends.

The rise of mobile payment apps like Venmo has made it much easier to, say, split a dinner tab, but this convenience comes along with worries about security and privacy. Further, could companies’ use of personal information about payments to target advertising reveal compromising details about our personal lives?

Venmo, for instance, is explicitly “not just a mobile payment app”—it’s also a social media platform that broadcasts its users’ payment activities to their friends. Cameron Tung discusses some of the implications in Slate. Mobile sharing of payment information helps us attach social meanings to financial transactions, and $100 spent in a restaurant is not the same as $100 spent on a phone bill. Sharing details about whom we’re paying and when opens our financial activity to social scrutiny. Don’t want your spouse or partner to know about the fancy dinner you had last weekend? Better not pay with Venmo.

To support this point, Tung cites Princeton sociologist Viviana Zelizer’s work on payments and social ties. We should think about each monetary transaction, according to Zelizer, as a gift, an entitlement, or compensation: “each one corresponds to a significantly different set of social relations and systems of meanings. People making payments use a number of earmarking techniques to distinguish those categories of social relations and meanings from each other.”

When Zelizer wrote about Christmas bonuses, for instance, she found that whether employers and employees thought about bonuses as gifts, compensation, or entitlements had a profound effect on the relationships between bosses and workers. Mobile payment platforms allow us to attach similar meanings to everyday transactions, broadcasting these meanings to our friends. As we consider the privacy and security implications of convenient mobile services, we also need to think about their cultural implications. Though we might want to use sharing apps strategically to cultivate particular online personas and identities, we may not always be able to predict how others’ will attach meanings to our payments.

Sociology and stand-up comedy have a lot in common: both reveal deep truths about life experiences and reveal the connections and disconnections of humanity. One just has more citations.

For his upcoming book Modern Romance, stand-up comic and Parks and Rec star Aziz Ansari teams up with sociologist Eric Klinenberg to tackle modern dating in the age of technology. Klinenberg is well known for his work on culture and media, as well as his recent book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. Ansari’s stand-up often pokes fun at the cultural shifts in relationships, but he recently told Time that academic research, including that of MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle, inspired him to delve deeper into the science behind modern relationships:

“I thought it would be kind of interesting to take my point of view and a conversation with someone from an academic field and put that together. If I could do that as a book, I would be able to go deeper into this area than I can in my stand-up.”

For the study, Ansari and Klinenberg interviewed hundreds of people worldwide about relationships, marriage, social networks, and technology. The end result uses Ansari’s comedic spin to explore the sociology behind the changing course of modern relationships. And on stage, it means getting to see Ansari act out a line graph of relationship intensity. How could you resist?

Click here to listen to an Office Hours interview with humorist and story-teller Dylan Brody about his work as “stand-up sociology”.

Following the whitest Academy Awards in nearly 20 years, UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies released its 2015 Hollywood Diversity Report. Sociologist and center Director Darnell Hunt described the findings to The Hollywood Reporter: “Hollywood is not progressing at the same rate as America is diversifying.”

The study, which surveyed the top 200 worldwide box office films and 1,105 television series in 2012 and 2013, found that racial minorities and women were substantially underrepresented in both acting and directing roles. Those films with at least 30% diversity, however, did best in the worldwide box office tallies.

Study co-author Ana-Christina Ramon believes these numbers show that, “audiences, regardless of their race, are clamoring for more diverse content.” So what’s the holdup?

“It’s a high-risk industry,” says Hunt. “People want to surround themselves with collaborators they’re comfortable with, which tends to mean people they’ve networked with—and nine times out of 10, they’ll look similar. It reproduced the same opportunities for the same kind of people: You’re surrounding yourself with a bunch of white men to feel comfortable.”

Hunt suggests that emerging digital platforms like Netflix and Amazon could create more opportunities for on-screen diversity. Still, he is hesitant to make grand claims about progress: “It’s getting better, but it’s not getting better fast enough. And it’s still a big problem.”

“There’s always someone more ignorant than you!” Ronald Burt, a professor of sociology and strategy at the University of Chicago’s prestigious Booth School of Business is definitely up for looking on the bright side. In fact, that opening mantra? It’s his way of saying maybe there isn’t anything new under the sun—but if it’s new to you? You can work with that.

According to the Chicago Tribune’s “Blue Sky Innovation,” Burt says there are two good ways to network that to support your ideas. Those who need to work on nitty gritty improvements—say getting production processes fine-tuned—need “closure,” or a tight social network of specialists. But those “charged with innovation need to branch out and build brokerage,” or a diverse network of people and insights from different fields and even different mindsets. more...

Social networks allow instant access to friends and family, and let you show the world what’s going on in your life. Maybe a bit narcissistic, but harmless. Studies, however, have been all over the place on the question of whether SNS (social networking systems) are “good” or “bad” for individuals and society. Are we more connected than ever or more disconnected than ever? A recent study by the Public Library of Science went with the bad news: it found that the more you use Facebook, the more miserable you’ll be.

A recent article in The Economist describes the work of Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan, and Philippe Verduyn of Leuven University in Belgium. In response to generally short-term, “cross-sectional” studies of SNS, their study was done over an extended period of time.  Subjects would answer surveys reporting their mental and emotional states multiple times a day. The more they were on Facebook, the more they reported being dissatisfied with life.

Others studies have associated the use of social networks like Facebook with depression, social tension, and envy. The article states:

Endlessly comparing themselves with peers who have doctored their photographs, amplified their achievements and plagiarised their bons mots can leave Facebook’s users more than a little green-eyed.

On a positive note, the same study found that the more in-person contact the subject had, the more satisfied they were. Digital dualism aside, a well-rounded life of on- and off-line interaction—that good old “moderation”—seemed to do the trick.