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