• Sherry Turkle (Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was interviewed for NPR’s Body Electric to discuss her latest research on people’s experiences with generative AI chatbots. Turkle describes how some individuals she interviewed formed emotional or romantic connections to the chatbots. “What AI can offer is a space away from the friction of companionship and friendship,” Turkle said. “It offers the illusion of intimacy without the demands. And that is the particular challenge of this technology.”
  • In France’s recent parliamentary election, the left-wing New Popular Front coalition won more seats than both the centrist Ensemble Alliance and far-right National Rally party (which was predicted to emerge with the most seats). Safia Dahani (Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at the European Centre for Sociology and Political Science) commented to the New York Times that “at every election, racist, antisemitic, sexist or homophobic comments made by National Rally candidates” raise suspicion among voters, despite the party’s efforts to sanitize its image. However, as Dahani commented on The Conversation Weekly, the election was not a total defeat for the National Rally party: “They gained more seats than they had in 2022. They are the third force represented in the National Assembly … So it means that they are here and they are settling in to French political life.”
  • Terry Shoemaker (Associate Teaching Professor in Religious Studies at Arizona State University) wrote an article for The Conversation applying sociologist Robert Bellah’s concept of “civil religion” to the Summer Olympics and describing how the Olympic Games provide a sacred arena to perform patriotism.
  • In a new study, Sofia Hiltner (PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Michigan) found that there is little focus on climate change in leading sociology journals, conference sessions, faculty biographies and course listings in top-ranked U.S. sociology departments in the U.S. “This deficit threatens sociology’s relevance to human welfare,” Hiltner said. “It also limits our understanding of the climate crisis as a social problem and our ability to imagine responses.” This story was reported by Phys.Org.