{"id":8175,"date":"2025-10-27T14:07:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T19:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/?p=8175"},"modified":"2025-10-27T14:07:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T19:07:16","slug":"clippings-october-27th-2025-tsp-media-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2025\/10\/27\/clippings-october-27th-2025-tsp-media-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Clippings | October 27th, 2025 | TSP Media Report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The New York Times<\/em><\/a> ran a story on the removal or design changes of public benches as a part of a \u201cdecades-long shift of reinventing the public bench into something that doesn\u2019t welcome the public at all.\u201d Michael Benediktsson<\/a> (Associate Professor of Sociology at Hunter College) commented that this trend connects to pre-1970s anit-vagrancy laws that allowed police officers to arrest people of color and people experiencing homelessness who were utilizing public spaces. Benediktsson commented that once these laws were deemed unconstitutional, \u201cthat\u2019s when you see more of a turn to hostile urban design and planning as a means of achieving the same objective.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Michael Benediktsson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ash Watson<\/a> (Scientia Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney) described the consequences of the digital divide in Australia in an NewsCop<\/em><\/a> <\/em>article. Nearly \u201c6 million Australians have difficulty accessing the internet; this spans physical access, affording the internet and being confident and capable with their own abilities,\u201d Watson described. As more services\u2013including banking, news, housing applications, and government services\u2013move online, many Australians are getting left behind. \u201cThe big consequence is that people can struggle to fully participate and feel that they don\u2019t belong in Australian society as a result,\u201d Watson said.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Ash Watson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Atlantic<\/em><\/a> ran a story addressing a \u201csurprisingly contentious\u201d question: does money make parenting easier? In 2023 a Pew Research Center<\/a> survey found that lower-income parents were more likely to state that they found parenting enjoyable and rewarding most of the time. Many media commentators focused on this singular data point, claiming that parenting was most difficult for wealthier parents (despite another finding in the Pew data that lower-income parents are more likely to say that parenting is stressful). Jennifer Glass<\/a> (Sociology Professor at the University of Texas at Austin) commented that \u201cthere\u2019s simply no data on mental health, subjective well-being, or happiness that I have ever seen showing [that wealthy parents struggle with parenthood more].\u201d Rather, Glass\u2019s research shows that higher income and education improve happiness for parents.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer Glass<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Equal Times<\/em><\/a> interviewed Alex Wood<\/a> (Assistant Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Cambridge) on the rise in self-employment and freelance work since 2000. Wood explains that freelancing is often more common where there are weaker labor protections, service-based economies, and digital labor platforms available. Wood also describes a shift in the corporate mindset toward prioritizing short-term profit: \u201cIf you leave it to employers, to firms, they will choose the low road, the easy option, because they are focused on short-term profitability and short-term share price, even though that\u2019s detrimental to them in the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Alex Wood<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Washington Post<\/em><\/a> ran an article about shifting trends in cosmetic surgery\u2013particularly a rise in breast implant removals and breast implants of smaller sizes, mirroring a broader cultural trend toward thinness. Alka Menon<\/a> (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University) explained that \u201ccosmetic surgery moves on a trend model. Minimalism is the name of the game now.\u201d Menon also commented on how social media accelerates cycles of beauty trends: \u201cWhat took decades to shift from Marilyn Monroe to Kate Moss now happens in a few years. The algorithm determines what version of beauty you\u2019re exposed to.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Alka Menon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Benediktsson Ash Watson Jennifer Glass Alex Wood Alka Menon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2217,"featured_media":8186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,55,33,13,85],"tags":[118353,118358,118365,118338,118345,118350,117611,117294,98,1628,118357,118367,118341,118348,118351,118360,118342,118361,118362,192,832,118336,118339,2889,39110,118346,20794,118363,565,118337,118352,19376,118355,118356,12882,118335,9084,118340,118364,19084,118349,732,118343,117991,104075,118347,118359,118344,118354,3644,11336,27102,118366],"class_list":["post-8175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-gender","category-health","category-inequality","category-politics","tag-access-to-technology","tag-alex-wood","tag-alka-menon","tag-anti-vagrancy-laws","tag-ash-watson","tag-australia","tag-beauty-standards","tag-body-image","tag-capitalism","tag-city-planning","tag-class-and-family","tag-cosmetic-surgery","tag-design-justice","tag-digital-divide","tag-digital-literacy","tag-economic-sociology","tag-exclusionary-design","tag-freelance-economy","tag-gig-work","tag-happiness","tag-homelessness","tag-hostile-architecture","tag-hunter-college","tag-income-inequality","tag-inequality","tag-internet-access","tag-jennifer-glass","tag-labor-protections","tag-mental-health","tag-michael-benediktsson","tag-online-participation","tag-parenthood","tag-parenting-research","tag-pew-research-center","tag-policing","tag-public-benches","tag-public-policy","tag-public-space","tag-short-termism","tag-social-control","tag-social-inclusion","tag-social-media","tag-sociology-of-design","tag-sociology-of-family","tag-structural-racism","tag-technology-inequality","tag-university-of-cambridge","tag-university-of-new-south-wales","tag-university-of-texas-at-austin","tag-urban-planning","tag-urban-sociology","tag-well-being","tag-yale-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2025\/10\/photo-collage.png-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8187,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8175\/revisions\/8187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}