politics

Recently, the Trump administration announced they would continue federal executions this coming year, despite the fact there had been no federal executions in nearly two decades. This announcement comes soon after a recent Supreme Court decision reversing Curtis Flower’s death penalty conviction for racial bias in jury selection by a Mississippi prosecutor. This is not the first case about racial bias that has made it to the Supreme Court (see: Furman v. Georgia, McCleskey v. Kemp), nor will it be the last. Social science research demonstrates racial disparities are common in death penalty cases, but racism is not the only factor.

Racial bias in jury decisions is one way black defendants are disadvantaged in capital punishment cases. Research by Mona Lynch and Craig Haney shows that white male jurors are more likely to sentence black defendants to death than women and jurors of color. These jurors often use emotion-based tactics to sway other jurors to their side — and to racially-biased outcomes.

• Mona Lynch and Craig Haney. 2011 “Mapping the Racial Bias of the White Male Capital Juror: Jury Composition and the ‘Empathic Divide’.” Law & Society Review 45(1): 69-101.
• Mona Lynch and Craig Haney. 2015. “Emotion, Authority, and Death: (Raced) Negotiations in Mock Capital Jury Deliberations.” Law & Social Inquiry 40(2): 377-405.

The race of the victim — perhaps more than the race of the defendant — plays an extremely important role in the probability a defendant will face the death penalty, and the likelihood the defendant will eventually be executed. Research finds that black and Hispanic death row inmates convicted of killing white victims face a higher likelihood they will be executed than others on death row. 

• David Jacobs, Zhenchao Qian, Jason T. Carmichael, Stephanie L. Kent. 2007. “Who Survives on Death Row? An Individual and Contextual Analysis.” American Sociological Review 72(4): 610-632.
• Michael L. Radelet. 1981. “Racial Characteristics and the Imposition of the Death Penalty.” American Sociological Review 46(6): 918-927.

Racist histories — like the presence of lynchings — as well as a higher percentage of blacks living in the area increase the number of death sentences. Beyond race, political factors, like public support for the death penalty and Republican strength, also influence yearly executions. Other factors include national level Republican strength, presidential elections that emphasize law and order, economic inequality, and higher murder rates. Further, the presence of liberal political values may explain the absence of death sentences. 

• David Jacobs and Stephanie L. Kent. 2007. “The Determinants of Executions since 1951: How Politics, Protests, Public Opinion, and Social Divisions Shape Capital Punishment.” Social Problems 54(3): 297-318.
• David Jacobs, Jason T. Carmichael, Stephanie L. Kent. 2005. “Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, and Death Sentences.” American Sociological Review 70(4): 656-677.

The death penalty’s role in deterrence is contested, but its racial impact is not. Using research on racial bias, social scientists have helped change death penalty policy in the United States. A report by Katherine Beckett and colleagues played a key role in Washington’s decision to abolish the death penalty in 2018. The report found that prosecutors were significantly more likely to file a death notice in a county with a relatively large black population, and juries were 4.5 times more likely to sentence black defendants to death than defendants of other races. 

You may also be interested in a previous article: Racial and Regional Differences in Support for the Death Penalty.”

For more information and data on the death penalty, check out the Death Penalty Information Center.

Originally posted February 16, 2017.

The narrow confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education has served as a catalyst for renewed conflict over public education in the United States. DeVos is a strong proponent of private education and charter schools, and this concerns supporters of a strong public school system. Social science comparing the two approaches shows distinct benefits of public schools and questions whether more choice in schooling really helps everyone.

The argument for private and charter schooling is based on the benefits of competition: when public schools don’t perform well, offering parents a broader set of choices forces them to compete and improve. While people often worry about public schools “failing,” it turns out that many schools with low standardized test scores actually do fine in terms of learning outcomes and whether learning persists over the summer.

• Douglas B. Downey, Paul T. von Hippel, Melanie Hughes. 2008. “Are ‘Failing’ Schools Really Failing? Using Seasonal Comparison to Evaluate School Effectiveness.” Sociology of Education. 81(3): 242 – 270

School choice can also reinforce inequality because people in poor and minority communities rarely have a similar set of schools to choose from. Many social scientists have found that the positive outcomes for students in charter schools are often limited to more privileged or affluent children.

• Patrick Denice, Betheny Gross. 2016. “Choice, Preferences, and Constraints: Evidence from Public School Applications in Denver.” Sociology of Education. 89(4): 300 – 320
• Peter M. Rich, Jennifer L. Jennings 2015. “Choice, Information, and Constrained Options: School Transfers in a Stratified Educational System” American Sociological Review 80(5): 1069-1098
• Mark Berends. 2015. Sociology and School Choice: What We Know After Two Decades of Charter Schools.  Annual Review of Sociology 41: 159-180

Regardless of the possible benefits of competition that supporters of private schools claim, public schools simply do better when they receive more funding — funding that could be at risk if funds and focus are shifted primarily to private schools.

• Diane Ravitch. 2013. Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. Vintage.
• Richard Arum. 1996. “Do Private Schools Force Public Schools to Compete?” American Sociological Review 61(1): 29–46.

For more, see a previous TROT on charter schools.

The Northern Triangle region of Central America — composed of the nations of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — is considered one of the most violent regions in the world outside of a war zone. In addition to a de facto state of war against highly organized and well-armed nonstate actors, extrajudicial killings by both the police and citizens of local gang members and criminals reveal both the ineffectiveness of state action in preventing violence and the desperation of local communities for security. Research on vigilante forms of justice in the region demonstrates how weak state institutions, like inadequate police forces, inefficient judicial systems, and corruption, can contribute to citizens taking the law into their own hands to provide justice and security in their communities.

Ineffective and inaccessible criminal justice institutions create a void that fosters mob action and vigilante justice. In Latin America, linchamientos, a form of collective vigilantism, reflect communities’ dissatisfaction with state authority and the desire to have autonomy in their own affairs. In rural Guatemala, for example, linchamientos have been considered a legacy of the nation’s brutal civil war (1960-1996). Today, they still function as a form of community justice against local criminals, due to the perceived corruption, inefficiency, and illegitimacy of official police forces.

• Francis Fukuyama. 2004. “The Imperative of State-Building.” Journal of Democracy 15(2): 17-31.
• Jim Handy. 2004. “Chicken Thieves, Witches, and Judges: Vigilante Justice and Customary Law in Guatemala.” Journal of Latin American Studies 36: 533-561.
• José Miguel Cruz. 2016. “State and Criminal Violence in Latin America.” Crime, Law and Social Change 66(4): 375-396. 
• José Miguel Cruz and Gema Santamaría. 2019. “Determinants of Support for Extralegal Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Latin American Research Review 54(1): 50–68.

Widespread political problems generate conditions of ‘statelessness’ in which citizens are more likely to ignore legal avenues of conflict resolution to engage in violent “self‐help.” In Guatemala and Honduras, for instance, conflicts over land have fostered a continuous cycle of violence between peasants and elites. State ineffectiveness not only incentivises citizens to take justice into their own hands, but also enables the expansion of private security, the militarization of police forces, and even alliances between vigilante groups and the state’s armies. In Mexico, when the police have fallen short of providing adequate security in the last decade, organized vigilante groups have battled powerful drug cartels. The Mexican state has assimilated these groups as a way to both expand the fight against crime and keep vigilantes under its control. 

• Teresa Caldeira. 2012. “Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation.”  Pp. 419-427 in The Urban Sociology Reader. Routledge.
• Amy E. Nivette. 2016. “Institutional Ineffectiveness, Illegitimacy, and Public Support for Vigilantism in Latin America.” Criminology 54(1): 142-175.
• Gema Santamaría. 2015. “Drugs, Gangs and Vigilantes: How to Tackle the New Breeds of Mexican Armed Violence.” Estudios Internacionales 181: 115-134.

In a number of cases in Latin America, the inability of states to provide social order, security, and justice has led citizens to take up arms and attempt to do it themselves. Just as vigilante justice can challenge the power of the state and support for democratic governance, however, confidence in law enforcement can strengthen democracy by reducing the need for extralegal justice. 

• Daniel Zizumbo-Colunga. 2017. “Community, Authorities, and Support for Vigilantism: Experimental Evidence.” Political Behavior 39: 989-1015.

A historic inquiry into missing and murdered women in Canada has determined that the nation committed genocide against Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people. The violence stems from a long history of colonial and patriarchal violence, according to the report’s authors. Moreover, they suggest that “persistent and deliberate human and Indigenous rights violations and abuses are the root cause behind Canada’s staggering rates of violence” still today. Recent sociological research shows that the heightened risk of violence faced by Indigenous women in Canada is also deeply entwined with social stigmatization, poverty, and the lingering impacts of reservations on housing and schools.

With racism and colonization, Indigenous women in Canada have long been labelled as promiscuous, immoral, and sexually available. Today, these stereotypes contribute to victim-blaming and a lack of attention to cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people. More specifically, law enforcement regularly dismisses reports of missing women and girls as runaways or partiers and, with the media, use these stereotypes to blame these women for making bad choices that contribute to their own victimization.

• Paulina Garía-Del Moral. 2018. “The Murders of Indigenous Women in Canada as Feminicides: Toward a Decolonial Intersectional Reconceptualization of Femicide.” Signs 43(4): 929–954.

Yet many women who hitchhike
do so for social and material reasons. Ever since the creation of reservations, these women face barriers to transportation and mobility. Such challenges are only exacerbated by poverty and homelessness. For Indigenous women and girls in other words, hitchhiking a logical, even necessary form of travel.

• Katherine Morton. 2016. “Hitchhiking and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Billboards on the Highway of Tears.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 41(3): 299-326.

Then, there is also the
problem of violence committed by law enforcement officers themselves. Even when publicized (as one egregious such case from 2011 was) police officers rarely face prosecution — further reinforcing the idea that Indigenous women and girls can be exploited with impunity. These abuses of power are part of systemic injustices in the criminal justice system, from denial of medical care while incarcerated to jury acquittals in murder trials. 

• Pamela Palmater. 2016. “Shining Light on the Dark Places: Addressing Police Racism and Sexualized Violence against Indigenous Women and Girls in the National Inquiry.” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 31(1): i-vii.
• Julie Kayes. 2016. “Reconciliation in the Context of Settler‐Colonial Gender Violence: ‘How Do We Reconcile with an Abuser?’” Canadian Review of Sociology 53(4).
• Josephine L. Savarese. 2017. “Challenging Colonial Norms and Attending to Presencing in Stories of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 29(1): 157-181.

Prime Minister Trudeau has assured the Canadian public that his government will take action in response to this report. But with a history of abuse and broken promises, it should not be surprising that many Indigenous people are skeptical that anything will really change.

For in-depth reporting on more of these cases, listen to the CBC podcast, Missing & Murdered.

Originally published on June 29, 2018.

In the United States, tension between religious institutions and the LGBT community persists, even after the legalization of same-sex marriage. While some faith groups are becoming open and affirming, the recent Supreme Court decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and stories of LGBTQIA+ exclusion at religiously-affiliated institutions like Hope College and Wheaton College show continued conflict between religion and sexuality, even in an era when Americans have become more accepting of same-sex relationships. Social science research shows that these challenges continue, but it also demonstrates how people don’t always have to choose between faith and being faithful to who they are.

Religious institutions are clearly changing. Even churches without formal welcoming statements often accept LGBT members, sometimes in contrast to the policies of their national organizations. At the same time, queer students are both learning to navigate their identities on religious campuses, and engaging in direct activism to create more welcoming and inclusive organizations.

• Andrew L. Whitehead. 2018. “Institutionalized Norms, Practical Organizational Activity, and Loose Coupling: Inclusive Congregations’ Responses to Homosexuality.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 56(4): 820–35.
• Jonathan S. Coley. 2018. Gay on God’s Campus: Mobilizing for LGBT Equality at Christian Colleges and Universities. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Robbee Wedow, Landon Schnabel, Lindsey K. D. Wedow, and Mary Ellen Konieczny. 2017. “‘I’m Gay and I’m Catholic’: Negotiating Two Complex Identities at a Catholic University.” Sociology of Religion 78(3): 289–317.

Some people who are queer and religious experience tension between their identities, especially when they feel family members, faith leaders, or friends want them to choose one or the other. But other people work out all kinds of ways to be both religious and queer at the same time, from different doctrinal interpretations to forging their own communities.

• Tanya Erzen. 2006. Straight to Jesus : Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Melissa M. Wilcox. 2009. Queer Women and Religious Individualism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Dervla Sara Shannahan. 2009. “Sexual Ethics, Marriage, and Sexual Autonomy: The Landscapes for Muslimat and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Muslims.” Contemporary Islam 3(1): 59–78.

“Howzat?”
“Kaaaaach it!”
“Bowled ‘im!”
“Wadda wrong’un!”

Americans may scratch their heads at these expressions, but a large body of international sports fans relishes those words. England and Wales are currently hosting the Cricket World Cup, the 12th edition of the tournament that began in 1975; ten national teams who have made it past qualifiers are slogging it out to lift the trophy. Social scientists around the world have studied cricket — as with many sports, a social science perspective on cricket shows that the pitch and stumps reside at a complex intersection of globalization, postcolonialism, boundaries, and identity.

Cricket is a global sport based on institutional and organizational processes as well as broader patterns of cultural and national identity. The centuries-old sport started in the United Kingdom and has since spread into a worldwide, modernized phenomenon, complete with fireworks, cheerleaders, and sophisticated analytics. An international network of cricketing organizations, athletes, broadcasting companies, sponsors, and state actors bring the game to its large, global audience.

• Jason Kaufman and Orlando Patterson. 2005. “Cross-National Cultural Diffusion: The Global Spread of Cricket.” American Sociological Review 70(1): 82-110

• Jon Gemmell and Boria Majumdar. 2007. Cricket, Race and the 2007 World Cup. CRC Press.
• Devra Waldman and Brian Wilson. 2017. “Behind the Scenes of Sport for Development: Perspectives of Executives of Multinational Sport Organizations.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 52(6): 651-674.

In several countries, cricket’s growth has been shaped by the dilemmas, challenges, and sticky wickets of decolonization. In these countries, cricket has played an important role in building new cultural and national identities; social scientists explain that the popularization of cricket is both a cause and consequence of broader change. South Asian nations today are key players and decision-makers in the international cricketing world, which reverse-sweeps conventional logic that white countries hold greater global power.

• Boria Majumdar. 2007. “Nationalist Romance to Postcolonial Sport: Cricket in 2006 India.” Sport in Society 10(1): 88-100.
• Colin Agur. 2013. “A Foreign Field No Longer: India, the IPL, and the Global Business of Cricket.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 48(5): 541-556.
• Kaushik Bandyopadhyay. 2013. “Cricket as Nationalist Obsession: ICC World Cup 2011 and Bangladesh as a Host Nation.” Sport in Society 16(1): 19-32.

The cricket field can also tell us a lot about race, belonging, and hierarchy. A classic in the social science of sport, C.L.R. James’ Beyond the Boundary uses his tales playing cricket to highlight status, exclusion, prejudice, and inequality within a social world shaped by racism, colonialism, and resistance. For example, he describes how team selection in cricket was shaped by skin-color rather than skill. Today, James’ ideas still influence scholars who study cricket as relevant to race, group boundaries, and social movements. Some researchers have studied anti-racist activism and the pursuit of equitable cricket representation in countries grappling with racial inequality. Others have shown that cricket offers an avenue of legitimization for marginalized and underrepresented groups in such nations.

• Goolam Vahed. 2001.”‘What Do They Know of Cricket Who Only Cricket Know?’: Transformation in South African Cricket, 1990-2000.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport (36)3: 319-336.
• Karen Farquharson and Timothy Marjoribanks. 2006. “Representing Australia: Race, the Media and Cricket.” Journal of Sociology 42(1): 25-41.
• Stephen Wagg. 2007. “‘To Be an Englishman’: Nation, Ethnicity and English Cricket in the Global Age.” Sport in Society 10(1): 11-32.
• Thomas Fletcher and Thomas Walle. 2014. “Negotiating Their Right to Play: Asian-specific Cricket Teams and Leagues in the UK and Norway.” Identities 22(2): 230-246.

Unfortunately, many issues of exclusion and marginalization still exist in the cricketing world today, both within and across different nations. As cricket continues to grow, globalize, and gather, such issues will hopefully be firmly driven outta here from the middle of the bat.

For an explanation of cricket terms, visit this ESPN glossary.

Research on “environmental racism” discusses how non-white communities more frequently reside in areas that are environmentally unclean, polluted, or hazardous — often a direct consequence of other racial inequalities. We at The SocietyPages have written about this phenomenon before, but recent research shows that the consequences of climate change have added new dimensions to these dynamics.

Climate change and shifting weather patterns pose issues at large, but racial minorities are more likely to bear the brunt of adverse effects related to climate change. As existing racial inequalities are often linked to neighborhood and place, climate change threatens those who are already at risk of adverse health outcomes due to discrepancies in income, education, and more. In essence, the impacts of climate change are more likely to be felt among poorer, non-white communities.

• Raoul S. Liévanos. 2017. “Sociospatial Dimensions of Water Injustice: The Distribution of Surface Water Toxic Releases in California’s Bay-Delta.” Sociological Perspectives 60(3): 575-599.

• Bongki Woo, Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz, Victoria Sass, Kyle Crowder, Samantha Teixeira, and David T. Takeuchi. 2019. “Residential Segregation and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Ambient Air Pollution.”Race and Social Problems 11(1): 60-67.

• Lauren Richter. 2018. “Constructing Insignificance: Critical Race Perspectives on Institutional Failure in Environmental Justice Communities.” Environmental Sociology 4(1): 107-121.

• John Hannigan. 2017. “Toward a Sociology of Oceans.” Canadian Review of Sociology 54(1): 8-27.

Internationally, climate change has greatly impacted farming, fishing, and other economic activities in developing countries. This has particularly affected poorer, disadvantaged communities in non-white countries, that are more at risk for weakening agricultural yields and devastating super-storms linked to climate change. Researchers now use terms like, “environmental migration” or “climate change induced migration,” to capture the ways migration becomes the best adaptive strategy to the changing climate. Unfortunately, the places they move to are sometimes far from welcoming; racism and prejudice often shape their new lives after climate change induced migration.

• Robert McLeman, Jeanette Schade, and Thomas Faist, eds. 2016.Environment, Migration, and Inequality. Springer.

• Chris Methmann and Angela Oeis. 2015. “From ‘Fearing’ to ‘Empowering’ Climate Refugees: Governing Climate-induced Migration in the Name of Resilience.” Security Dialogue 46(1): 51-68.

• Michael Brzoska and Christian Frohlich. 2016. “Climate Change, Migration and Violent Conflict: Vulnerabilities, Pathways and Adaptation Strategies.” Migration and Development 5(2): 190-210.

Climate change thus poses greater challenges for poorer, non-white communities both in the United States and globally. As adverse environmental factors continue, it is important to think about how the intersection of social and natural forces “turns up the heat” on racial inequality.

Elizabeth Warren released an ambitious plan for free college and student loan relief on April 22.  Among a Democratic primary field that is increasingly embracing free college as the standard, Warren’s plan stood out for including $50,000 of debt relief for all individuals with current student debt, expanding what we mean by the cost of attendance, creating a fund for HBCUs, and (eventually) banning for-profit colleges from receiving federal funds. The plan also stood out in another way: centering sociological, justice-oriented research. Inequality and education are topics with a lot of good work from sociologists, but it is worth highlighting three sociologists who influenced Warren’s proposal: Louise Seamster, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and Sara Goldrick-Rab.

Warren notes that student loan debt is a racial equality issue. She specifically cites analysis done by a team at Brandeis University, including sociologist Louise Seamster, that finds that households with lower levels of education and families of color benefit more from Warren’s plan. Dr. Seamster’s recent article in Contexts, “Black Debt, White Debt,” demonstrates how debt often functions differently for black and white families. White Americans can take advantage of forms of debt like home mortgages, student loans, and business loans that later result in increased wealth and can be used to establish creditworthiness for future financial interactions. In contrast, municipals fines and fees or predatory student loans are more likely to be carried by black Americans. These forms of debt have high interest rates, poor terms, and hurt future wealth and creditworthiness more than they help.

• Louise Seamster. 2019. “Black Debt, White Debt.” Contexts 18(1): 30–35.

• Louise Seamster and Raphaël Charron-Chénier. 2017. “Predatory Inclusion and Education Debt: Rethinking the Racial Wealth Gap.” Social Currents 4(3): 199–207.

Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Lower Ed also highlighted disparate impacts of student loan debt on black Americans, as well as the centrality of inequality for the American economy and the effects of for-profit colleges. Her work demonstrates how for-profit colleges target low-income students and students of color Dr. Cottom has also testified in front of Congress on for-profit colleges and the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

• Tressie McMillan Cottom. 2017. Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy. New York: The New Press.

Warren’s free-college-for-all position leans heavily on researchers such as Sara Goldrick-Rab, one of the most active scholars and advocates for low-income college students. Dr. Goldrick-Rab advocates for meeting the basic needs of students as they pursue their education, especially in recognizing the costs beyond tuition that students face. Paying the Price demonstrates how it is money, not will or desire, that gets in the way of students on financial aid trying to finish a degree.

• Sara Goldrick-Rab. 2016. Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Louise Seamster, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and Sara Goldrick-Rab are exemplars of how sociological research can shape public policy and of how research and activism can push for a more equitable world.

This post was created in collaboration with the Minnesota Journalism Center.

Recent estimates from the International Labor Organization (ILO) and Walk Free Foundation found that more than 40 million people are in modern slavery. The ILO has valued human trafficking as a $150 billion industry, with $99 billion coming from commercial sexual exploitation. Prostitution and trafficking are both illegal in America (except for several counties in the state of Nevada where prostitution is legal), but the two terms are often conflated. With regard to terminology: When one is coerced or forced into selling themselves for sex, it is a form of trafficking, and those who enter the regulated sex industry voluntarily are deemed sex workers.

The “normalization” of sex work worldwide is still in flux. Scholars divide the international community into two camps with regard to this issue: abolitionist feminists, who believe both voluntary and involuntary prostitution and sex work is exploitative; and human rights feminists, who de-link prostitution/sex work and trafficking by arguing that some adult women and men are in prostitution/sex work voluntarily and should not be considered victims, and only those who are forced or coerced to be prostitutes or sex workers should be considered trafficking victims.

• Orlando Patterson and Xiaolin Zhuo. 2018. “Modern Trafficking, Slavery, and Other Forms of Servitude.” Annual Review of Sociology 44(1): 407-439.
• Noël Bridget Busch-Armendariz, Maura Nsonwu, and Laurie Cook Heffron (Eds.). 2017. Human Trafficking: Applying Research, Theory, and Case Studies. Los Angeles: SAGE.
• Mark P. Lagon. 2017. “Reflections on Global Justice and American Exceptionalism.” World Affairs 180(1): 42–63.
• Amy Farrell and Shea Cronin. 2015. “Policing Prostitution in an Era of Human Trafficking  Enforcement.” Crime, Law and Social Change 64(4–5): 211–228.
• Elizabeth Bernstein. 2010. “Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Sex, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary Antitrafficking Campaigns.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 36(1): 45–71.

Scholars demonstrate that NGO coverage of trafficking often portrays “ideal victim” and “ideal perpetrator” stereotypes that don’t always reflect the truth about who is subject to trafficking worldwide. Further, journalistic coverage of trafficking is often written through the lens of “episodic” frames that provide personal narratives but lack trend statistics, quotes from experts, or social forces at play in perpetuating demand for trafficking worldwide.

• Meghan Sobel, Barbara Friedman and Anne Johnston. 2017. “Sex Trafficking as a News Story: Evolving Structure and Reporting Strategies.” Journal of Human Trafficking: 1–17.
• Erin O’Brien. 2016. “Human Trafficking Heroes and Villains: Representing the Problem in Anti-Trafficking Awareness Campaigns.” Social & Legal Studies 25(2): 205–224.
• Girish J. Gulati. 2011. “News Frames and Story Triggers in the Media’s Coverage of Human Trafficking.” Human Rights Review, 12(3): 363–379.

As anti-trafficking campaigns evolve in the Digital Age, technology also plays an integral role in efforts to curb demand and address supply that flows through social media networks and the Internet. Initiatives — including research about online demand for sex and working partnerships between social scientists, law enforcement, and anti-trafficking NGOs — are shaping the future of anti-trafficking efforts worldwide.

• Artur Dubrawski, Kyle Miller, Matthew Barnes, Benedikt Boecking and Emily Kennedy. 2015. “Leveraging Publicly Available Data to Discern Patterns of Human-Trafficking Activity.” Journal of Human Trafficking 1(1): 65–85.
• Jennifer Lynne Musto and danah boyd. 2014. “The Trafficking-Technology Nexus.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 21(3): 461–483.
• Mitali Thakor and danah boyd. 2013. “Networked Trafficking: Reflections on Technology and the Anti-trafficking Movement.” Dialectical Anthropology 37(2): 277–290.

This post was created in collaboration with the Minnesota Journalism Center.

The landscape of journalism is changing every day. The Pew Research Center reported that newspaper newsroom employees declined by 45% between 2008 and 2017, and Nieman Lab argues that newsrooms are in the midst of a “do-or-die moment.” As traditional newsrooms lose hundreds of reporters and editors annually, content creators including WikiLeaks and Deadspin are coming alongside legacy media outlets including CNN, the BBC, and The New York Times to provide information to the public. All of these players publish content online in a journalistic fashion, raising the question of what journalism is as a profession.

In the midst of a shrinking workforce, scholars are starting to pay attention to “interlopers” and “intralopers:” Interlopers are actors or institutions who may consider the work they do to be part of news media, though they do not always define themselves as journalists; web analytics companies are one current example. Intralopers are similar to interlopers, but instead work from within news organizations as specialists in digital and social media and often produce emerging technology meant to complement journalists’ work. Both play increasingly key roles in journalistic spaces.

• Avery E. Holton and Valerie Belair-Gagnon. 2018. “Strangers to the Game? Interlopers, Intralopers, and Shifting News Production.” Media and Communication 6(4): 70–78.
• Scott A. Eldridge, II. 2018. Online Journalism from the Periphery: Interloper Media and the Journalistic Field. London: Routledge.

Machines and software packages are beginning to play a more central role in news gathering, news selection, news writing, news editing, and news distribution in newsrooms worldwide. Drones are one example of machines occupying space traditionally held by journalistic actors. 2016 was a turning point for the institutionalization of drones in newsrooms in the United States, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) amended aviation regulations to allow for widespread experimentation with drones in American journalism. Since that date, journalists from outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post have produced compelling stories, photos and videos but have also go through a comprehensive federal certification process (Columbia Journalism Review recently wrote about this phenomenon).

• Shangyuan Wu, Edson C. Tandoc Jr., and Charles T. Salmon. 2018. “Journalism Reconfigured.” Journalism Studies: 1–18.
• Astrid Gynnild. 2014. “The Robot Eye Witness.” Digital Journalism 2(3): 334–343.

Analytics and metrics also play a key role in newsrooms nationwide. However, journalists have varying opinions of how influential their role is in their daily routines, with some arguing that analytics challenge journalists’ authority to decide which stories are newsworthy.

• Valerie Belair-Gagnon and Avery E. Holton. 2018. “Boundary Work, Interloper Media, And Analytics In Newsrooms.” Digital Journalism 6(4): 492–508.
• Edson C. Tandoc Jr. 2014. “Journalism is Twerking? How Web Analytics is Changing the Process of Gatekeeping.” New Media & Society 16(4): 559–575.
• Rodrigo Zamith. 2018. “Quantified Audiences in News Production.” Digital Journalism 6(4): 418–435.

Beyond analytics and metrics, journalists and technologists often collaborate with each other on a regular basis to create open-source software programs. One example is “hackathons” — events where coders and journalists come together to find solutions to journalistic problems in the interest of creating a brighter future for news outlets worldwide.

• Jan Lauren Boyles. 2017. “Laboratories for News? Experimenting with Journalism Hackathons.” Journalism: 1–17.

• Seth C. Lewis and Nikki Usher. 2014. “Code, Collaboration, And The Future Of Journalism.” Digital Journalism 2(3): 383–393.