The title is click-bait. If you follow me on That Social Media site you know two things about me: I love Dolly Parton and I am mad for Hallmark Christmas movies. As the former goes without saying, I will say a bit more about latter. Hallmark Christmas movies are a genre. They are a phenomenon.Read More “Deviance and Hallmark Christmas Movies”

This semester I taught the first digital sociology capstone course in our Master’s of Digital Sociology program. In all of my classes I use the final class session to “zoom” back out to the big picture of why we have been talking about what we have talked about all semester. This course got the sameRead More “Wrapping Up My Digital Sociology Seminar”

I couldn’t care less about the substance of the most recent round of words between Cornel West and Ta-Nehisi Coates. If you need or want to catch-up you can do so here. The gist is West did a drive-by on the title reference in Coates’ latest book, a collection of essays. There was a Twitter slam.Read More “Round 3 of West and TNC”

Trust Black women! Do not expect Black women to save you!   Which is it?   This will make no sense to you if you are not in the social media communities on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr where these conversations mostly unfold. Generally, Black women have created entire discursive communities online and offline during theRead More “Trust Black Women?”

For lots of reasons people frequently ask me for my CV. I almost never have the right/latest version available when they do. I have read all the blogs and advice about updating your CV immediately after every accomplishment. I think those people are mutants. I simply cannot manage it. Previously I have hired graduate students toRead More “Who Has Time? Updates and CV”

I spent the last ten to fifteen years of my life figuring out what is wrong with higher education. I think I have a handle on that part. The causation is hard to pin down precisely but the story roughly goes: macro-economic change changes the value of higher education credentials as information technologies and financializationRead More “The Black Artisans Scholarship”

President Trump has turned the intellectual elite on its head. Depending on one’s disposition, public intellectuals have assigned blame (or credit) for the bombastic blowhard President-who-would-be-king to: poor whites, upper class whites, the Hispanic voters who did not turn out, the Black voters who did not turn out more, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Berniebros, effeteRead More “Trump: The Intersectional President”

I argued that digital sociology, as a distinct subfield, needs to not only have a what but a why. It also needs a how. As I see it, digital sociology will: observe macro changes in the digital society observe changes in institutions that shape the digital society observe and explain the effect of macro and institutionalRead More “How Digital Sociology?”

Any attempt at knowledge production has to answer the basic question of what it is. But, before long, it must also address the question of why it is. As early as the 1990s sociologists were asking how to study the way internet technologies were clearly changing societies. The term digital sociology does not make anRead More “Why Is Digital Sociology?”