I suppose it is always a difficult time to teach sociology. The past few months have certainly been such a time. There seems to be a new video of police brutality and extrajudicial murder of mostly black men and women every week. People are actually debating if there is some essential genetic race feeling (which,Read More “Doing Sociology With New Sociologists”
Tag Archives: Digital Sociologies
Credit Scores, Life Chances, and Algorithms
There’s a great article in The Nation this week about social media and ad hoc credit scoring. Can Facebook assign you a score you don’t know about but that determines your life chances? Traditional credit scores like your FICO or your Beacon score can determine your life chances. By life chances, we generally mean howRead More “Credit Scores, Life Chances, and Algorithms”
Everything But The Burden: Publics, Public Scholarship, And Institutions
Institutions are inherently conservative. They are built to last. One way that institutions last is by diffusing threats to the status quo across org charts, rules, forms, email chains and meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. That is why it is ridiculous to expect college institutions to be radical. But, that is the claim thrownRead More “Everything But The Burden: Publics, Public Scholarship, And Institutions”
Fresh Off The [Digital] Presses
My latest paper is out with ADA: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology. This paper began with a discussion on Twitter, transitioned to a blog post here, morphed into an empirical question in comment sections and finally became what it is presently, i.e. a paper about academic capitalism + attention economies + structural marginality.Read More “Fresh Off The [Digital] Presses”
Forced Context Collapse or The Right to Hide in Plain Sight
There is a whole brand of (mostly digital) journalism that culls social media content for stories. We can argue about the extent to which that is reporting as opposed to search engine optimization but it is fairly safe to say that this is a set of activities happening in the media domain. Almost from theRead More “Forced Context Collapse or The Right to Hide in Plain Sight”
Creating #Havoc at #VCUSOCY
It may surprise you to learn that I live a great deal of my life off-line. I know, I know, hear me out on this fantastical possibility. Recently, I’ve been offline meeting some of the most brilliant scholars across the country and I am beyond pleased to say that I have found a home amongRead More “Creating #Havoc at #VCUSOCY”
When White Men Love Black Women on TV
With Olivia and Fitz and Annalise and Sam it has been noted that there’s a mainstream pop culture revolution happening in the representation of white men in relationships with black women. Has post-racial dating finally trickled down to black women? Are younger people less hung-up on race and more accepting of interracial couples in media?Read More “When White Men Love Black Women on TV”
Racists Getting Fired: The Sins of Whiteness on Social Media
Having a race is one long math equation. When you speak well and choose the right fork you can be a credit to “your race”. And so, of course, there must be actions that are a debit – a detriment – to one’s race. The list there is long. One can use profanity, wear designerRead More “Racists Getting Fired: The Sins of Whiteness on Social Media”
The Rebirth of Cool: Trust, Tech, and Dystopias
I did a cool thing today. I MOOC’d. That is, I joined Justin Reich’s massive open online course “Massive: The Future of Learning at Scale“. Justin is a guru at Harvard’s EdX and the class was being hosted on MIT’s “unHangout” platform. I don’t know exactly where the course is housed. I visited a classRead More “The Rebirth of Cool: Trust, Tech, and Dystopias”
Thoughts on a Theory: New Media and Representation
This post has two antecedents, one more ignoble than the other. On one side, I half-joked on Twitter that I make my friends listen to my half-formed theories on new/legacy/social media organizations, race, class, gender, and tweefing (i.e. twitter + beefing or the more formal “conflicts that originate on or encompass a social media platform”).Read More “Thoughts on a Theory: New Media and Representation”