The ‘proper’ way to spread ideas through social media: exploring the affordances and constraints of different social media platforms as perceived by Italian activists

Social media have become a relevant arena for different forms of civic engagement and activism. This article focuses on the affordances and constraints of different social media platforms as they are perceived by Italian activists. Instead of focusing on single protest movements, or on single platforms, we adopt a media ecological approach and consider a variety of environments where people can choose to express protest‐related content. Our main goal is to explore whether, and how, the affordances and constraints of different social media platforms are perceived by users, and how such perceived differences are integrated in everyday social media activities. To this end, we combined in‐depth interviews with an adapted version of the cognitive walkthrough and thinking aloud techniques. Respondents reported that they act on social media platforms according to specific representations of what each platform ‘is’, and how it works. Such perceptions affect users’ protest‐related social media practices. Although they perceive major social media platforms filtering strategies and are aware, to different extents, of their commodified nature, they report continuing to use them for activism‐related communication, often adopting an instrumental approach.     

Fat in the Fire? Science,the News Media,and the “Obesity Epidemic”2

In recent years, the “obesity epidemic” has emerged as a putative public health crisis. This article examines the interconnected role of medical science and news reporting in shaping the way obesity is framed as a social problem. Drawing on a sample of scientific publications on weight and health, and press releases and news reporting on these publications, we compare and contrast social problem frames in medical science and news reporting. We find substantial overlap in science and news reporting, but the news media do dramatize more than the studies on which they are reporting and are more likely than the original science to highlight individual blame for weight. This is partly due to the news media’s tendency to report more heavily on the most alarmist and individual‐blaming scientific studies. We find some evidence that press releases also shape which articles receive media coverage and how they are framed.     

Measuring Social “Informatization”: A Factor Analytic Approach*

Some scholars have argued that we are witnessing a new social revolution—social “informatization”—that is comparable in scope and impact to that of the Industrial Revolu‐tion of the eighteenth century. Others have argued that it is a much more modest phase in the ongoing development of communication and information‐processing technology. While there are a number of reasons for disagreement about what exactly “informatization” is, and what its impact will be, two are paramount: (1) conceptual imprecision, and (2) issues of measurement. Using factor analysis, this study aims to clarify its conceptualization, and, then, rather than focusing on a single dimension (e.g., technological or economic), it will develop a comprehensive multiple‐indicator measure that captures the economic, technological, and size (stock) dimensions of social informatization. We find that this measure of social informatization strongly correlates with the general level of socioeconomic development. This result implies that social informatization may be a more continuous and cumulative process than a disjunctive or discontinuous “revolution.”     

The myth of the “data‐driven” society: Exploring the interactions of data interfaces,circulations, and abstractions

The prominence of data and data technologies in society, such as algorithms, social media, mobile technology, and artificial intelligence, have heralded numerous claims of the revolutionary potential of these systems. From public policy, to business management, to scientific research, a “data‐driven” society is apparently imminent—or currently happening—where “objective” and asocial data systems are believed to be comprehensively improving human life. Through a review of existing sociological literature, in this article, we critically examine the relationship between data and society and propose a new model for understanding these dynamics. “Using the concept of the informatic,” we argue the relationship between data and society can be understood as representing the interaction of several different social trends around data; that of data interfaces (that connect individuals to digital contexts), data circulation (trends in the movement and storage of data), and data abstraction (data manipulation practices). Data and data technologies are founded to be entwined and embedded in numerous social relationships, and while not all are fair and equitable relationships, there is ample evidence of the deeply social nature of data across many streams of social life. Our three‐part informatic framework allows these complex relationships to be understood in the social dynamic through which they are witnessed and experienced.     

“Reactive Ethnicity” or “Assimilation”? Statements,Arguments, and First Empirical Evidence for Labor Migrants in Germany

In this article, we scrutinize the often stated assumption that labor migrants in Germany turn away from integration and reaffirm their ethnicity by examining their identificational, cognitive, and social assimilation processes. Using data from the German Socio‐economic Panel, we present trend analyses of different hostland‐ and homeland‐related indicators for the past fifteen years. Results are presented separately for first‐ and second‐generation migrants from Turkey, the EU, and the former Yugoslavia. While not all assimilation‐related indicators change a great deal over time, they show at least a substantial difference between the first and the second generation. With regard to the homeland‐related indicators, the results by no means suggest that Turkish migrants try to compensate for their comparatively disadvantaged social status by revitalizing ethnic cultural habits or homeland‐oriented identifications.     

“Let's Talk about the Institution”: Same‐Sex Common‐Law Partners Negotiating Marriage Equality and Relationship Legitimacy

The 2005 Canada‐wide legalization of same‐sex marriage provided same‐sex couples with access to an institution they had previous been excluded from. Yet not all couples choose to marry. In this paper, we examine why this is the case, considering the role of personal, political, and historical factors. We draw on 22 interviews with people in common‐law same‐sex relationships in Toronto to examine how they understand their relationship within the new context of marriage equality. We find that participants feel they are held accountable to marriage as a default relationship legitimacy norm, indicating that this new institutional access is accompanied by a set of social expectations. Despite their awareness of the need to navigate a social context favoring marriage, participants individualize their relationship decisions as personal rather than political. Participants often contradict themselves as they articulate what marriage means to them, suggesting that, in this period of legal and social transition, people are negotiating multiple meanings, societal messages, and traditions when it comes to making sense of their relationship. We discuss the implications of these findings for LGBQ activism and the framing of sexuality‐based inequalities in Canadian society.     

“No Thanks,We’re Full”: Individual Characteristics,National Context,and Changing Attitudes Toward Immigration1

In this paper we examine how individual‐level characteristics and national context affect attitudes toward immigration. Although many previous studies have compared attitudes toward immigration across countries, little attention has been paid to how attitudes may be affected by changes within a country over time. We take advantage of seventeen national Canadian Gallup surveys to consider how differences in national economic conditions and changing immigration flows affect attitudes and changes in attitudes between 1975 and 2000. While the state of the national economy affects attitudes this is not the case for the rate of immigration. Rather than affecting some groups more than others the state of the economy has a relatively uniform effect across groups. Our results also show that far from being a continuum, being anti‐immigration and being pro‐immigration are qualitatively different. Interest, ideology, and the national economy affect anti‐immigration sentiments, but only ideology affects pro‐immigration sentiments.     

The Passion Paradigm: Professional Adherence to and Consequences of the Ideology of “Do What You Love”

If changes to the material structures of work have ushered us into a “new economy,” cultural scholars assume that there must also be changes to ideological structures of work. Extant scholarship on precarious professionals and on the role of emotions in 21^st‐century work find that passion may be an important cultural component of white‐collar work in the new economy. Using data from engineers, nurses, and graphic designers who work in either less precarious or more precarious contexts, this paper contributes the first emic definition of work passion as the experiences of attraction, enjoyment, motivation, and perseverance. Because I find overwhelming adherence and conceptual consistency among professionals in my sample, I argue that the pursuit of work passion constitutes a coherent ideology of work, which I call the passion paradigm. I argue that the passion paradigm is compatible with and protects structures of work in the new economy because its logic of hyper individualism motivates workers to work hard and work well as a practice of self‐care, shifting the locus of critique further away from institutions and more toward the self. Adherence to and institutionalization of the passion paradigm may have myriad consequences, opening up broad areas of future research.     

IS THE BUDGET DEFICIT “TOO LARGE?”

Yes. Specifically, we find that recent spending and taxing policies of the government–if continued–violate the government's intertemporal budget constraint. As a result, government spending must be reduced and/or tax revenues must be increased. These conclusions are based on tests of whether government spending and revenue are cointegrated. In addition to examining real spending and revenue, we also normalize these variables by real GNP and population. For a growing economy, these normalized measures are perhaps more pertinent. We also test and find support for the hypothesis that deficits have become a problem only in recent years.     

Social Engagement Leads 2‐Year‐Olds to Overestimate Others’ Knowledge

Previous research has found that young children recognize an adult as being acquainted with an object most readily when the child and adult have previously engaged socially with that object together. In the current study, we tested the hypothesis that such social engagement is so powerful that it can sometimes lead children to overestimate what has been shared. After having shared two objects with an adult in turn, 2‐year‐old children played with a third object the adult could not see. In three out of four conditions, the adult remained co‐present and/or communicated to the child while she played with the third object. Children falsely perceived the adult as being acquainted with the third object when she remained co‐present (whether or not she also communicated) but not when she clearly terminated the interaction by disengaging and leaving. These results suggest that when young children are engaged with a co‐present person they tend to overestimate the other’s knowledge.     

Are the Negative Effects of Divorce on Well‐Being Dependent on Marital Quality?

We test the so‐called escape hypothesis, which argues that for people from a poor marriage, a divorce has a less negative or even a positive effect on well‐being. In an analysis of two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (N =4,526), we find only limited evidence. When people divorce from a dissatisfactory or unfair marriage, they experience smaller increases in depression than when they divorce from a less dissatisfactory and less unfair marriage. For marital conflict, we find no interaction. Marital aggression seems to increase the negative effect of divorce, especially among women, suggesting that notions about the accumulation of problems after divorce need to be considered in combination with notions of escape.     

Statistical Estimation of the Casual Effect of Social Economy on Subjective Well-Being

It is well known that measuring the noneconomic outcomes produced by social economy organizations is fairly difficult and complex. Usually, social economy organizations feature participatory and democratic decision-making processes that help create social capital and relational goods, and they are interested in social integration; accordingly, they tend to create an organizational culture that encourages their workers to contribute to local communities. Therefore, the hypothesis that the increased activities of social economy organizations have a causal effect on the subjective well-being of the people living near those organizations is highly plausible. In this paper, we estimate the causal effect and attempt to test the hypothesis statistically by using a dataset called the “Seoul Survey,” which provides observations on the subjective well-being of 45,496 citizens living in Seoul and the size of social economy organizations. Controlling for variables at the district level and the appropriate socioeconomic characteristics of each individual in the dataset, we find that the size of social organizations is highly significant.     

Single Mothers “Do” Family

This paper explores how single mothers both incorporate others into family life (e.g., when they ask others to care for their children) and simultaneously “do families” in a manner that holds out a vision of a “traditional” family structure. Drawing on research with White, rural single mothers, the author explores the manner in which these women both endorse their children’s attachment to other caregivers and maintain boundaries around issues of discipline and attachment vis‐à‐vis these others. The author demonstrates that single mothers are willing to share this protected realm of family life with a new man (a fiancé or cohabiting boyfriend) as they pursue the goal of what has been called the “Standard North American Family.”     

“That's not Grassfed!” Identity Formation,Maintenance, and Co‐Optation in Oklahoma's Grassfed Livestock Movement

Using interview data from thirty‐one grassfed ranchers across Oklahoma, we adapt a culturally focused social movement framework to explore a regional grassfed livestock movement. Drawing on social movement and agrifood literature, we examine how grassfed actors forge a cohesive grassfed collective identity and how collective identity processes inspire engagement in forms of individualized, cultural protest. We address how collective identity politicizes movement actors, moving them to prioritize cultural issues of the grassfed movement and development of a grassfed activist identity, sometimes above other tangible, economic rewards. We also consider how grassfed ranchers are restricting the boundaries of movement membership in response to increased interest in alternative agricultural practices by new producers and by agrifood elites, and how they use market‐oriented tactics to enforce those boundaries. In doing so we draw parallels to conventionalization processes in the organic sector. By emphasizing the identity work of grassfed producer‐activists, we provide new perspectives on an emerging agricultural movement gaining traction in the US and abroad.     

“We Don't Call It a 'Circle'”: The Ethos of a Support Group

This paper contains the results of an eight month qualitative study of a group of young adults called a 'circle of friends', in Ontario, Canada. The 'circle of friends' concept has become increasingly popular in the field of disability in the last few years. In it, unrelated age peers are expected to befriend and support a person with a label. Utilizing participant observation and in-depth qualitative interviewing, the researcher gathered data which revealed a group ethos. The group attempted to make their activities seem as 'natural' and 'normal' as possible. It was also found that the 'circle' meant little or nothing to the supporters involved, but their friendships with the labelled person were quite important to them. The results of the study increase our understanding of how one such group operates, and the meaning participation has to those involved. As well, we can begin to build a theory about the relationship between friendship and support in such groups.     

The Boom‐Bust‐Recovery Cycle: Dynamics of Change in Community Satisfaction and Social Integration in Delta,Utah*

Abstract To better understand the long‐term effects of rapid boom growth, we reexamine four subjective indicators of community satisfaction and social integration in Delta, Utah, that were originally analyzed by Brown, Geertsen, and Krannich in 1989. With 24 years of longitudinal data, we find that within approximately a decade of the boom period three of the four indicators returned to or exceeded pre‐boom levels. We argue that we need to modify our theories and vocabulary regarding boomtowns to account for a “boom‐bust‐recovery cycle” that better takes into consideration the dynamic nature of communities and their residents and how they subjectively adjust to shifts in objective conditions.     

“We have to take these guys out”: Motivations for Assaulting Incarcerated Child Molesters

We know very little about how incarcerated men justify assaults against at‐risk inmates such as child molesters. For this article, we fill this gap in the literature by examining how men describe these assaults as a way to align their own violent behavior with more conventional mores. We find that formerly incarcerated men justify violence as a way to raise their own social status and promote cultural norms against child abuse. When inmates attack someone convicted of child molestation, they do so to punish him and provide a “service” to their community. Furthermore, they elevate their own social status and distance themselves from these offenders. Theoretically, this work broadens our understanding of verbal justifications for violent action.