Some Trends in the Prestige of U.S. Ph.D. Programs in Sociology, 1976–2011

The prestige ranks of 110 U.S. Ph.D. programs in Sociology are examined at seven times between 1976 and 2011. Linear latent growth curve models are fitted to test differences between public and private institutions, institutions located in the four major census regions, and between three historically strong communities (the Ivy League, Big-10, and Pac-10) and others. The relative prestige ranks display considerable stability, totaling 90 % of the variance between, and 10 % of the variance within programs. Differences between the three historically high-prestige communities and others are more important than geographic or public/private distinctions. The Big-10 institutions have declined markedly in relative prestige, as has the mean prestige rank of institutions in the Midwest generally. Ivy and other Eastern schools have gained modestly; Western, but not Pac-10, schools have also gained, while schools in the South are little changed. Overall, public institutions have shown gains relative to private during the period.     

The popularity and virality of political social media: hashtags,mentions, and links predict likes and retweets of 2016 U.S. presidential nominees’ tweets

What political social media messages resonate and get shared? We analyzed the first three months of tweets from Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump since winning their respective nominations and found that messages containing #hashtags, @usermentions, or http://www.websitelinks.com decreased likes and retweets. While these features are intended to increase audience exposure, their presence concurrently increases disfluency – the subjective experience of difficulty associated with cognition. These features make the message less visually clear (perceptual disfluency) and require the translation of symbols and text strings into meaning (orthographic disfluency). Features that improved processing fluency (i.e. embedded images) increased interactions. These findings underscore the importance of fluency in brief word-of-mouth transmissions and suggest strategies for social media users seeking to influence the voting public.     

Chinese, U.S. Women Yearn for Exchange and Understanding

ONE September morning in 1994 laughter was heard coming from a meeting room at the China Women's Travel Service. Here, a friendly forum was being held between a group of tourists from Leadership America and Chinese women     

Understanding Ivy Lee's declaration of principles: U.S. newspaper and magazine coverage of publicity and press agentry, 1865–1904

Ivy Lee's 1905 “Declaration of Principles” has been called the “starting point of modern public relations,” but what did it mean in the context of his time? Analysis of press discussion finds that, while press agentry was connected to the circus and theater, “corporate publicity” was linked to Theodore Roosevelt's call for the release of financial information in the public interest. The paper confirms that scholars do not have a clear understanding of public relations history and identifies areas for further research.     

Mapping the City: Innovation and Continuity in the Chicago School of Sociology, 1920–1934

This paper examines the historical origins and theoretical underpinnings of the maps of the city of Chicago produced by sociologists at the University of Chicago between 1920 and 1934. I argue that the three mapping schemes produced in those years—the concentric zone map of The City (1925), the base map of 75 community areas and the census tract maps published in three volumes of Census Data of the City of Chicago (1920, 1930, 1934)—draw upon distinct historical antecedents and have distinct theoretical implications. The first scheme exhibits the strong influence of Johann Heinrich von Thünen’s location theory and maps produced by early Chicago city boosters, the second most clearly exhibits the influence of the Social Survey Movement and of pragmatist philosophy and the third, the influence of the financial and governmental interests of the organizations that made up the Chicago Census Committee. Literature on early urban sociology and mapping in Chicago has hitherto not adequately differentiated these three mapping schemes or problematized the implications of their differences for our understanding of the theoretical commitments of the “Chicago School.”