fantastic piece from @marionf.bsky.social and @kjhealy.co that provides tools for thinking about surveillance, knowledge, identity, and much more
it links pressing issues, from DOGE to AI cheating, that demonstrate how our Faustian bargain with infinite data and infinite content is playing out
Screenshot of an event at ASA. The event information is: Sun, August 10, 12:00 to 1:30pm, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Concourse Level/Bronze, Wrigley The description reads: Public Sociology and Engaged Scholarship Part II examines the possibilities and challenges of sociological practice that is deeply engaged with social movements, policy debates, and struggles for justice. The panel explores the ethical dilemmas, political risks, and methodological innovations that come with working in collaboration with marginalized communities and advocating for structural change. Presenters reflect on the tensions between academic autonomy and activist commitments, the responsibilities of researchers in politically hostile environments,and the role of participatory methods in redistributing power in the research process. Together, these papers push the boundaries of what it means to practice sociology in ways that are both intellectually rigorous and socially transformative.
hello #ASA2025! K. Schilt and I will be talking about research ethics, vulnerable populations, and legal attempts to access confidential data on Sunday during this great and wide-ranging paper session! it will be...relevant to "contemporary issues" facing our discipline. also PS I'm at ASA say hi :)
I think that would be super useful!
Epstein has long been a test on cognitive dissonance for supporters, some elaborate decoding around Trump's less-than-critical remarks, so I'd be interested in how you're thinking about its importance in this moment--but it might take a minute to see how it's being integrated by diff factions
DISASTROUS. This means they will send people to horrific situations with no due process — in direct violation of promises the Solicitor General made to the Court in previous cases.
This greenlights sending people to be enslaved in Libya or tortured in any random foreign country.
3) prevents Americans who protested from feeling like they have engaged in politics. For all the criticism of voter apathy and "audience democracy," it's clear that the Dem establishment and news media have no way of incorporating mass popular action/demands/messaging into a movement or narrative.
The day after, essentially no (@nytimes.com @npr.org) or minimal (@apnews.com @cnn.com) front page coverage of one of the largest protests in US history.
This: 1) cedes narrative control to RW "riot" narratives; 2) makes the military parade the leading edge of Trump-obsessed media, and...
But, if we want to be future-looking, we can't *just* think about the interface: LLMs imply a relationship to knowledge that goes beyond the chatbot UI. What that means for how we understand, work, communicate, and believe are big, open-ended questions.
bsky.app/profile/mike...
I agree that an analysis of "the interface" or UX is necessary, much like how people got different "feels" for the algorithms of TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, etc., there are different epistemologies implied by the way one "reads" technology.
bsky.app/profile/pete...
Oracular, protagonistic ideas espoused by chatbots are reminiscent of doomsday cult beliefs. Theorists have long argued that such "cults" rely on members' social support: echo chambers + cognitive dissonance. But not so for chatbots! It's a dissonance chamber and the "social" is a technical trick.
Those are usually more niche, and for field "insiders," but I think there are increasing venues for quasi-public, research-lite work (HKS MisinfoReview, The Conversation, Slate, etc.) Still, having your own space (as I'm thinking about it) might be a way to engage a smaller, more intentional public.
This is something I've been thinking about doing as well, mostly as a motivation to practice writing and have a dialogue on contemporary issues through my research lens. Depending on the field, there are also "blog-like" channels (for sociology, see scatter.wordpress.com or ethnomarginalia.com)
this is the same kind of magical thinking that we see with AI and generally techno utopianism
why have proactive, preventative initiatives if we have magic?
which is exceptionally absurd when they are gutting the only funding that could even hypothetically "reanimate" the dead
ah yes what's that famous quotation?
something about "millionaires see themselves as temporarily embarrassed coal miners"
Second, Hochschild's recent book introduces the "four-moment anti-shame ritual." In this argument, it is the retaliation against Trump (his "shaming") that binds him to supporters. Provocations, like retaliatory tariffs, are viewed as cruel and unjust punishment, which allows Trump to push back.
FOX, OANN, etc. lend support to the idea that, say, government is inefficient or the EU is looting US prosperity. This fiction convinces MAGA. Trump acts on the fictions of inefficiency/theft, then takes steps which actually produce inefficiency and monetary retaliation, which confirms his story.
Two concepts to help explain the persistence of MAGA support: First, there's "conspiracy fictioning + hyperstition" from @ddzeeuw.bsky.social and Gekker:
When Trump claims the economy is rigged by foreign interests, then acts as if it is, he creates the original conditions for his conspiracy theory
Screenshot of the linked Quarto website, with input checkboxes to change different conditions for a regression model that predicts economic performance based on US political party, with a reported p-value
I’ve long used FiveThirtyEight’s interactive “Hack Your Way To Scientific Glory” to illustrate the idea of p-hacking when I teach statistics. But ABC/Disney killed the site earlier this month :(
So I made my own with #rstats and Observable and #QuartoPub ! stats.andrewheiss.com/hack-your-way/
Are you working in a setting where historical data is at risk of being lost/erased/removed? Let the OAH know. I think this is an important way to account for what's there now so that we understand what goes missing. You can fill out the form anonymously. #historysky
www.oah.org/2025/03/12/r...
This is a fascinating, disturbing, and complicated piece from @nberlat.bsky.social.
Martin Niemöller Was an Antisemite www.everythingishorrible.net/p/martin-nie...
Critical Sociology compiled Michael Burawoy's articles and allowed free access.
I hope other journals will do the same.
journals.sagepub.com/page/crs/vir...
FANTASTIC
ICPSR at U Mich is coordinating the archiving of at-risk federal data (all of it?)
You can upload data you have & search for data you don’t have
www.datalumos.org/datalumos/
it feels like a way of dealing with our lack of any opposition to this incredible narrative power, but in reality it just obscures which of his policies are popular and downplays the serious consequences of his actions simply because they're filled with falsehoods
people who follow anti-Trump media relish in these "gotcha" moments, but he skillfully undermines such critiques of his actions. he produces selective causal sequencing: he says he'll build the wall, money is appropriated, ergo wall is built. gaps in the narrative are moot. vaccines, tiktok, etc
The rule law comment comes immediately after complaining about EU fines. US hegemony protected his business model, and now he's worried about its collapse. He praises Trump for actually caring about the US "winning."
The sleight of hand implies the EU fines were primarily about free speech...
Halfway through the Zuckerberg interview: We cannot separate his criticism of the Biden admin from the massive fines Meta has faced in the EU. He makes a tacit link between the politicization of Big Tech and the US's decision to abandon tech companies to places that disregard "the rule of law."
We lost our house in the Eaton Fire. We're safe, but the level of devastation is impossible to convey. I won't be able to work for a while, so if you want to support us, I'd appreciate a Patreon subscription or buying one of my books. It will help.
www.patreon.com/MikeRothschild