Prelims

The M in CITAMS@30

ISBN: 978-1-78769-670-9, eISBN: 978-1-78769-669-3

ISSN: 2050-2060

Publication date: 30 November 2018

Citation

(2018), "Prelims", The M in CITAMS@30 (Studies in Media and Communications, Vol. 18), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. i-xxii. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2050-206020180000018001

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited


Half Title Page

The M in CITAMS@30

Series Page

STUDIES IN MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS

Series Editors: Laura Robinson, Shelia R. Cotten and Jeremy Schulz

Volumes 8–10: Laura Robinson and Shelia R. Cotten

Volume 11 Onwards: Laura Robinson, Shelia R. Cotten and Jeremy Schulz

Recent Volumes:

Volume 11: Communication and Information Technologies Annual: [New] Media Cultures – Edited by Laura Robinson, Jeremy Schulz, Shelia R. Cotten, Timothy M. Hale, Apryl A. Williams, and Joy L. Hightower
Volume 12: Communication and Information Technologies Annual: Digital Empowerment: Opportunities and Challenges of Inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean – Edited by Laura Robinson, Jeremy Schulz and Hopeton S. Dunn
Volume 13: Brazil: Media from the Country of the Future – ESMC volume editors: Laura Robinson, Jeremy Schulz, and Apryl Williams; guest volume editors: Pedro Aguiar, John Baldwin, Antonio C. La Pastina, Monica Martinez, Sonia Virgínia Moreira, Heloisa Pait, and Joseph D. Straubhaar; volume guest associate and assistant editors: Sayonara Leal and Nicole Speciale
Volume 14: Social Movements and Media – Edited by Jennifer Earl and Deana A. Rohlinger
Volume 15: e-Health: Current Evidence, Promises, Perils, and Future Directions – Edited by Timothy M. Hale, Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou, and Shelia R. Cotten; Assistant Editor: Aneka Khilnani
Volume 16: Media and Power in International Contexts: Perspectives on Agency and Identity – Edited by Apryl Williams, Ruth Tsuria and Laura Robinson; Associate Editor: Aneka Khilnani
Volume 17: Networks, Hacking and Media – CITAMS@30: Now and Then and Tomorrow – edited by Barry Wellman, Laura Robinson, Casey Brienza, Wenhong Chen, and Shelia R. Cotten. Associate Editor: Aneka Khilnani

Editorial Board

  • Rebecca G. Adams

    University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA

  • Ron Anderson

    University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, USA

  • Denise Anthony

    Dartmouth College, USA

  • Alejandro Artopoulos

    Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina

  • John R. Baldwin

    Illinois State University, USA

  • Jason Beech

    Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina

  • Grant Blank

    Oxford Internet Institute, UK

  • Geoffrey Bowker

    Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, USA

  • Casey Brienza

    City University London, UK

  • Jonathan Bright

    Oxford Internet Institute, UK

  • Manuel Castells

    University of Southern California, USA

  • Mary Chayko

    Rutgers University, USA

  • Wenhong Chen

    University of Texas at Austin, USA

  • Lynn Schofield Clark

    University of Denver, USA

  • Jenny L. Davis

    James Madison University, USA

  • Hopeton S. Dunn

    University of the West Indies in Jamaica, Jamaica

  • Jennifer Earl

    University of Arizona, USA

  • Hernan Galperin

    Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina

  • Joshua Gamson

    University of San Francisco, USA

  • Blanca Gordo

    University of California at Berkeley, USA

  • Tim Hale

    Partners Center for Connected Health and Harvard Medical School, USA

  • David Halle

    University of California, Los Angeles, USA

  • Caroline Haythornthwaite

    University of British Columbia, Canada

  • Anne Holohan

    Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

  • Heather Horst

    RMIT University, Australia

  • Gabe Ignatow

    University of North Texas, USA

  • Samantha Nogueira Joyce

    St Mary’s College of California, USA

  • Vikki Katz

    Rutgers University, USA

  • Nalini Kotamraju

    IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

  • Robert LaRose

    Michigan State University, USA

  • Sayonara Leal

    University of Brasilia, Brazil

  • Brian Loader

    University of York, UK

  • Monica Martinez

    Universidade de Sorocaba, Brazil

  • Noah McClain

    Illinois Institute of Technology, USA

  • Gustavo Mesch

    University of Haifa, Israel

  • Sonia Virgínia Moreira

    Universidade do Estado Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

  • Gina Neff

    University of Washington, USA

  • Christena Nippert-Eng

    Illinois Institute of Technology, USA

  • Hiroshi Ono

    Texas A&M University, USA

  • Heloisa Pait

    Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil

  • CJ Pascoe

    University of Oregon, USA

  • Antonio C. La Pastina

    Texas A&M

  • Trevor Pinch

    Cornell University, USA

  • Anabel Quan-Haase

    University of Western Ontario

  • Kelly Quinn

    University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

  • Violaine Roussel

    University of Paris 8, France

  • Saskia Sassen

    Columbia University, USA

  • Sara Schoonmaker

    University of Redlands, USA

  • Markus Schulz

    The New School, USA

  • Mike Stern

    University of Chicago, USA

  • Joseph D. Straubhaar

    The University of Texas at Austin, USA

  • Simone Tosoni

    Catholic University of Milan, Italy

  • Zeynep Tufekci

    University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA

  • Keith Warner

    Santa Clara University, USA

  • Barry Wellman

    NetLab, University of Toronto, Canada

  • Jim Witte

    George Mason University, USA

  • Julie B. Wiest

    West Chester University of Pennsylvania, USA

  • Simeon Yates

    University of Liverpool, UK

Title Page

STUDIES IN MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS VOLUME 18

THE M IN CITAMS@30: MEDIA SOCIOLOGY

EDITED BY

CASEY BRIENZA

Media Sociology Preconference Founder and Chair, USA

LAURA ROBINSON

Santa Clara University, USA

BARRY WELLMAN

Netlab Network and Ryerson University, Canada

SHELIA R. COTTEN

Michigan State University, USA

WENHONG CHEN

University of Texas at Austin, USA

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

ANEKA KHILNANI

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2019

Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN:978-1-78769-670-9 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-669-3 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-671-6 (Epub)

ISSN: 2050-2060 (Print)

Foreword to CITAMS@30

The reception, sessions, and roundtables at ASA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia in August 2018 aside, these double volumes are perhaps the most enduring fruit of our celebration of CITAMS@30 – the 30th anniversary of the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. The two volumes are the results of the numerous conversations – in personal and various mode of digital communication – between and among the co-editors and contributors, many of whom have been an integral part of the CITAMS community.

With its roots in ASA’s Microcomputing User Group (MUG) meetings, the Microcomputing Section established in 1988 (Anderson, 2006) has developed into a strategic venue that connects sociologists, communication scholars, and media researchers. The section changed its name to Communication and Information Technologies in 2002, proposed by Keith Hampton, Eszter Hargittai and Anabel Quan-Haase representing a new generation of sociologists of the Internet and digital technologies (Elesh & Dowdall, 2006). In 2016, responding to the growing members’ interests in digital, social, mobile and popular media sociology, the section officially added Media to its name (Robinson, 2018).

As a section member since I was a graduate student, my intellectual and professional development has greatly benefited from many talented, generous CITAMS members. It is my tremendous privilege serving as the section chair in the year of its 30th anniversary. It has been a great pleasure working with three CITAMS past chairs Barry Wellman, Shelia Cotten, Laura Robinson as well as Casey Brienza, the founder of the Media Sociology Preconference on the two volumes. The response to our call for papers has been so great that we have two volumes rather than one volume as originally planned. In particular, Laura Robinson, as the editor of the Emerald Studies in Media and Communications, has played a pivotal role in shepherding the reviewing process.

Together, contributors, including past and future chairs as well as section members and friends, revisit the section history, examine important themes relevant to the thirty-year section history and imagine the section future. Gathering some of the finest scholars in the sociology of communication, information technologies, and media, the two volumes look back, celebrating what the members and friends of this section has achieved. More importantly, the two volumes set agenda for the future of our shared intellectual commons.

ESMC Volume 17: Networks, Hacking, and Media--CITAMS@30: Now and Then and Tomorrow is co-edited by Barry Wellman, Laura Robinson, Casey Brienza, Wenhong Chen, Shelia R. Cotten, and Aneka Khilnani (Associate Editor). The volume starts with the field analysis on the history, present and future of Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology, authored by past and incoming chairs including Jennifer Earl, and Deana Rohlinger, James Witte, a past chair, and his co-authors (Roberta Spalter-Roth and Yukiko Furuya) examine section members’ participation in the publication process of the American Sociological Review while Edward Brent reviews earlier section history and investigates the method implications of information technology. The second part of Volume 17 centers on the contours of interpersonal relationships, as well as the shifting structures, compositions, and purposes of networks in the digital age by Mary Chayko, Anabel Quan-Haase, Andrew Nevin, Veronika Lukacs, Yotam Shmargad, Hazel Kwon, Marc Esteve Del Valle, Alicia Wanless-Berk, Anatoliy Gruzd, and Philip Mai.

ESMC Volume 18 highlights the M in CITAMS, namely Media Sociology, and is co-edited by Casey Brienza, Laura Robinson, Barry Wellman, Shelia Cotten, Wenhong Chen, and Aneka Khilnani (Associate Editor). Contributors include both practitioners and scholars, discussing a range of issues related to digital media inequalities that call for government intervention in the US (Lloyd Levine) and media intervention in China (Mingli Mei, Ru Zhao, and Miaochen Zhu). Jeremiah Morelock focuses on the tangled interrelationship between digital, racial and health inequalities, Saran Ghatak and Niall Moran examine the nineteenth-century news media coverage of immigrants in New York. The Volume also sheds lights on culture production and consumption, a rapid growing area of media sociology, including the paradox of closure and openness in cultural journalism by Philippa K. Chong, the story-world of the hit HBO drama Game of Thrones by Carmen Spanó, the discourse of family, gender, and class in Bollywood cinema by Tanni Chaudhuri, and the intriguing relations of affection, mediation, and communication by Ana Ramos.

The two volumes, together, demonstrate the range, sophistication, and compassion of our section. CITAMS is definitely one of the most intellectually diverse ASA section with many of its members nurturing and thriving at the intersections of multiple disciplines, switching between academia and practices. The sociological insight and imagination advanced by the work of section members, often transcending disciplinary boundaries, have important theoretical and practical implications in our digital world. As a networked transfield (Chen, 2018), CITAMS is uniquely positioned to contribute to scholarly and public discourse and practice on big challenges of our time such as digital inclusion, privacy, and the future of work and organization. If an Internet year is a dog year, what are the next 30 years in store for our globalized, mediated, and networked societies and communities? How would the boundaries and scope of sociology change and how would CITAMS evolve? CITAMS, Happy Anniversary and many Happy Returns!

Wenhong Chen

Section Chair 2017–2018 of the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association Associate Professor of Media Studies and Sociology, Department of Radio-TV-Film, Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, USA

Acknowledgments

All of the ESMC editorial staff extend our appreciation to the many individuals who have contributed to this volume. We would like to call attention to the often unseen work of the many individuals whose support has been indispensable in publishing all volumes in the series and this volume in particular. Regarding the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section in the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), we thank the Council for the section’s sponsorship of the series. Our thanks also go to our Editorial Board members for their service disseminating our outreach and publicity. In particular, at Emerald Publishing, we deeply appreciate Jennifer McCall’s support of the series and the Emerald editorial staff’s contributions bringing the volumes to press. Finally, we recognize Associate Editor, Aneka Khilnani, for her excellent work, as well as guest editors, Barry Wellman, Wenhong Chen, and Casey Brienza, without whom these volumes celebrating the 30-year anniversary of CITAMS would have been impossible.

Editor Biographies

Casey Brienza is the Founder of the Media Sociology Preconference. Previously, she was Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Centre for Culture and the Creative Industries at City, University of London. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge. To date, she has written over 15 articles and chapters about transnational cultural production and consumption and the political economy of the global culture industries, specifically as these relate to publishing and emerging digital technologies. Casey is the author of Manga in America: Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics (Bloomsbury 2016), editor of Global Manga: “Japanese” Comics without Japan? (Routledge 2015), and co-editor with Paddy Johnston of Cultures of Comics Work (Palgrave 2016).

Shelia R. Cotten is a Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. She has served as the Chair of CITAMS and has previously held appointments at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. After earning her PhD from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, she was a Postgraduate Fellow at the Boston University School of Public Health. Her work has been funded by The National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Aging. Cotten’s work addresses key social problems with sociological tools related to technology access, use, and impacts/outcomes. She has published on a number of topics including the XO laptop program in Birmingham and the use of ICT resources to improve older Americans’ quality of life. The body of her work was recognized by the CITASA Award for Public Sociology in 2013 and the CITAMS Career Achievement Award in 2016.

Wenhong Chen is an Associate Professor of Media Studies and Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research has focused on digital media technologies in entrepreneurial and civic settings. Dr Chen has more than 60 publications, including articles in top-ranked journals in the fields of communication and media studies, sociology, and management. Dr Chen’s research has received awards from American Sociological Association, the Academy of Management, International Communication Association, and International Association of Chinese Management Research. She is serving as the chair of the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of American Sociological Association in 2017–2018. Dr Chen is the lead editor of the book Networked China: Global Dynamics of Digital Media and Civic Engagement (with Stephen Reese, Routledge 2015).

Aneka Khilnani (Associate Editor) is a Graduate Student at Georgetown University. She is an Assistant Editor of the book series Emerald Studies in Media and Communications and has worked on the editorial team for volumes including e-Health: Current Evidence, Promises, Perils, and Future Directions. Before attending Georgetown, she graduated from Santa Clara University with a B.S. in Public Health Science (Summa Cum Laude). Her past research was supported by a $30,000 grant from the Health Trust Initiative to support dietary change among low-income women in the San Jose Guadalupe area. She is currently working on a co-authored book manuscript on digital research methods.

Laura Robinson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Santa Clara University. She earned her PhD from UCLA, where she held a Mellon Fellowship in Latin American Studies and received a Bourse d’Accueil at the École Normale Supérieure. In addition to holding a postdoctoral fellowship on a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation funded project at the USC Annenberg Center, Robinson has served as Visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell University and the Chair of CITAMS (formerly CITASA) for 2014–2015. Her research has earned awards from CITASA, AOIR, and NCA IICD. Robinson’s current multi-year study examines digital and informational inequalities. Her other publications explore interaction and identity work, as well as new media in Brazil, France, and the US.

Barry Wellman directs the NetLab Network and is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Ryerson University’s Social Media Lab He is the former S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Wellman’s most recent book is the prize-winning Networked: The New Social Operating System (with Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project) published by MIT Press in Spring 2012. The book analyzes the social nature of networked individualism, growing out of the Social Network Revolution, the Internet Revolution, and the Mobile Revolution. Prof. Wellman is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He founded the International Network for Social Network Analysis in 1976–1977. He is the Chair-Emeritus of both the Community and Information Technologies section and the Community and Urban Sociology section of the American Sociological Association. He has been a keynoter at conferences ranging from computer science to theology. He is the (co-) author of more than 200 articles that have been co-authored with more than 80 scholars and is the (co-)editor of five books.

Author Biographies

Tanni Chaudhuri is a Faculty of Sociology at Rhode Island College since Fall 2013. She received her PhD in Sociology from Texas Women’s University in 2011. Her pre-doctoral education includes a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology (Presidency College, India), a dual Master’s in Film Studies (Jadavpur University, India) and Mass Communication (Kansas State University, USA). Dr. Chaudhuri’s areas of expertise include medical sociology, criminology, and media studies. Besides teaching some of sociology capstone classes including Qualitative or Quantitative Research Methods, she brings her international training and passion for movies in the classroom by engaging in dialogues on Bollywood or Hollywood. Dr Chaudhuri also uses media as an important lens for teaching sociology and has worked on a few visual sociology projects in the past.

Phillipa K. Chong is a Cultural Sociologist who specializes in how we define and evaluate worth: This includes the value we assign to social objects (e.g., books, paintings, knowledge, opinions, and so on) and social groups (e.g., experts, artists, minority groups, and so on). To date, her empirical focus has been on book reviewers as market intermediaries in the cultural market. Her present work explores how fiction reviewers engage in the dual project of constructing (i) the value of new novels in the absence of objective indicators of esthetic quality and (ii) the legitimacy of their professional judgments given the accepted subjectivity of taste. She is currently writing a book, with Princeton University Press, exploring the boundary between expert and public opinion given recent changes in the mediascape. She currently works as an Assistant Professor in Sociology at McMaster University. Before arriving at her current post, she earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University

Saran Ghatak is a Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies at Keene State College. He has a PhD in Sociology from New York University. His research interests include culture, theory, crime, law, and deviance. He is currently working on a grant supported project on craft breweries.

Lloyd Levine (ret.) is a former Member of the California State Legislature where he chaired the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce. As a legislator he authored several foundational pieces of legislation relating to broadband, telecommunications, and technology. He served as a member of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Broadband Taskforce, and a founding board member of the California Emerging Technology Fund. He is currently a Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California at Riverside School of Public Policy where is the co-founder of the Center for Technology, Society, and Policy.

MingLi Mei is an Associate Professor at the College of Arts and Media, Tongji University, China. She earned her PhD in Media Management from Wuhan University, China. Her research areas include, but are not limited to, Media Management and Media Sociology. Her research has earned The First National Academic Award for Outstanding Journalism Young Scholars.

Jeremiah Morelock teaches at Boston College, where he earned a Master’s degree in Sociology. His research focuses on authoritarian and populist themes in biological horror and science fiction films. He is editor of Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism (University of Westminster, 2018) and director of the Critical Theory Research Network.

Heloisa Pait, a Fulbright Alumna, teaches at the São Paulo State University Julio de Mesquita Filho and investigates the role of new means of communication in democratic life. In her doctoral dissertation, she analyzed how soap opera writers and viewers attempted to make mass communication a meaningful activity. She has written on the reception of international news, on media use by Brazilian youth, and on the disruptive role of the internet in the Brazilian political environment. She has recently redirected her attention to the understanding of the historic roots of Brazilian development and democracy. Her chapter “Media Epiphanies: Selvies and silences in São Paulo street protests” received the Outstanding Author Contribution in the 2018 Emerald Literati Awards. She takes active part of the Brazilian public dialogue, contributing to the press and supporting democratic movements.

Ana Ramos holds a PhD from the Department of Communication, University of Montreal. Her current postdoctoral research at the SenseLab, Concordia University, is devoted to process philosophy inquiry in the field of esthetics and affect theory as related to art experience and techniques of the body. In her publication “On Consciousness-with and Virtual Lines of Affection,” she acknowledges an affective dimension of the body.

Carmen Spanò holds a PhD in Media and Communication from the University of Auckland (New Zealand). She graduated in Humanities at Università Cattolica del “Sacro Cuore” in Milan (Italy). Her research interests include transnational and international production and distribution of TV programs, trans-media/cross-media storytelling, and transnational television consumption and reception. She writes film and TV series reviews for the Italian sites Mediacritica, Leitmovie and Nocturno, and she worked as Content Curator for the popular Italian movie magazine FilmTV.

Ru Zhao is a Graduate Student and Master’s Degree Candidate at Tongji University, Shanghai, China. She majors in journalism and communication. Her research interests include new media and communication. She is currently working on her master’s thesis, which is about depression dissemination and audience cognition based on new media platform.

Miaochen Zhu is a Graduate Student and Master’s Degree Candidate at Tongji University, Shanghai, China. She majors in journalism and communication. Her research interests include new media and marketing. She is now working on her master’s thesis, which is about social media marketing in China’s digital environment.

References

Anderson (2006) Anderson, R. E. (2006). Citasa. Social Science Computer Review, 24(2), 150157. doi:10.1177/0894439305284509K

Chen (2018) Chen, W. (2018). Abandoned not: Media sociology as a networked transfield. Information, Communication & Society, 21(5), 647660. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2018.1428658

Elesh & Dowdall (2006) Elesh, D. , & Dowdall, G. W. (2006). Citasa. Social Science Computer Review, 24(2), 165171. doi:10.1177/0894439305284510

Robinson (2018) Robinson, L. (2018). From CITASA to CITAMS. Communication, information technologies and media sociology section of the ASA Newsletter, Spring 2018. Retrieved from https://citams.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/spring-2018.pdf