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Facebook “likes” are often used as a proxy of users’ attention and an affirmation of what is posted on Facebook (Gerodimos & Justinussen, 2015). To determine what factors predict “likes,” the authors analyzed Facebook posts made by the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump, the top three candidates from the 2016 US primary election. Several possible factors were considered, such as the types of posts, the use of pronouns and emotions, the inclusion of slogans and hashtags, references made to opponents, as well as candidate’s mentions on national television. The results of an ordinary least-squared regression analysis showed that the use of highly charged (positive or negative) emotions and personalized posts (first-person singular pronouns) increased “likes” across all three candidates’ Facebook pages, whereas visual posts (posts containing either videos or photos) and the use of past tenses were liked more often by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’ followers than by Trump’s followers. Television mentions boosted likes on Clinton and Sanders’ posts but had a negative effect on Trump’s. The study contributes to the growing literature on digitally networked participation (Theocharis, 2015) and supports the emerging notion of the new “hybrid media” system (Chadwick, 2013) for political communication. The study also raises questions as to the relevance of platforms such as Facebook to deliberative democratic processes since Facebook users are not necessarily engaging with the content in an organic way, but instead might be guided to specific content by the Facebook timeline algorithm and targeted ads.

Society’s relations to animals pose possible blind spots in sociological theory that may be revealed and illuminated by studying systems of human‐animal interaction. By investigating whether and how animals enter into key processes that shape self and society we may determine the ways in which animals might be included in the core subject matter of sociology. An earlier discussion of the role of animals in sociology initiated by Weber is reviewed. Issues that debate raised about the extent of linguistically‐mediated human‐animal intersubjectivity are updated. It is in principle difficult to rule out animal languages, and some animals have acquired human language. But sociology may follow a more fecund empirical route by examining successful human‐animal performances produced by enduring interspecies relationships. Following this route, this paper specifically argues that the human self should be seen to take root in the available mixed species community. To show this, the work of G.H. Mead is revisited and corrected in light of recent work on early human development, and conceptual analyses of language, the body, and the self. The formation of the self is not dependent on only linguistic exchanges; a nonverbal nonhuman other can contribute to the self‐reflective sense of being a human self. Based on this reasoning, examples of studies of humans with wild and domestic animals illustrate the potential for a human‐animal sociology.

Ever since Mead, sociology has maintained a deep divide between human and non human animals. In effect, Mead constructed humans as having capacities that he saw lacking in animals. Recent research on animals has challenged the traditional ideas of Mead and others by providing evidence of animal intelligence, adaptability, selfawareness, emotionality, communication and culture. This paper examines the human‐animal relationship as presented in Introductory Sociology Textbooks to see if this new research on animals has allowed us to move beyond Mead. We find outdated information and confused thinking on such topics as the relationship between language and culture, the development of the self in animals, and the role of instinct, socialization and culture in animal behavior. We conclude that, with few exceptions, the main function of the treatment of animals in these texts is to affirm the hard line that sociology has always drawn between humans and other species.

Only within the past decade have sociologists begun to investigate the relationships between humans and other animals. Even more recently, college courses that examine this subject have emerged. This article looks at one such undergraduate sociology course – Animals and Society – at the University of South Carolina Spartanburg. It outlines the opposition to the course and the fight for its approval. Then an overview of the course objectives and content is presented, followed by an assessment of the impact of the course on students. Finally the implications of the emergence of animals and society courses in sociology, and the new sub‐field of animal studies, are discussed.

In recent years there has been a dramatic expansion in both the number and scope of policy proposals explicitly intended to reduce inequality proffered by policymakers in the Democratic Party. In the following, it is argued that this state of affairs is the result of a complex series of developments triggered by the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests. OWS dramatically enhanced both the salience and the politicization of economic inequality. These developments altered the strategies of elites and organizations within the institutional left and advantaged elite movement allies within the Democratic Party. In combination, these indirect and elite-mediated responses resulted in antiinequality positions becoming integrated into both the partisan identity and the platform of the Democratic Party. Despite the Occupy movement being relatively short-lived and explicitly eschewing reliance on institutional politics, it nonetheless had a significant impact on conventional politics. By significantly shifting the political discourse around the issue of inequality, the movement reshaped the political landscape in a manner that created new opportunities and openings for political actors. As organizations within the Democratic Party's coalition increasingly adopted antiinequality messaging this both pressured and incentivized establishment Democrats to fully embrace an antiinequality agenda. This account is consistent with a theory of political parties in which the key actors are activists and interest groups, not party leaders, and social movement research that suggests that movements are often more influential in the earliest stages of the policymaking process.

This piece is a review of the animal selfhood literature in sociology, organized into four main parts. First, I review the sociological literature of human–animal interactions, in which sociologists claim that animals possess selves. Second, I review how sociologists have referred to the self, from which I construct five criteria of selfhood, including self as attribution, self-awareness, intersubjectivity, self-concept/reflexivity, and narration. Third, I address how animals have selves using these criteria, drawing on sociological and ethological evidence. Fourth, I critique the animal interaction sociologists’ specific claims of animal selfhood, including their epistemological failure to distinguish between human accounts of animal subjectivities and animal subjectivities, and their empirical failure to show how animals act toward themselves. Ultimately, I conclude that animal selves, particularly in an elemental Meadian sense, are potentially real, but in most cases are unobservable or unverifiable phenomena.