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In this paper, I argue that unique locations of digital interactions constitute distinct information‐technological media. I first apply a close reading of Couch's () work to digital sociology, and then analyze three popular social media networks: www.Imgur.com, www.Reddit.com, and www.Twitter.com. I close with a theoretical application of Couch's paradigm for analyzing the qualities of information technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper places friendships at the center of individuals' identity work, examining how individuals construct self-identities through their talk about friend relationships and networks. We conceptualize this 'friendship talk' as a subcategory of identity talk. From interviews with emerging adults, we find three strategies of friendship talk: envisioning self through others, betterment distancing, and situating with networks. These strategies demonstrate unique ways identity construction occurs through talk about friends. Individuals verbally connect with and separate from friends while constructing desired selves and moral identities. We suggest that friendship talk strategies may be generic social processes that apply beyond emerging adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section introduces the articles featured in the March 1983 issue of Symbolic Interaction. Symbolic interaction often has been derided as astructural, unable to deal with social organization. The articles in the said issue were the result of a call for papers on Symbolic Interaction and Social Organization. No attempt was made to narrow the section beyond that. As a result, the papers are quite diverse in theory, method, and scope. One obvious similarity of the Mast paper and the Weiss/Faulkner paper is that they both examine art worlds, but there the similarity ends. Mast is interested in the micro-structure of television production--how technical considerations generate methods of acting and directing; Weiss and Faulkner are interested in the macro-structure of the Hollywood film industry and how the structure reflects the entrepreneurial needs of individuals and organizations as seen from a collective action perspective. Both papers argue that the structure of collaboration is constrained by the production needs of the art world. The other two papers are theoretical. Wood and Wardell extend the social behavioristic critique of symbolic interactionism, by asking how Blumer's perspective on social organization differs from that of George H. Mead. Fine and Kleinman work in a more traditional interactionist perspective. They suggest that the concept of the social network might prove to be both a valuable sensitizing concept for interactionists and also an empirical set of relationships that more adequately represents the real world than does the concept of the small group.

Social networks are typically associated with recruitment tactics. In this article, I offer an additional perspective on social networks as a constraint to social change and an under‐recognized challenge to reducing consumption. I draw on 45 interviews with: voluntary simplifiers, religious environmentalists, and green home owners. Informants, failing to withdraw from gift‐giving networks, instead (1) negotiate a reduction in gift giving, (2) green gift giving, and (3) attempt to transform gift giving into a tactic for lifestyle change. Rather than viewing social networks as channels for cultural cohesion, I argue that we need to better conceptualize the way culture and networks are co‐constituted by tactics of influence within areas of contention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, I examine how people in emotionally fraught circumstances strategically structure social interactions in order to protect fragile emotional states. Data come from interviews and observations with 18 families of children being treated for life-threatening conditions at an elite university research hospital. I show how families worked to ward off emotional threats to their ability to maintain hope that their children would recover by preempting and restructuring social interactions with friends and family members and pruning social networks. These efforts allowed families to minimize reciprocal obligations and avoid encountering pessimistic reflected appraisals that might trigger 'emotional shortcuts' leading to states of fear and anxiety. Similar efforts to reconstruct social interactions and social networks may be common among those working to maintain fragile emotional states in a variety of challenging circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on role transitions, following a tradition pioneered by van Gennep, regards these major turning points in the life course primarily as times when people move between different sets of social networks. While these studies acknowledge that rites of passage occur within particular physical spaces in which material objects are present, the importance of such objects has received little attention, I explore one particular role transition--moving away to college--and illustrate that objects play a central role in how students construct their identities. Students at "Midwestern" University make strategic choices about which objects to leave at home as anchors of prior identities and which ones to bring to school as markers of new identities. Moreover, I suggest that the meanings of these two categories of objects differ by gender. I argue that this case opens up the possibility that objects play a much more central part in role transitions than social scientists have acknowledged. This study also challenges existing assumptions about different processes of identity formation. Therefore, it engenders the need for additional research about how people reinterpret objects during role transitions, and about the different meanings that objects may have for the constructions of masculinity and femininity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]