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Discusses teaching current events in sociology with a focus on events in the mass media and the responses of students to those events. Describes three teaching strategies recommended for teaching current events because they enable students to understand the media's role in society. Includes references. (CMK)

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2006.00144.x Byline: Sarah Sobieraj (1) Abstract: This article reviews the prominent historical changes in American associational life (increasingly diffuse organizational attachments, professionalization of the voluntary sector, and the proliferation of 'mailing-list' citizen groups), and turns to cross-sectional data on contemporary voluntary associations and their activities during the key campaign events of the 2000 presidential election to evaluate the impact of these changes on associations' ability to live up to the normative visions of civic engagement. Data on 29 diverse voluntary associations were gathered through unobtrusive observations at association events on location during the two national nominating conventions and the three televised presidential debates, 61 subsequent in-depth interviews with association representatives, literature distributed at association events, and a variety of supplemental sources. This article argues that although this new terrain is marked by significant limitations (as critics have suggested), especially in terms of associations' ability to provide opportunities for members to develop civic skills, these changes in associational life also offer important opportunities, particularly in terms of contributing to a vital democratic process by promoting public political discourse. Implications for social solidarity are also addressed. Author Affiliation: (1)Tufts University

Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life. By Theda Skocpol. University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. 366 pp. Paper, $24.95. Drawing on an extensive qualitative and quantitative data [...]

In this interdisciplinary roundtable discussion, five scholars interested in political communication work through the democratic dilemmas created when privately owned social media platforms are used as digital public squares by elected officials in the United States. This conversation unfolds in the context of ongoing legal cases that challenge politicians' efforts to block select interlocutors and bar them from participation. We grapple with the tension between politicians' use of social media to broadcast their own messages as a form of publicity with the desire by some members of the public that politicians be transparent online by allowing the electorate to question or even criticize them. Through this discussion, we weigh the importance of the right to criticize the government and its leaders alongside the realities of contentious content on social media platforms that are rife with abusive content, in a cultural context marked by social inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the divides between political communication and social movement research. Topics include electoral politics, communication as internal interpretive work, sociological approach to communication and American Political Science Association (APSA) and social activism and political campaigns.

The article discusses the divides between political communication and social movement research. Topics include electoral politics, communication as internal interpretive work, sociological approach to communication and American Political Science Association (APSA) and social activism and political campaigns.

Resistance to women’s public voice and visibility via street harassment and workplace sexual harassment have long constrained women’s use of and comfort in physical public spaces; this gender-based resistance now extends into digital arenas. Women face extreme hostility in the form of digital sexism in discussion rooms, comment sections, gaming communities, and on social media platforms. Reflecting on two years of in-depth interviews with women who have been on the receiving end of gender-based digital abuse (n = 38), conversations with industry professionals working in content moderation and digital safety, the extant literature, and news stories about digital attacks against women, I offer a lens to think through the prominent patterns in digital sexism, showing (1) that aggressors draw upon three overlapping strategies - intimidating, shaming, and discrediting - to limit women’s impact in digital publics, (2) the way femininity and femaleness are used to undermine women’s contributions, and (3) men call attention to women’s physicality as a way to pull gender - and the male advantage that comes with it - to the fore in digital exchanges. Finally, I argue that when digital sexism succeeds in pressing women out of digital spaces, constrains the topics they address publicly, or limits the ways they address them, we must consider the democratic costs of gender-based harassment, in addition to the personal ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on incivility in American politics focuses on its effects on citizens' political attitudes and behaviors, in spite of remarkably little data on the extent to which political discourse is actually uncivil. Those studies that do examine content focus on negative campaign advertisements, overlooking more egregious forms of political incivility that penetrate the broader media landscape. In this study, we attempt to conceptualize and measure more dramatic types of political incivility, which we term 'outrage.' Outrage discourse involves efforts to provoke a visceral response from the audience, usually in the form of anger, fear, or moral righteousness through the use of overgeneralizations, sensationalism, misleading or patently inaccurate information, ad hominem attacks, and partial truths about opponents. Scrutinizing 10 weeks of data from political blogs, talk radio, and cable news analysis programs, we demonstrate that outrage discourse is extensive, takes many different forms (we examine 13 different types), and spans media formats. We also show that while outrage tactics are largely the same for liberal and conservative media, conservative media use significantly more outrage speech than liberal media. It is our hope that introducing more concrete information about the actual content of political media will render existing research on potential effects more meaningful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two letters to the editor are presented in response to the article about the American Political Science Review in the previous issue.