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This special issue of Information, Communication, and Society (ICS) is edited by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS) section of the American Sociological Association and includes papers that were first presented at either the 2021 or 2022 ASA meetings or Media Sociology Symposia. For this special issue, an innovative editorial approach was taken that brought the editing process into a graduate classroom. That process is described below along with a brief introduction to themes of the selected articles. Key themes for this special issue include content analysis, ethics, privacy, new economy, and digital inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer review is a central institution in academic publishing, yet its processes and effects on research remain opaque. Empirical studies have (1) been rare because data on the peer review process are generally unavailable, and (2) conceptualized peer review as gate-keepers who either accept or reject a manuscript, overlooking peer review's role in constructing articles. This study uses a unique data resource to study how sociological manuscripts change during peer review. Authors of published sociological research often present earlier versions of that research at annual meetings of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Many of these annual meetings papers are publicly available online and tend to be uploaded before undergoing formal peer review. A data sample is constructed by linking these papers to the respective versions published between 2006 and 2012 in two peer-reviewed journals, American Sociological Review and Social Forces. Quantitative and qualitative analyses examine changes across article versions, paying special attention to how elements of data analysis and theory in the ASA versions change. Results show that manuscripts tend to change more substantially in their theoretical framing than in the data analyses. The finding suggests that a chief effect of peer review in quantitative sociology is to prompt authors to adjust their theoretical framing, a mode or review I call 'data-driven.' The data-driven mode of review problematizes the vision of sociological research as addressing theoretically motivated questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions on inequality have traditionally focused on an economic perspective, centering around how the unequal distribution of wealth or resources impacts the life chances of different groups of people, and how it leads to social segregation, polarization or fragmentation. The explanatory power and influences as such remain to this day. Recently, however, some scholars have tried to investigate inequality from an angle of institutional culture. The author examined the presidential addresses of the American Sociological Association over the past 20 years, and found that at least five of them dealt with inequality through culturalist lens, which indicated the relevance of cultural forces to inequality. This paper synthesized their arguments into 'categorization and classification systems of otherness' and 'effects of childrearing/parenting'. The preliminary finding shows that 'categorization and classification systems of otherness' are the main mechanism of social inequality, while 'effects of childrearing/parenting' act as latent factors behind most educational inequality. In this study, the former are explicated from two dimensions, namely, cultural foundation and institutional operation, and the latter from cultural knowledge and cultural guides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on various developments in the field of sociology. For the 1970 national meetings of the American Sociological Association, special efforts are being made to expand and enlarge the seminar sessions. These sessions are an experiment in seeking to make available a new format at the convention in order to overcome fragmented sessions and to permit discussion in depth. The luncheon roundtables at the Annual Meeting continue to be highly successful and more than 100 are being scheduled for the 1970 meeting. Herbert L. Costner of the University of Washington will replace Edgar F. Borgatta as editor of Sociological Methodology as of January 1, 1970. Papers will be accepted for review for Sociological Methodology: 1971 from January, 1970, through September 1970. They will be accepted or rejected as soon as sufficient editorial review is available, usually in 6 to 12 weeks. Papers accepted early in the year will be available for any necessary revision before the publisher's deadline, and hence early submission is encouraged.

The article offers news briefs related to philosophy in the U.S. A call for papers is issued by the College at Brockport in Brockport, New York for its annual philosophy conference on April 22-23, 2011. The 69th Annual Midwest Political Science conference will be held at Chicago Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, Illinois from March 31 to April 3, 2011. The 106th Annual Meeting of American Sociological Association will be held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada on August 20-23, 2011.

The article reports some trends in the relative emphasis devoted to different specialties within the field of sociology in the U.S. since World War II. According to the author, sociology has grown since World War II in the number of courses taught, the number of people who make their living as sociologist and the amount of research done. The field has expanded so rapidly that virtually all special areas of interest within the field have shared in the general growth. As proportions of the total, however, some areas of specialization have gained at the expense of others. In the article sources of information used to asses trends in sociology include fields of interest listed by members for American Sociological Association directory, papers read at annual meetings of the Association, papers published in the journal "American Sociological Review" and course listings in college catalogs. The author states that in analyzing and interpreting the data, he had to make certain assumptions, which may be debatable. The author makes no ambitious claims for the absolute validity of interpretations.

The current period of disruptive social change is inextricably bound up with new means and modes of communication, information, and media streams. The Communication, Information Technologies & Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS) locates these factors at the center of our collective interests, investigating them through a plethora of methods, theories, and empirical cases. Each year, CITAMS runs a special issue in ICS showcasing select works presented at the previous year's American Sociological Association conference and the affiliated Media Sociology preconference. Papers in the 2022 CITAMS Special Issue reflect a social context defined by a prolonged global pandemic and wrought by democratic uncertainty. Across these social circumstances, technology and media loom large. Simultaneously, everyday life continues and classic CITAMS scholarship sustains relevance for the ways people interact, construct identity, consume, and mobilize. All of this and more are contained in the pages of this year's Special Issue, from which readers can get a sense of what CITAMS has to offer and consider how their own work may fit within the broad CITAMS umbrella. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a sociological view of the press coverage of a sociological convention. The coverage is based on observations carried out by five newsmen-observers who attended the August 1965 American Sociological Association (ASA) meetings in Chicago, Illinois. The general conclusion of this study of the convention was that the confrontation of the sociologist with the representative of the news media was overwhelmingly inadvertent, disconcerting and only partially successful to either party. In terms of efficiency in social communication, it leaves much to be desired and strongly entices one to prescribe therapy. Few suggestions are made in advance of Florida sessions in order to get sociologist into communication with the Miami Press. It is suggested to issue a handbook in advance of the convention to all members of the ASA and once the convention has started, to maintain a special message board near the newsroom which offers a chance for newsmen to indicate their wish to contact writers of papers. It is also suggested the president of the ASA assemble a small, informal committee which would hold daily news briefings alerting them to persons or topics originating outside or inside the formal program of the convention.

The article presents guidelines for submitting various types of manuscripts and ancillary materials to the American Sociological Association's journal "Teaching Sociology."

This article is an adaptation of the sixteenth Lewis A. Coser lecture, given virtually in 2021 for the American Sociological Association Meetings. In this article, I pay tribute to Lewis and Rose Laub Coser by engaging with their past work, which inspired a theoretical provocation about what it means to theorize from the margins. I specifically address the questions of who gets to be a theorist and what kinds of theoretical work get marginalized. I outline the process of epistemic oppression involved in trying to publish marginal ideas in mainstream journals. I argue that the relationship between mainstream sociology and what I refer to as "marginal" requires a relational perspective that (1) situates both marginalized scholars and their scholarship in the broader discipline of sociology and (2) examines the epistemic oppression of their theories regardless of their sometimes-powerful institutional positioning in highly ranked departments or as leaders within various professional associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the 2007 annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, we presented a workshop entitled "How to do the Scholarship of Teaching." The workshop had three main goals: to introduce participants to the literature on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and to various SoTL outlets, to guide participants in the process of doing their own SoTL research, and to enhance participants' chances of getting their SoTL work published, especially in the discipline's teaching journal, Teaching Sociology. The overarching purpose of the workshop and this paper is to help participants and readers think about how their own experiences in the classroom could be transformed into research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erving Goffman's written legacy bears on sociology as a whole, or so he argued in his Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association (Goffman, 1983). However, while being celebrated as important to the discipline, his work is also interpreted in inconsistent ways, often downplayed or marginalized, and even neglected. This paper claims that Goffman's "well known aversion to self-disclosure" (Shalin, 2013) does not justify overlooking his trajectory, from the unknown "margins" of a Canadian small town to the elusive "center" of American sociology—and much less does it justify still circulating assessments of his personality, crafted while overlooking his life experiences—and, especially, his writings. Anecdotal evidence of his "enigmatic" personality (Lemert, 2003), or "bad-boy outrageousness" (Berger, 1986), works as a derailing tactic, leading to unwarranted appraisals of Goffman's personality—and, more importantly, to the neglect of crucial aspects of his work. From a theoretical standpoint, Simmel's treatment of "the stranger" as a social relationship, and Merton's concept of "moral alchemy", are used here to try to make some sense of the mixture of celebration and neglect still surrounding "Goffman". Historical data was gathered in part from the "Erving Goffman Archives'' (Shalin, 2013). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the intellectual benefits and lessons learned from a symposium for junior sociology scholars, sponsored by sponsored by the History of Sociology (HoS) Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA), at the New School for Social Research on August 10, 2013. Among the lessons learned are the need for long-term perspective in decision making, little money for food, and flexibility in the exclusion and inclusion of criteria for participation. Information on papers submitted for the symposium, including on sociology, social change, and the work of sociologist W. I. Thomas, is also presented.

Professional organizations all exist in resource niches and, over time, confront varying degrees of density and, hence, competition with other organizations. The initial founding and growth, the precipitous decline, and the subsequent revitalization of the Pacific Sociological Association over the last six decades can be analyzed from an ecological perspective, suggesting strategies for the further survival of PSA in an every more dense resource niche. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the Report of the Editor of the journal "American Sociological Review." The growth of the Review has taken place during a period when several other journals to which many sociologists contribute have become established, apparently the Review is holding its own. The relatively large number of books reviewed during 1960, the only "deviant" figure in the table, may suggest the desirability of greater selectivity than that of the present editors, who have viewed numerous marginal works as appropriate grist for the sociologist's mill. During this period, approximately 1,050 papers will have been evaluated, and except in a very few cases each manuscript has been read by at least two referees. There have been no important editorial innovations since last year's report, but certain developments may be noted. More papers by foreign authors have been received, articles by sociologists in England, Poland, and Israel already have been published, and scholars from many nations have been encouraged to submit such papers.

The article presents various updates from the American Sociological Association. These are as annual meeting, publications, medical sociology, program announcement, submission of papers, thematic sessions et al. Papers may be submitted directly to the session organizers or, if there is doubt as to the appropriate session, to Professor Dennis Wrong, Department of Sociology, New York University, Washington Square, New York, New York. The executive committee of the International Sociological Association has announced that the working group on Armed Forces and Society has been recognized as a standing research committee by the International Sociological Association. The library of the newly established University of the South Pacific indicates a dire need of gifts of books, research reports, back issues of journals, and reprints of articles in sociology, and social and cultural anthropology.

In summer, 1976 Norm Denzin and Norb Wiley acted, as a Symbolic Interactionist lobby, to try to get a more centrist, middle-of-the-road editor for the American Sociological Review. We wanted one who could represent female epistemology, which is less narrow than that of males. We also wanted a female as editor She would be the first female ASR editor. So it was a gender lobby as well as Symbolic Interactionist. Wiley attended the American Sociological Association Council meeting where this issue was discussed. We wanted to formally state our position in an address to the ASA Council. The ASA Secretary, Bill Form, attempted to keep us off the agenda, and we needed a vote from the Council approving our inclusion. This paper describes the fight at the meeting between Bill Form and Wiley, along with comments from the Council members. The lobby got the required votes and Wiley gave the prepared statement. As a consequence we did get a female editor (Rita Simon). And we promoted the issue of how representative the American Sociological Review and the other sociology journals should be. Later Wiley continued to promote social theory, and Denzin achieved several important accomplishments toward broadening and democratizing the field of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been common for studies presented as about American sociology as a whole to rely on data compiled from leading journals ( American Sociological Review [ASR] and American Journal of Sociology [AJS]), or about presidents of the American Sociological Association [ASA], to represent it. Clearly those are important, but neither can be regarded as providing a representative sample of American sociology. Recently, Stephen Turner has suggested that dominance in the ASA rests with a 'cartel' initially formed in graduate school, and that it favors work in a style associated with the leading journals. The adequacy of these ideas is examined in the light of available data on the last 20 years, which show that very few of the presidents were in the same graduate schools at the same time. All presidents have had distinguished academic records, but it is shown that their publication strategies have varied considerably. Some have had no ASR publications except their presidential addresses, while books and large numbers of other journals not normally mentioned in this context have figured in their contributions, as well as being more prominent in citations. It seems clear that articles in the leading journals have not been as closely tied to prestigious careers as has sometimes been suggested, and that if there is a cartel it has not included all the presidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay describes institutional ethnography as a method of inquiry pioneered by Dorothy E. Smith, and introduces a collection of papers which make distinctive contributions to the development of this novel form of investigation. Institutional ethnography is presented as a research strategy which emerges from Smith‘s wide-ranging explorations of the problematic of the everyday world. Smith‘s conception of the everyday world as problematic involves a critical departure from the concepts and procedures of more conventional sociologies. She argues for an alternative sociology which begins with the standpoint of the actor in everyday life, rather than from within a professional sociological discourse aligned with the society‘s ruling institutions. The familiar sociologies of everyday life do not suffice for this purpose, since they deal with local settings and social worlds, but stop short of examining how these are knitted into broader forms of social organization. In contrast, institutional ethnography examines how the scenes of everyday life are shaped by forms of social organization which cannot be fully grasped from within those scenes. The principal tasks of institutional ethnography include describing the coordination of activities in the everyday world, discovering how ideological accounts define those activities in relation to institutional imperatives, and examining the broader social relations in which local sites of activity are embedded. The four papers which follow demonstrate that specific contributions to institutional ethnography can be made in relation to a wide array of topics, methods, and interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on various meetings of the American Sociological Association (ASA) to be held in the year 1969. The 64th Annual Meeting of ASA will be held in Chicago, Illinois, August 25-28, 1969. The Program Committee, consisting of Ralph H. Turner, Chairman, Irwin Deutscher, Hirman J. Friedsam, Harold L. Sheppard, James F. Short, Sheldon Stryker and Robin M. Williams is planning the program to include a group of sessions on "Group Conflict and Mutual Acceptance." Regular sessions of the association on various topics are held from time to time. The session on Aging by the Department of Sociology, Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana; the session on Collective Behavior by the Department of Sociology, University of Iowa, Iowa City; on Sociology of Development by the Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, California; on Deviance by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan; on Sociology of Education, by the Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Canada.

The article presents the program of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association to be held from August 26-29, 1968. It will be held in Boston, Massachusetts. The Program Committee, consisting of Chairman Philip M. Hauser, William J. Goode, Robin M. Williams. Jr., O.D. Duncan, and Gerhard E. Lenski is planning sessions on the central theme of "On the Gap Between Sociology and Social Policy". The session topics are as follows: 1) Plenary sessions: Sociology and the Negro Revolt, Sociology and Social Accounting; 2) Thematic Sessions: Conformity and Social Control, Law and the Administration of Criminal Justice, Socialization and Education, Population and Population Control, Sociology and Environmental Planning, The Polity and the Academy, Sociology and Social Development, Sociology and Systems Analysis, Sociology and Socialist Countries, 3) Regular Sessions: The New Sociometrics, Theory Building. In order to broaden member participation in the Annual Meeting, the 1968 Program Committee is planning a limited number of sessions utilizing a Seminar format. Papers contributed by members apart from those scheduled for organized sessions, will be screened and grouped under appropriate subject headings.

This article presents information about the 1971 annual meeting program, organized by American Sociological Association (ASA). ASA is 65 years old this year, but hardly ready for retirement and very much in the pink of condition at least as far as its internal affairs go. As of June, 1970 it had nearly 13,000 members distributed as follows in the various membership categories. The growth of ASA membership over the past decade has been spectacular: in 1960, it had less than 7,000 members: in 1965 there were approximately 9,000; today, the number is 13,000. It has almost doubled in the past decade and added two thirds of that growth in the past five years.

This article reports on the convention of the American Sociological Association. The article further refers to a sociologist who is so much a part of normal society that today one of the stores is tendering a fashion show for his wife to indicate her status equal to the wife of doctor, politician or any other example of social adjustment to be found at a convention in New York. According to the author, the paper presented at the convention can only represent a tiny sample of all the chaff that is annually struck up by this vast communal threshing crew. People owe many of these papers to the broad tolerance of the American academic community which apparently approved and even financed them without one man in a supervisory position having the discourtesy to suggest that the matter under study was self-evident. There seems also to be developing a sociology within sociology which promises much. Its best sample is a paper which indicates that persons who fail to answer sociological questionnaires by mail come from homes where their parents habitually beat them.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including American Sociological Association awards, theorising sex and gender and the history focused on homosexuality and education.

Jane Sell’s contributions to social psychology include guides to theory building, experimental methods, public goods, prosocial interaction, gender, race, and status processes. She serves on committees and panels at the American Sociological Association (ASA), the ASA Social Psychology Section, and the National Science Foundation. Her doctoral students attest to her wise and patient guidance, and she continues to enrich social psychology through her research, her service, and her many students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a report of the Representative to the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The American Sociological Association cooperated in the 129th annual meeting of A.A.A.S. through the participation of its members in the general sessions, the programs of the various sections, the invited sessions, and the contributed papers sessions. An Interdisciplinary Symposium in the Social Sciences, sponsored by Sections. Of the many committee activities of A.A.A.S. on which council members receive reports, the one which touched on problems most directly of interest to sociologists was a one-day conference sponsored by the Board of Directors in which ten past presidents participated. The topic under consideration was the directions in which the activities of A.A.A.S. might most usefully be extended. It was agreed that considerably more attention should be given to the way science is taught in high schools and colleges, the problems of training students from less well-developed countries, the flow of talent through the educational system, the public understanding of science, international exchange of scientists and scientific information, the proper use of grants from Federal agencies, relationships between universities and Federal agencies, and the role of scientific academies.

Following American Sociological Association’s recommendations for a cumulative curriculum in sociology, sociology faculty at Pacific Lutheran University created cumulative writing competencies to integrate writing into the curriculum on a department level. In this article, I explore the rationale for this programmatic approach to writing, describe the process by which we developed cumulative writing competencies in our major, discuss implementation, and describe our plans for assessment. The writing competencies emphasize that good writing is about more than good grammar; it also requires clear and complex thinking. This model of writing instruction offers students an opportunity to develop their writing skills in a sequential, intentional, discipline-specific way. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The American Sociological Association and the American Society for Public Administration are widely recognized as being among the premier professional associations in their respective fields within academia and beyond. Although a commitment to the promotion of ethical competence among their members is clearly viewed by both organizations as being central to the accomplishment of their missions, their techniques for doing so have included unique, as well as similar initiatives, to include, perhaps most importantly, periodic reviews and revisions of their marquee Codes of Ethics. While these reviews, which have been undertaken from an intra-disciplinary perspective, have been productive, it is the position of the authors that to approach future reviews of their ethics codes, and other ethics initiatives, from an interdisciplinary, collaborative perspective could serve to facilitate even more insightful modifications. To that end, this paper 1) provides a comprehensive, comparative overview of the ethics initiatives of the two professional associations, 2) presents a summary of what the authors will have learned with respect to the feasibility of continuing to pursue the proposed collaboration between the two associations, and 3) if it is determined that continuing efforts are warranted, presents a formal plan for moving the initiative forward toward a positive conclusion with regard to the ASA and ASPA as well as for potential expansion to other organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact the paper "The Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology," written by Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne in 1985, had on the study and teaching of sociology. The paper argued that sociology, in contrast to other social sciences, had warded off attempts by feminist scholars to transform the field's theoretical and conceptual frameworks. A discussion of a study of the paper, which took place at the 2005 meeting of the American Sociological Association is presented.

This paper is based on a workshop of the same name presented at the 2007 American Sociological Association meetings. The purpose of the workshop and this article is to focus attention on teaching methods that require students to actively investigate sociological phenomena. During the workshop, participants practiced constructing inquiry-guided learning activities suitable for a range of different courses taught throughout the curriculum. These activities are described here. Inquiry-guided learning (IGL) includes a variety of teaching methods that assist students in their investigation of questions and problems. Fundamental to IGL in sociology is the notion that students should think and act like sociologists. IGL activities provide a means whereby the instructor models and the student practices the same disciplinary activities. Students "do" sociology rather than just learning about the results of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been renewed interest over the past 5 years among sociologists in empirically examining the status of sociology in high school. The few studies that have recently been conducted, however, have focused almost exclusively on high school sociology teachers. The nature and structure of the courses themselves have been largely ignored. Given the American Sociological Association’s recent attempts to develop and implement an Advanced Placement course, it seems especially important to examine the characteristics of existing sociology courses. This paper uses the results of a national mail survey to describe and discuss three aspects of the nature and structure of a random sample of sociology courses that were offered during the 2005–06 school year: instructional materials and pedagogical resources, teaching techniques, and course content. I demonstrate that these aspects of the courses look remarkably similar across the country: Teachers rely overwhelmingly on standard introductory textbooks to structure their courses. They are also apt to utilize supplemental materials from textbook publishers and from newspapers and newsmagazines, and to use a combination of lecture and discussion in their sociology classes. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American Sociological Association (ASA) used social science research and data informed approaches to engage community college faculty in the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Double-blind peer review is a central feature of the editorial model of most journals in sociology and neighboring social scientific fields, yet there is little history of how and when its main features developed. Drawing from nearly 70 years of annual reports of the editors of American Sociological Association journals, this article describes the historical emergence of major elements of editorial peer review. These reports and associated descriptive statistics are used to show that blind review, ad hoc review, the formal requirement of exclusive submission, routine use of the revise and resubmit decision, and common use of desk rejection developed separately over a period of decades. The article then argues that the ongoing evolution of the review model has not been driven by intellectual considerations. Rather, the evolution of peer review is best understood as the product of continuous efforts to steward editors' scarce attention while preserving an open submission policy that favors authors' interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]