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Football may be America's most popular sport, but with growing evidence of the risk of sport-associated concussions, some adults are reconsidering which sports to encourage children to play. Using data from a nationally representative sample of 958 respondents, we examine how political party, belief in patriotic displays in sport, attention to concussion news, social class, and race are associated with support for children playing each of the five major U.S. sports: baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, and football. Our findings suggest that unlike other sports, attitudes about youth participation in football are divided by views on patriotism in sport, age, race, education, and attention to concussion news. For many Americans, football is connected to participation in a civil religion, which celebrates national pride and respect for the military. We argue that child safety advocates who aim to steer children away from football must grapple with the deeper cultural and identity-based framework associated with the sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a long tradition of activism within sport, a popular criticism of athlete protest is that it is a "distraction" that hinders on-field performance. The widespread demonstrations against racial injustice in 2017 among players in the National Football League (NFL) provided an opportunity to test this "distraction hypothesis." Using data drawn from multiple sources, we first explored which factors predicted player protest, finding that Black players and those playing for underdogs were more likely to protest. Then, using a series of analyses at the player-game level (n = 19,051) and the team-game level (n = 512), we tested the assertion that protest is detrimental to individual or team performance, finding no evidence for a distraction effect. The results of this study allow us to better understand social factors that may affect athletic performance or constrain athlete activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each year the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association curates a special issue highlighting sociological contributions to technology and media studies. That tradition continued in 2020, even as everything else changed. The articles included in this year's special issue were mostly written pre-Pandemic, yet their implications seem amplified by the current historical moment. With a globe gone remote, mediated communication rose from a specialist academic subject to an acute social consideration, intersecting with and illuminating basic sociological concerns about inequality, the nature of work, family life, and the compounding effects of race, class, gender, and sexuality as they interplay with social and material conditions. These topics are all reflected in the articles from this year's issue, now inflected with a post-Pandemic reality that shows insights from CITAMS are needed now, more than ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tor anonymity network allows users to protect their privacy and circumvent censorship restrictions but also shields those distributing child abuse content, selling or buying illicit drugs, or sharing malware online. Using data collected from Tor entry nodes, we provide an estimation of the proportion of Tor network users that likely employ the network in putatively good or bad ways. Overall, on an average country/day, ~6.7% of Tor network users connect to Onion/Hidden Services that are disproportionately used for illicit purposes. We also show that the likely balance of beneficial and malicious use of Tor is unevenly spread globally and systematically varies based upon a country's political conditions. In particular, using Freedom House's coding and terminological classifications, the proportion of often illicit Onion/Hidden Services use is more prevalent (~7.8%) in "free" countries than in either "partially free" (~6.7%) or "not free" regimes (~4.8%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite both scholarly and popular claims that citizen journalism (CJ) represents a growing democratizing force in the journalistic field, recent scholarship in the area has noted the decline of the organizational population of CJ. In this paper, we investigate how individual characteristics of sites and the dynamics of larger organizational population affect a CJ site’s risk of experiencing a mortality. Drawing on the largest sample to date of US-based English-language CJ sites, this study examines the risk of site mortality through an event history framework. Findings indicate that the strongest predictor of a site’s mortality is the age of the site, consistent with organizational population theory’s ‘liability of newness.’ We also find that for-profit and community-based sites have lower rates of site mortality, indicating that adopting legitimate conventions of journalism may serve as a protective buffer to site death. The results offer mixed evidence on whether CJ has become more professionalized via attrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous research has considered patterns of homogeneity and heterogeneity in the journalistic field, existing literature has largely ignored the factors that contribute to the growth and contraction of the field. Using citizen journalism (CJ) as a case study, we examine how four forces – organizational population dynamics, technological innovations, exogenous political events, and endogenous disruptions elsewhere in the field – shaped the growth of CJ over time and, consequently, the journalistic field. Using a snowball sampling method, we collected a “near-population” of U.S.-based, English-language CJ sites (n = 1829) to measure yearly density and rates of foundings and mortalities. The population of CJ sites increased through most of the period, foundings declined after a spike in 2005, and mortalities rose dramatically after 2010. The results provide evidence that organizational population and technological change affected the size of the population of CJ sites, while political upheaval and disruptions within professional journalism held less sway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editorial staff play an essential role as gatekeepers within professional journalism. Citizen journalism has the potential to depart from routine journalistic practices and allow for more democratic posting of unmoderated content. Nonetheless, many citizen journalism web sites do have an editorial staff and no existing research has explored the contributions of editors to citizen journalism web sites. I theorize that the editorial staff on citizen journalism sites serve as legitimating organizational structures within the larger organizational field and, as citizen gatekeepers, who enforce journalistic routines. Using a content analysis of a sample (n = 326) drawn from the largest sampling frame of English-language citizen journalism web sites based in the United States to date (n = 1958), I examine the characteristics of citizen journalism web sites with an editorial model as well as how the presence of an editorial staff is associated with the practice of journalistic routines common in professional journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines processes that contribute to the underrepresentation of women in film by linking the depiction of gender in film to its impact on domestic box office returns. Drawing on a sample of widely distributed movies from 2000 to 2009 ( n = 974), we test whether the box office under-performance of films with an independent female presence results primarily from 'downstream' public rejection or from an gendered 'upstream' division of resources that provides greater studio support to movies about men. Using a series of multivariate regression analyses and controlling for genre, critical appraisal, arthouse label, being a sequel, and including a popular star, films with a female presence earn less at the box office. This effect, however, appears to be largely the consequence of movies that feature women having smaller production budgets, suggesting that the underrepresentation of women in film stems from 'upstream' routines of film industry gatekeepers, not a lesser interest in stories about women in the minds of the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars, journalists, and laypeople alike have argued that the relatively new field of citizen journalism (CJ) offers a space where citizens can act as amateur reporters to challenge the dominance of mainstream media. However, contrary to popular expectations, a large number of CJ sites include current or former professional journalists as contributors, calling into question the new field's independence from the mainstream media. Using a content analysis of a sample (n = 326) drawn from the largest sampling frame of English-language CJ websites based in the United States to date (n = 1958), we explore potential explanations for the presence of professional journalists as contributors on CJ sites. In a series of logistic regression analyses, we find evidence that for-profit CJ sites and those with editorial staffs are more likely to have professional journalists. Furthermore, we find that sites with professional journalists do not offer significantly different content when controlling for other factors. Based on these findings, we theorize that CJ websites seek out professional journalists as a means of gaining legitimacy within a new organizational field. These results indicate a growing professionalization within the field of CJ and the persistence of a public sphere dominated by elite actors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the 'culture wars' using the lens of attitudes toward soccer. Despite soccer's increasing popularity in the United States, anti-soccer rhetoric is fairly common. In his widely read book, How Soccer Explains the World (2004), Foer contends that the 'culture wars,' including divisions over soccer, are better explained by reactions to globalization than social class or political ideology. Using data from a survey of Nebraskans, we find that attitudes about cultural globalization are the best predictor of soccer sentiment. Contrary to popular claims about the 'culture wars,' most respondents were moderate in their attitudes toward both soccer and globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the mass media coverage of U.S. Operation Iraqi Freedom by journalists. A content analysis is provided concerning the quality and effectiveness of three types of journalists involved with that war including journalists that the U.S. government embedded in military units, journalists that were stationed in Baghdad, Iraq, and journalists that were independent and were thus free to roam. Topics include news coverage which emphasized a soldier's experience in war while downplaying the invasion's effects on Iraqi people.

Background: Cannabis is one of the most commonly sold drugs on cryptomarkets. Because of the anonymity-granting functions of Tor, no study has traced the within-country effect of the Dark Web on cannabis consumption patterns. This article uses a big data research design to examine the association between revealed interest in the Dark Web and self-reported cannabis use within US states from 2011 when Silk Road launched to 2015 when Operation Onymous shuttered nine markets.Methods: This study uses mixed effects ordinary least squared regressions to analyze U.S. state/year panel data, using robust standard errors to correct for heteroscedasticity. Marginal effect plots illustrate substantive effects. The dataset consists of state-level variables drawn from the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), the American Community Survey (ACS), the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the Correlates of State Policy Project, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts. Data for the Dark Web interest measure are drawn from Google Trends. The proxy for Dark Web interest is an index of eight Dark Web related search queries.Results: The regression analysis indicates that Dark Web interest in US states positively correlates with cannabis consumption rates overall and among older adults (26+), but not youth (12-17) or younger adults (18-25). Additionally, Dark Web interest is positively associated with more frequent cannabis usage rates (i.e. use in the past month, excluding first time use) both overall and among older adults, but not among youth or younger adults. Dark Web interest does not correlate with casual use (i.e. use in the last year, excluding use in the past month) for any age bracket. Interacting Dark Web interest with state-level legalization regimes indicates that the association between Dark Web interest and cannabis consumption in the past year is no different in medically legalized states and amplified in states with recreational legalization. Lastly, the Dark Web interest term does not correlate with first time cannabis either overall or for any age category.Conclusions: Interest in the Dark Web is associated with increased cannabis use in U.S. states from 2011-2015, but the effect is concentrated in states with more frequent cannabis users, older users, and in states with recreational legalization of cannabis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]