Category Archives: Sociology

Just how much did Facebook and Twitter contribute to changes in Egypt?

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With the resignation of Hosni Mubarek, there is more talk about how the Internet, specifically social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, helped bring down a dictator in Egypt:

Dictators are toppled by people, not by media platforms. But Egyptian activists, especially the young, clearly harnessed the power and potential of social media, leading to the mass mobilizations in Tahrir Square and throughout Egypt. The Mubarak regime recognized early on that social media could loosen its grip on power. The government began disrupting Facebook and Twitter as protesters hit the streets on Jan. 25 before shutting down the Internet two days later.

In addition to organizing, Egyptian activists used Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to share information and videos. Many of these digital offerings made the rounds online but were later amplified by Al Jazeera and news outlets around the world. “This revolution started online,” Ghonim told Blitzer. “This revolution started on Facebook.”

Egypt’s uprising followed on the heels of Tunisia’s. In each case, protestors employed social media to help oust an authoritarian government–a role some Western commentators expected Twitter to play in Iran during the election protests of 2009.

This article, and others, seem to want it both ways. On one hand, it seems like social media played a role. But when considering whether they were the main factor, the articles back away. Here is how this same article concludes:

It’s true that tweeting alone–especially from safe environs in the West–will not cause a revolution in the Middle East. But as Egypt and Tunisia have proven, social media tools can play a significant role as as activists battle authoritarian regimes, particularly given the tight control dictators typically wield over the official media. Tomorrow’s revolution, as Ghonim would likely attest, may be taking shape on Facebook today.

Or it may not. Ultimately, we need more data. For example, we could match Facebook or Twitter activity regarding Egypt with the level of protests on specific days – did more online traffic or activity lead to bigger protests? This would at least establish a correlation. Why can’t we match GPS information from people using Facebook or Twitter while they were protesting on the streets? This would require more private data, primarily from cell phone companies, but it would be fascinating to look for patterns in this data. And how exactly do these cases from Egypt and Tunisia help us understand what didn’t happen in Iran?

These questions about the role of social media need some answers and perhaps some innovative insights into data collection. And a thought from another commentator are helpful to keep in mind:

Evgeny Morozov writes in his new book, “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom,” that only a small minority of Iranians were actually Twitter users. Presumably, many tweeting about revolution were doing so far from the streets of Tehran.

“Iran’s Twitter Revolution revealed the intense Western longing for a world where information technology is the liberator rather than the oppressor,” Morozov wrote, according to a recent Slate review. In his book, Morozov writes how authoritarian regimes can use the Internet and social media to oppress people rather than such platforms only working the other way around.

Perhaps we only want it to be true that social media use can lead to revolution. If there are enough articles written suggesting that social media helped in Egypt and Tunisia, does it make it likely that in the future social media will play a pivotal and even decisive role in social movements? Morozov seems to suggest this is a Western idea, probably rooted in Enlightenment ideals where information can (and should?) disrupt tradition and authoritarianism.

Sarkozy joins growing chorus of Western European leaders who have said multiculturalism has failed

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In a recent interview, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said multiculturalism has failed in his country:

“My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure,” he said in a television interview when asked about the policy which advocates that host societies welcome and foster distinct cultural and religious immigrant groups.

“Of course we must all respect differences, but we do not want… a society where communities coexist side by side.

“If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France,” the right-wing president said.

“The French national community cannot accept a change in its lifestyle, equality between men and women… freedom for little girls to go to school,” he said.

“We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him,” Sarkozy said in the TFI channel show.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australia’s ex-prime minister John Howard and Spanish ex-premier Jose Maria Aznar have also recently said multicultural policies have not successfully integrated immigrants.

Based on what Sarkozy said in this interview, it sounds like he either has a different definition of multiculturalism or a different end goal. A contrast to multiculturalism would be assimilation where newcomers to a country (or any group) should quickly or eventually adopt the customs and values of the country they have entered. Sarkozy is suggesting that because some immigrants have not done this, multiculturalism has failed. But Sarkozy seems to be explaining how assimilation has failed. The Oxford English Dictionary defines multiculturalism thusly: “the policy or process whereby the distinctive identities of the cultural groups within such a society are maintained or supported.” In this sense, a long-running policy of multiculturalism ends up changing the larger culture to some degree. It sounds like Sarkozy (and some of these other leaders) are not as interested in this. Can French or English or German culture change and incorporate elements of cultures from immigrants living within their borders?

These comments from various leaders seem to have been motivated in part by growing Muslim populations in these nations.

It is also interesting to note that there is not a whole lot of public discussion about this in the United States. Some of this may be more below the surface, particularly when issues like immigration arise (though this has been overwhelmed by economic concerns). Can you imagine an American political leader of any party making a statement like these Western European leaders have?

Skyscrapers matter for both the past and future of cities

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An argument for why cities are both built around skyscrapers and also need them for a better future. Also, find three quick suggestions for changes to “zoning boards and preservation committees.”

Scientists call for more rules and regulations about data

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There are a lot of academics and researchers collecting data on a variety of topics. Some scientists argue that we need more regulations about data so that researchers can work with and access data collected by others:

In 10 new articles, also published in Science, researchers in fields as diverse as paleontology and neuroscience say the lack of data libraries, insufficient support from federal research agencies, and the lack of academic credit for sharing data sets have created a situation in which money is wasted and information that could reveal better cancer treatments or the causes of climate change goes by the wayside…

A big problem is the many forms of data and the difficulty of comparing them. In neuroscience, for instance, researchers collect data on scales of time that range from nanoseconds, if they are looking at rates of neuron firing, to years, if they are looking at developmental changes. There are also difference in the kind of data that come from optical microscopes and those that come from electron microscopes, and data on a cellular scale and data from a whole organism…

He added that he was limited by how data are published. “When I see a figure in a paper, it’s just the tip of the iceberg to me. I want to see it in a different form in order to do a different kind of analysis.” But the data are not available in a public, searchable format.

Shared data libraries sound like they could be useful. Based on experience, however, even if data is made available, it still takes a good amount of time to download data, read the documentation, and reshape the data in a way that one can start to replicate findings from journal articles.

Argument: improve educational performance of poor children by moving them to the suburbs

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Academic achievement is a familiar topic in recent American discourse: how exactly do we improve student performance, particularly for those who are behind? One foundation president suggest the answer is to have more poor kids move to the suburbs and attend suburban schools with wealthier children:

One of the most important recent pieces of education research was released last year — and promptly ignored. The Century Foundation’s report “Housing Policy is School Policy” confirms the seminal 1966 finding of Johns Hopkins University sociologist James Coleman: The school-based variable that most profoundly affects student performance is the socioeconomic composition of the school. In short, poor children do better if they attend schools with affluent children.

The “new” news in the report? It highlights the critical out-of-school influence of where the low-income children reside. Poor children attending an affluent school do even better, it turns out, if they also live in an affluent neighborhood.

There is more interesting material in here, including reference to the Gautreaux program in Chicago (see some of the academic research generated in studying this program) that was one of the first programs that moved public housing families to suburban neighborhoods. (However, there is no mention of over similar and bigger programs, like HUD’s Moving To Opportunity.)

As the article suggests, this is a difficult solution to implement. The suburbs tend to have more expensive housing, suburban residents can be resistant to minorities and the lower classes, support networks can be lacking, and transportation by automobile is often required (and is costly). Additionally, it is very hard to create laws that would force movement or impel suburban communities to build affordable housing.

More broadly, this piece is a reminder of the price of segregated housing in America. We have an ethos that says people can move wherever they want (particularly if they have the money) but there are a variety of factors that inhibit this. As American Apartheid suggests, residential segregation “is the ‘linchpin’ of American race relations.”

Explaining the mean girls (and boys)

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A study from the most recent American Sociological Review is getting attention because of its finding that popular kids in middle and high school are more likely to be mean:

[A] paper released Tuesday in the American Sociological Review, which found that the more central you are to your school’s social network, the more aggressive you are as well — unless you’re at the top of the heap, in which case you’re more likely to give your peers a break.

“By and large, status increases aggression, until you get to the very top,” said the study’s lead author, UC Davis sociologist Robert Faris. “When kids become more popular, later on they become more aggressive.”

Three larger trends seem to be converging in this research: analyzing social networks of teenagers/emerging adults while also looking into bullying/aggressive behavior.

The network analysis is based on a measure common now to sociological surveys and research:

Faris and UC Davis sociology Professor Diane Felmlee followed almost 4,000 middle and high school students in three North Carolina counties, asking each child to name their five best friends. They were also asked to identify up to five people they bullied and five classmates who picked on them.

The researchers mapped each student’s popularity based on their personal relationships and compared it to aggressive behavior.

I’m curious to know if this analysis would also apply to adults.

How (baseball) statistics can help you earn $2.025 million

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Traditional baseball statistics would say that Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Ross Ohlendorf didn’t have a great 2010 season: the 27-year old had 1 win against 11 losses with 108 innings pitched in 21 games. Yet, in an arbitration hearing, Ohlendorf just earned a pay raise from $439,000 to $2.025 million. What happened?

Even though this might seem like a minor matter (the average MLB salary in 2010 was $3.3 million), there is plenty of talk already that Ohlendorf benefited from statistics (and a field known as sabermetrics) that have become fairly normal in the last 20 years in baseball. Ohlendorf’s WHIP ((walks + hits)/innings pitched) was decent at 1.384. His ERA+ (comparing his ERA to the league average and adjusting for the ballpark) was 100, right at the league average.

Ultimately, these statistics suggest that Ohlendorf’s performance was decent, at least average. His main problem was that he was pitching for a terrible team that finished with 57 wins and 105 losses. With a little more data beyond what typically goes on a baseball card or is flashed on a television graphic, Ohlendorf got a sizable raise.

There could be some alternative takes on this outcome:

1. Wow, even an average MLB pitcher can make big money.

2. It would be interesting to know whether Ohlendorf’s representative in the arbitration hearing used all of these advanced statistics to make his case.

3. How quickly can workers in other careers develop advanced statistics to further their pitches for raises?

How to improve the graduate student-faculty adviser relationship

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An English professor has discovered that there are a lot of graduate students (and former graduate students) who are upset with what they perceive to be lack of information given to them by their graduate advisers. The professor suggests how this relationship between graduate student and adviser could be improved:

That failure rests absolutely on us. We’re the teachers, and the initiative is ours. The communication gap between graduate teachers and graduate students is an intramural version of the crisis facing academe writ large: Professors are only lately waking up to the need to take their assigned part in the continuing and necessary discussion of the role of the university in society today.

We need likewise to rethink our role in the education of our graduate students. Professional-development seminars, which I discussed last month, help stake out common understanding between professors and graduate students, but communication only starts there. Advisers need to advance it. We shouldn’t wait for students to ask what’s out there careerwise. It’s part of our job to tell them. To mend the gap, we must mind the gap—or else corrosive anger will widen it…

I’m not sure I’d let the teachers off the hook so easily, but we should pay attention to the reader’s larger point, namely: Graduate students, as well as their professors, have responsibility for the choices they make.

School is a place where teachers tell students what to do. At the same time, school is supposed to prepare students to make choices for themselves. In between those two realities lie a lot of teaching and learning—and professional development. Both professors and students have to adapt to the rapidly changing conditions before us: We both must learn how to work together so that our students can leave us with every possible advantage. We all need to keep our eyes open.

On the whole, it sounds like there simply needs to be more conversation within graduate schools about the possibilities and pitfalls that graduate students and practitioners of particular disciplines will face in a changing world. The experience a faculty member might have had 20 years ago may not repeat itself but at the same time, the graduate student shouldn’t take that past experience as a factual story about how things always work.

A missing part of this conversation seems to be the interests of the graduate department and the school/university at large. Graduate departments generally want to produce students who go on to good jobs at Research 1 institutions. These departments are rated on this productivity, particularly by their peers at other Research 1 institutions. Would a department who puts a majority of PhDs in private industry when the norm for the field is Research 1 jobs be punished or be looked down upon? What incentives could be put into place so that departments would promote a broader range of options for students with advanced degrees?

Something might be said here as well for students building close relationships with several faculty. Advisers are important, particularly for the thesis and dissertation stages. But it is helpful to have other perspectives as well, something that is not possible if a student is tied to only one faculty member.

One proposal for 8 options instead of going to college

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James Altucher is a “money manager and author” who has put out some provocative ideas about avoiding college, partly because of its high cost at numerous campuses. And Altucher has recently come up with 8 alternatives to college that he would encourage teenagers to pursue:

  • Start a business.
  • Work for a charity.
  • Travel the world.
  • Create art.
  • Master a sport.
  • Master a game.
  • Write a book.
  • Make people laugh.

This is an interesting list. A number of these items push teenagers to expand their horizons or be creative, rather than simply following prescribed paths of going to college.

Social psychologists respond to claim of liberal bias in their field

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The New York Times describes a recent speech by a social psychologist arguing that liberals are underrepresented in academia. While this argument is not new to academia (the article cites several studies of recent years saying similar things), it is interesting to note how the social psychologists responded:

The fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology have long attracted liberals, but they became more exclusive after the 1960s, according to Dr. Haidt. “The fight for civil rights and against racism became the sacred cause unifying the left throughout American society, and within the academy,” he said, arguing that this shared morality both “binds and blinds.”

“If a group circles around sacred values, they will evolve into a tribal-moral community,” he said. “They’ll embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they’ll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value.” It’s easy for social scientists to observe this process in other communities, like the fundamentalist Christians who embrace “intelligent design” while rejecting Darwinism. But academics can be selective, too, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan found in 1965 when he warned about the rise of unmarried parenthood and welfare dependency among blacks — violating the taboo against criticizing victims of racism…

Can social scientists open up to outsiders’ ideas? Dr. Haidt was optimistic enough to title his speech “The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology,” urging his colleagues to focus on shared science rather than shared moral values. To overcome taboos, he advised them to subscribe to National Review and to read Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions.”

For a tribal-moral community, the social psychologists in Dr. Haidt’s audience seemed refreshingly receptive to his argument. Some said he overstated how liberal the field is, but many agreed it should welcome more ideological diversity. A few even endorsed his call for a new affirmative-action goal: a membership that’s 10 percent conservative by 2020. The society’s executive committee didn’t endorse Dr. Haidt’s numerical goal, but it did vote to put a statement on the group’s home page welcoming psychologists with “diverse perspectives.” It also made a change on the “Diversity Initiatives” page — a two-letter correction of what it called a grammatical glitch, although others might see it as more of a Freudian slip.

In the old version, the society announced that special funds to pay for travel to the annual meeting were available to students belonging to “underrepresented groups (i.e., ethnic or racial minorities, first-generation college students, individuals with a physical disability, and/or lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered students).”

As Dr. Haidt noted in his speech, the “i.e.” implied that this was the exclusive, sacred list of “underrepresented groups.” The society took his suggestion to substitute “e.g.” — a change that leaves it open to other groups, too. Maybe, someday, even to conservatives.

Several questions come to mind:

1. What will social psychologists do about this in the long run? It’s not surprising that the executive committee didn’t support the 10% by 2020 plan but what will they actively do to promote conservative involvement in this discipline?

2. How will the response to this within academia differ from the response outside of academia, particularly among groups who consistently already make noise about academics being too liberal?

3. In the long run, does this liberal bias mean that all or most of research within this field (and others) is not objective or true?