Discusses the way the mass media treats social problems, its contribution to causing and curing social problems, and its use by concerned organisations and groups wishing to act to reduce social problems. It brings together a wide range of topics including racism, sexism, poverty, violence, pornography, the educational disadvantaged, and crime and justice.
Is violence on the streets caused by violence in video games? Does cyber-bullying lead to an increase in suicide rates? Are teens promiscuous because of Teen Mom? As Karen Sternheimer clearly demonstrates, popular culture is an easy scapegoat for many of society's problems, but it is almost always the wrong answer. Now in its second edition, Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture goes beyond the news-grabbing headlines claiming that popular culture is public enemy number one to consider what really causes the social problems we are most concerned about. The sobering fact is that a "media made them do it" explanation fails to illuminate the roots of social problems like poverty, violence, and environmental degradation. Sternheimer's analysis deftly illustrates how welfare "reform," a two-tiered health care system, and other difficult systemic issues have far more to do with our contemporary social problems than Grand Theft Auto or Facebook. The fully-revised new edition features recent moral panics—think sexting and cyberbullying—and an entirely new chapter exploring social media. Expanded discussion of how we understand society's problems as social constructions without disregarding empirical evidence, as well as the cultural and structural issues underlying those ills, allows students to stretch their sociological imaginations.
From terrorism to social inequality and from health care to environmental issues, social problems affect us all. The Encyclopedia will offer an interdisciplinary perspective into these and many other social problems that are a continuing concern in our lives, whether we confront them on a personal, local, regional, national, or global level.
This volume focuses on media and social movements. Contributing authors draw on cases as diverse as the Harry Potter Alliance to youth oriented, non-profit educational organizations to systematically assess how media environments, systems, and usage affect collective action in the 21st Century.
There is no adequate definition of social problems within sociology, and there is not and never has been a sociology of social problems. That observation is the point of departure of this book. The authors aim to provide such a definition and to prepare the ground for the empirical study of social problems. They are aware that their objective will strike many fellow sociologists as ambitious, perhaps even arrogant. Their work challenges sociologists who have, over a period of fifty years, written treatises on social problems, produced textbooks cataloguing the nature, distribution, and causes of these problems, and taught many sociology courses. It is only natural that the authors' work will be viewed as controversial in light of the large literature which has established a "sociology of" a wide range of social problems-the sociology of race relations, prostitution, poverty, crime, mental illness, and so forth. In the 1970s when the authors were preparing for a seminar on the sociology of social problems, their review of the "literature" revealed the absence of any systematic, coherent statement of theory or method in the study of social problems. For many years the subject was listed and offered by university departments of sociology as a "service course" to present undergraduates with what they should know about the various "social pathologies" that exist in their society. This conception of social problems for several decades has been reflected in the substance and quality of the literature dominated by textbooks. In 'Constructing Social Problems', the authors propose that social problems be conceived as the claims-making activities of individuals or groups regarding social conditions they consider unjust, immoral, or harmful and that should be addressed. This perspective, as the authors have formulated it, conceives of social problems as a process of interaction that produces social problems as social facts in society. The authors further propose that this process and the social facts it produces are the data to be researched for the sociology of social problems. This volume will be of interest to those concerned with the discipline of sociology, especially its current theoretical development and growth.
From TV to smartphone apps to movies to newspapers, mass media are nearly omnipresent in contemporary life and act as a powerful social institution. In this introduction to media sociology, Lindner and Barnard encourage readers to think critically about the power of big media companies, state-media relations, new developments in journalism, representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality in media, and what social media may or may not be doing to our brains, among other topics. Each chapter explores pressing questions about media by carefully excavating the results of classic and contemporary social scientific studies. The authors bring these findings to life with anecdotes and examples ripped from headlines and social media newsfeeds. By synthesizing research on new media and traditional media, entertainment media and news, quantitative and qualitative studies, All Media Are Social offers a succinct and accessibly-written analysis of both enduring patterns and some of the newest developments in mass media. With strong emphases on theory and methods, Lindner and Barnard provide students and general readers alike with the tools to better understand the ever-changing media landscape.
The creative use of fear by news media and social control organizations has produced a "discurse of fear" - the awareness and expection that danger and risk are lurking everywhere. Case studies illustrates how certain organizations and social institutions benefit from the explotation of such fear construction. One social impact is a manipulated public empathy: We now have more "victims" than at any time in our prior history. Another, more troubling resutl is the role we have ceded to law enforcement and punishment: we turn ever more readily to the state and formal control to protect us from what we fear. This book attempts through the marshalling of significant data to interrupt that vicious cycle of fear discourse.
The media provide access to and construct social problems for large numbers of audiences throughout the world and in turn themselves have become a social problem in view of their multiple and complex effects, many negative. The media have been blamed by a wide spectrum of theorists and critics for promoting violence and sexism, racism, homophobia, ageism, and other oppressive social phenomena. Social problems connected with the media also involve allegedly harmful media influence on children and youth; pornography and the degradation of women and sexuality; advertising manipulation; and the promotion of excessive consumerism and materialism.
Updated with recent issues such as the national debate on health care reform, this Second Edition of How Can We Solve Our Social Problems? gives students a sense of hope by demonstrating specific, realistic steps we can take to solve some of the most pervasive social problems in America today. Author James Crone maintains a sense of sociological objectivity throughout and helps students realize that we can take steps to solve such key social problems as poverty, racial and ethnic inequality, unequal education, and environmental issues. The book's first two chapters define "social problem,," provide a theoretical background, discuss the daunting barriers we face in attempting to solve social problems, and demonstrate how sociology can help.
