Month: February 2020

• lundquist and curington, “love me tinder, love me sweet“
• fetters, “the five years that changed romance” (yes, this is not an academic article, BUT it does interview holly wood, who wrote her dissertation on the topic (but sadly has yet to publish on it). holly is also a former student who is super awesome, by the way…)
• stempfhuber and liegl, “intimacy mobilized: hook-up practices in the location-based social network grindr” (yes, 3 things is a lot to read! but this is the only standard academic article, and it does a nice job of framing this in terms of space and the actual objects, so it’s the most “digital” of the three)

extra stuff you will never read is below…

• tindr has its own sociologist! read more…
• this is not a cat influencer, but a dog influencer, so cave canem, but here’s a new interview with the owners/exploiters of “mr. bubz” (not to be confused with ‘lil bub) (how do they make money? here’s how)
• human celebrities are weird, too. “cameo is weirder than anyone expected”

• alice marwick, “the fabulous lives of micro-celebrities“
  • (if interested and have time (ha!), here is the next chapter from her book status update, “self branding” (NOT NOT NOT required!)
• zuleyka zevallos, “the sociology of unfollowing on twitter”

stop stop stop stop !!!!!!! stop stop stop stop

• marwick and boyd “I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience” (at this point, you’re bored with “context collapse” but this is the key article on the topic, so i’m sharing it just in case you want to take a looksy. if you want to think about how power can force/create such a collapse, read this piece by davis & jurgenson, “context collapse: theorizing context collusions and collisions“)

• boyd, “friends, friendsters, and myspace top8: writing community into being on social network sites”
• boyd, chapter 1 “identity” in it’s complicated (this link is the entire book, which is a good book, but you only should read pp29-54)
• tufecki, “who acquires friends through social media and why” (this is short!)
• wilson, “the era of antisocial social media” (this is short!)

more self! more control! think about this (among other things): what is the relationship between this quantified self and the selfie self? is this also a performance? is it more real? (how) do they relate?

• deborah lupton (from last week’s digital sociology book, but this is the field where she is the true leader in study), the quantified self (2018)
  • chapter 1 (this is a history/overview of the tech. you can skip this is you like, but it’s here as a reference in case you want/need/desire it)
  • chapter 2 (chapter 2 is theory, and it is a slightly more in-depth take on things than we say in her book last week, so there’s no reason to revisit this in a new reading — so if you want a refresher, go back to that text, and i won’t even pretend there’s a chance you will read this additional stuff, so i won’t include it.)
  • chapter 3
  • chapter 5

self, selfie, selfie, selfie, self.

1. cambre&lavrence, “how else would you take a photo? #selfieambivalence“
2. warfield, “mirrorcameraroom: the gendered multi-instabilities of the selfie” [[a slightly more straightforward version of her thinking can be found here, if you want to read. if you want to watch/listen to her give a 40minute presentation on why selfies are great, you can watch here. the operative word is “can.”]]
3. kaufman, “a sociological snapshot of selfies” (this is an informal blog post, but can be useful for those new to the sociology game, in giving more insight into what’s useful about the sociological perspective)

ALSO ALSO ALSO: take a selfie and send it to me, me, me! do it before class tuesday by 1230pm. thanks thanks thanks.

BELOW THIS YOU WILL FIND EXTRA STUFF THAT YOU WILL NEVER READ IN YOUR LIFE BUT WHATEVER…

• A couple more defenses of the politics of selfies (short and not academic, a.k.a quick reads):
  • #feministselfie reinforces why selfies are empowering;
  • the sexist backlash against selfies
• saltz, the history of the selfie (art history!)
• souza et al. dawn of the selfie era (quantitative analysis!)
• selfie city — comparing selfie styles across 5 cities [lots of journalistic takes on it (like this) and a feminist critique of the project]
• smyne: “selfie: the revolutionary potential of your own face, in 7 chapters” (estimated 57 minute read!!! worth it, if you have the time (which you don’t) and the interest (which you might!)

deborah lupton, first 2 chapters of digital sociology

tressie mcmillian-cottom, why is digital sociology?