Social Science Space

If you were going to create an encyclopedia about “mass media,” your first task likely would be to define both words in the term. Doing so was immeasurably easier in the 1920s, when the term “mass media” first started making the rounds, but it’s grown corresponding harder as both the popular conception of ‘mass’ has mutated and the very media itself has evolved from purely paper to heavily broadcast to OMG online.

Just after Samantha Power’s American Academy of Political and Social Science Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize lecture earlier this month, Social Science Space flagged her down to get some advice on navigating these abutting realms.

The academic publishing paradigm is changing, driven in large part by calls for open access to publicly funded research. In this first of two parts, SAGE Publishing’s vice president of open research explains the genesis of a pilot program his company has inked with a major U.S. research university.

Wade Clark Roof, a sociologist of religion whose work examined the evolving spirituality of the Baby Boomer generation in such words as A Generation of Seekers, has died.

Surely preparing Britain’s social science community to take the lead in a future of global and interdisciplinary team research isn’t a quest for a mythical beast? Matt Flinders, who heads an ESRC project trying to nurture that leadership, doesn’t think so – but he understands why someone might think it is.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has followed other research-based government agencies in trying to ring-fence American research from collaborative and acquisitive foreign actors. Could they mean China?

Whatever level of public awareness exists about mental health, it’s probably safe to say that awareness about the system of mental health care is considerably worse. And that’s a real issue, say the authors of a new book, ‘Mental Health in Crisis,’ whose title banishes any hope that the current system is acceptable. A Q&A with the lead author, Joel Vos.

A new survey of university faculty finds that the idea of altmetrics – using something aside from journal citations as the measure of scholarly impact – has made less headway among faculty than might be expected given the hoopla surrounding altmetrics. These new measures are the most familiar in the social science community (barely) and least familiar in the arts and humanities (dramatically so).

Earlier this month, psychologist Carol Dweck, author of the 2006 bestseller ‘Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,’ received the 2019 SAGE-CASBS Award. Social Science Space asked the award winner a few questions about her work, how growth mindset has been received by various publics, and what advice she might give today’s young scholars.

When the National Science Foundation tabbed Arthur “Skip” Lupia to head its Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE), it was making a statement whether it meant to or not. Lupia, officially the Hal R. Varian Collegiate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, has been one of social science’s ablest defenders — and occasional critics.

Gleb Tsipursky is addressing fake news, but not by trying to educate consumers about the viper already in their newsfeed. He harnessed his own skills as a behavioral scientist and is asking newsmakers themselves to not speak or spread fake news in the first place.

Sociologist Nick Adams’ TagWorks methodology is being used to rate — and in turn improve — the most shared news stories of the day via a new tool called PublicEditor.