Prelims

Half Title Page

Networks, Hacking, and Media – CITAMS@30

Series Page

Studies in Media and Communications

Series Editors: Shelia R. Cotten, Laura Robinson and Jeremy Schulz

Recent Volumes:

Editorial Board

• Rebecca G. Adams

  University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA

• Ron Anderson

  University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, USA

• Denise Anthony

  Dartmouth College, USA

• Alejandro Artopoulos

  Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina

• John R. Baldwin

  Illinois State University, USA

• Jason Beech

  Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina

• Grant Blank

  Oxford Internet Institute, UK

• Geoffrey Bowker

  Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, USA

• Casey Brienza

  City University London, UK

• Jonathan Bright

  Oxford Internet Institute, UK

• Manuel Castells

  University of Southern California, USA

• Mary Chayko

  Rutgers University, USA

• Wenhong Chen

  University of Texas at Austin

• Lynn Schofield Clark

  University of Denver, USA

• Jenny L. Davis

  James Madison University, USA

• Hopeton S. Dunn

  University of the West Indies in Jamaica, Jamaica

• Jennifer Earl

  University of Arizona, USA

• Hernan Galperin

  Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina

• Joshua Gamson

  University of San Francisco, USA

• Blanca Gordo

  University of California at Berkeley, USA

• Tim Hale

  Partners Center for Connected Health and Harvard Medical School, USA

• David Halle

  University of California, USA

• Caroline Haythornthwaite

  University of British Columbia, Canada

• Anne Holohan

  Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

• Andrea Hoplight Tapia

  Penn State University, USA

• Heather Horst

  RMIT University, Australia

• Gabe Ignatow

  University of North Texas, USA

• Samantha Nogueira Joyce

  St. Mary’s College of California, USA

• Vikki Katz

  Rutgers University, USA

• Nalini Kotamraju

  IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

• Robert LaRose

  Michigan State University, USA

• Sayonara Leal

  University of Brasilia, Brazil

• Brian Loader

  University of York, UK

• Monica Martinez

  Universidade de Sorocaba, Brazil

• Noah McClain

  Illinois Institute of Technology, USA

• Gustavo Mesch

  University of Haifa, Israel

• Sonia Virgínia Moreira

  Universidade do Estado Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

• Gina Neff

  University of Washington, USA

• Christena Nippert-Eng

  Illinois Institute of Technology, USA

• Hiroshi Ono

  Texas A&M University, USA

• Heloisa Pait

  Universidade Estadual Paulista

• C. J. Pascoe

  University of Oregon, USA

• Antonio C. La Pastina

  Texas A&M, USA

• Trevor Pinch

  Cornell University, USA

• Anabel Quan-Haase

  University of Western Ontario, Canada

• Kelly Quinn

  University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

• Violaine Roussel

  University of Paris 8, France

• Saskia Sassen

  Columbia University, USA

• Sara Schoonmaker

  University of Redlands, USA

• Markus Schulz

  The New School, USA

• Mike Stern

  University of Chicago, USA

• Joseph D. Straubhaar

  The University of Texas at Austin, USA

• Andrea Hoplight Tapia

  Penn State University, USA

• Simone Tosoni

  Catholic University of Milan, Italy

• Zeynep Tufekci

  University of North Carolina, USA

• Keith Warner

  Santa Clara University, USA

• Barry Wellman

  NetLab, University of Toronto, Canada

• Jim Witte

  George Mason University, USA

• Julie B. Wiest

  West Chester University of Pennsylvania, USA

• Simeon Yates

  University of Liverpool, UK

Title Page

Studies in Media and Communications Volume 17

Networks, Hacking, and Media – CITAMS@30: Now and Then and Tomorrow

Editors

Barry Wellman

University of Toronto, Canada

Laura Robinson

Santa Clara University, USA

Casey Brienza

Media Sociology Preconference Founder and Chair, USA

Wenhong Chen

University of Texas at Austin, USA

Shelia R. Cotten

Michigan State University, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA , UK

First edition 2019

Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78769-666-2 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-665-5 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-667-9 (Epub)

ISSN: 2050-2060 (Series)

Contents

Foreword to CITAMS@30

The reception, sessions, and roundtables at American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia in August 2018 aside, these double volumes are perhaps the most enduring fruit of our celebration of CITAMS@30 – the 30th anniversary of the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. The two volumes are the results of the numerous conversations – in personal and various mode of digital communication – between and among the co-editors and contributors, many of whom have been an integral part of the CITAMS community.

With its roots in ASA’s Microcomputing User Group meetings, the Microcomputing Section established in 1988 (Anderson, 2006) has developed into a strategic venue that connects sociologists, communication scholars, and media researchers. The section changed its name to Communication and Information Technologies in 2002, proposed by Keith Hampton, Eszter Hargittai, and Anabel Quan-Haase representing a new generation of sociologists of the Internet and digital technologies (Elesh & Dowdall, 2006). In 2016, responding to the growing members’ interests in digital, social, mobile, and popular media sociology, the section officially added Media to its name (Robinson, 2018).

As a section member since I was a graduate student, my intellectual and professional development has greatly benefited from many talented, generous CITAMS members. It is my tremendous privilege serving as the section chair in the year of its 30th anniversary. It has been a great pleasure working with three CITAMS past chairs Barry Wellman, Shelia R. Cotten, Laura Robinson as well as Casey Brienza, the founder of the Media Sociology Preconference on the two volumes. The response to our call for papers has been so great that we have two volumes rather than one volume as originally planned. In particular, Laura Robinson, as the editor of the Emerald Studies in Media and Communications (ESMC), has played a pivotal role in shepherding the reviewing process.

Together, contributors, including past and future chairs as well as section members and friends, revisit the section history, examine important themes relevant to the 30-year section history, and imagine the section future. Gathering some of the finest scholars in the sociology of communication, information technologies, and media, the two volumes look back, celebrating what the members and friends of this section have achieved. More importantly, the two volumes set agenda for the future of our shared intellectual commons.

ESMC Volume 17: Networks, Hacking, and Media – CITAMS@30: Now and Then and Tomorrow is co-edited by Barry Wellman, Laura Robinson, Casey Brienza, Wenhong Chen, Shelia R. Cotten, and Aneka Khilnani (Associate Editor). The volume starts with the field analysis on the history, present, and future of Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology, authored by past and incoming chairs including Jennifer Earl, and Deana Rohlinger, James C. Witte, a past chair, and his co-authors (Roberta Spalter-Roth and Yukiko Furuya) examine section members’ participation in the publication process of the American Sociological Review while Edward Brent reviews earlier section history and investigates the method implications of information technology. The second part of Volume 17 centers on the contours of interpersonal relationships, as well as the shifting structures, compositions, and purposes of networks in the digital age by Mary Chayko, Anabel Quan-Haase, Andrew D. Nevin, Veronika Lukacs, Yotam Shmargad, Hazel Kwon, Marc Esteve Del Valle, Alicia Wanless-Berk, Anatoliy Gruzd, and Philip Mai.

ESMC Volume 18 highlights the M in CITAMS, namely Media Sociology, is co-edited by Casey Brienza, Laura Robinson, Barry Wellman, Shelia R. Cotten, Wenhong Chen, and Aneka Khilnani (Associate Editor). Contributors include both practitioners and scholars, discussing a range of issues related to digital media inequalities that call for government intervention in the United States (Lloyd Levine) and media intervention in China (Mingli Mei, Ru Zhao, and Miaochen Zhu). Jeremiah Morelock focuses on the tangled interrelationship between digital, racial and health inequalities, Saran Ghatak and Niall Moran examine nineteenth century news media coverage of immigrants in New York. The volume also sheds lights on culture production and consumption, a rapid growing area of media sociology, including the paradox of closure and openness in cultural journalism by Philippa K. Chong, the story-world of the hit HBO drama Game of Thrones by Carmen Spanó, the discourse of family, gender, and class in Bollywood cinema by Tanni Chaudhuri, and the intriguing relations of affection, mediation, and communication by Ana Ramos.

The two volumes, together, demonstrate the range, sophistication, and compassion of our section. CITAMS is definitely one of the most intellectually diverse ASA section with many of its members nurturing and thriving at the intersections of multiple disciplines, switching between academia and practices. The sociological insight and imagination advanced by the work of section members, often transcending disciplinary boundaries, have important theoretical and practical implications in our digital world. As a networked transfield (Chen, 2018), CITAMS is uniquely positioned to contribute to scholarly and public discourse and practice on big challenges of our time such as digital inclusion, privacy, and the future of work and organization. If an Internet year is a dog year, what are the next 30 years in store for our globalized, mediated, and networked societies and communities? How would the boundaries and scope of sociology change and how would CITAMS evolve? CITAMS, Happy Anniversary and many Happy Returns!

Wenhong Chen

Section Chair 2017–2018 of the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association Associate Professor of Media Studies and Sociology, Department of Radio-TV-Film, Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, USA

Acknowledgments

All of the ESMC editorial staff extend our appreciation to the many individuals who have contributed to this volume. We would like to call attention to the often unseen work of the many individuals whose support has been indispensable in publishing all volumes in the series and this volume in particular. Regarding the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section in the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), we thank the Council for the section’s sponsorship of the series. We also thank to our Editorial Board members for their service disseminating our outreach and publicity. In particular, at Emerald Publishing, we deeply appreciate Jennifer McCall’s support of the series and the Emerald editorial staff’s contributions bringing the volumes to press. Finally, we recognize Associate Editor, Aneka Khilnani, for her excellent work, as well as Guest Editors Barry Wellman, Wenhong Chen, and Casey Brienza without whom these volumes celebrating the 30-year anniversary of CITAMS would have been impossible.

Editor Biographies

Author Biographies

Edward Brent is a Professor and the Chair of Sociology at the University of Missouri. He is a serial Entrepreneur, beginning in 1981 by founding the Idea Works, Inc., a company developing and marketing computer software and services for teaching and research. Products include the Methodologist’s Toolchest(™), Qualrus(™), and SAGrader(™). His current research uses data analytics from tens of thousands of student essays to study how writing is a social process influenced by issues such as procrastination, multitasking, cheating, and deciding when to stop.

Mary Chayko is a Sociologist, Teaching Professor, and Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information. Her research is on the impact of digital technology and social media on relationships, community, society, and self. She is the author of Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life (Sage Publications), now in its second edition; Portable Communities: The Social Dynamics of Online and Mobile Connectedness and Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age, both with SUNY Press; and many published articles. She served on the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS) Section Council of the American Sociological Association from 2015 to 2017.

Jennifer Earl is a Professor of Sociology and (by courtesy) Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona. She is the Director Emeritus of the Center for Information Technology and Society and Director Emeritus of the Technology and Society PhD Emphasis, both at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on social movements, information technologies, and the sociology of law, with research emphases on Internet activism, social movement repression, youth activism, and legal change. She received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for research on Web activism and was a member of the MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics. She has published widely, including an MIT Press book, co-authored with Katrina Kimport, entitled Digitally Enabled Social Change, which examines how the use of Internet affordances are reshaping the basic dynamics of protest online and was awarded an Honorable Mention for the Communication and Information Technologies Section of the American Sociological Association’s Book Award in 2013. She also served as section chair of CITASA from 2013 to 2014.

Marc Esteve Del Valle is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media Studies and Journalism at the University of Groningen. His main research interests include the networked public sphere, online political polarization, online influence, and networked learning. Marc’s work has appeared in the International Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Policy & Internet, and the Journal of Information, Technology & Politics, among the most recent journals. He is the author of the book Telmex, Slim and the Mexican Government: From the Monopoly of the State to the ‘Invisible Hand’ of the Market (Dictus Publishing, 2014).

Yukiko Furuya is a PhD Student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and a graduate researcher in the Center for Social Science Research at George Mason University. She has worked for various research projects focusing on education, labor market, and gender issues. Before attending she earned her MA in Public Policy from the University of Maryland and MA in East Asian Studies from the University of Tokyo. Her dissertation research addresses the effects of institutional networks between schools and employers on students in job search.

Anatoliy Gruzd is a Canada Research Chair in Social Media Data Stewardship, an Associate Professor, and the Research Director of the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management in Toronto, Canada. Gruzd studies how social media use is changing the ways in which people and organizations communicate, connect, and how these changes impact our society.

K. Hazel Kwon is an Assistant Professor of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Her research centers on online communities with an emphasis on the dynamics in which networked environment influences public engagement, collective sense-making, and anti-social behaviors. The National Science Foundation and Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory have supported her research previously. She has received the Dordick Dissertation Award from the International Communication Association (ICA), Emerging Scholars award from Association of Education for Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC), and multiple paper awards from ICA, AEJMC, and National Communication Association.

Veronika Lukacs has earned a Master’s Degree in Media Studies from Western University and a master’s degree in Occupational Therapy from the University of Toronto. She currently works as an Occupational Therapist in the Emergency Department at Toronto Western Hospital. Her current research focuses on processes for ensuring patients receive the appropriate level of care upon presentation to the emergency department. Her past publications focus on the dissolution of romantic relationships and the role of social media.

Philip Mai is the Director of Business and Communications at Ryerson Social Media Lab at Ted Rogers School of Management and Co-founder of the International Conference on Social Media and Society. In his work at the Social Media Lab, he focuses on knowledge mobilization, information diffusion, business and research partnerships, and the practical application of social media analytics.

Andrew D. Nevin is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. His research addresses the social implications of the internet and technology, including diverse topics such as cyber-deviance and bullying, technology use at home and work, hacktivism, online communities and networks, and digital inequality.

Anabel Quan-Haase is a Professor of Information and Media Studies and Sociology at Western University and a Director of the SocioDigital Media Lab. Her work focuses on social change, social media, and social networks. She is the author of Technology and Society (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-author of Real-life Sociology with Lorne Tepperman (Oxford University Press, 2018), and co-editor of the Handbook of Social Media Research Methods with Luke Sloan (Sage, 2017). She has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and presented her work at national and international events. Dr Quan-Haase is the past President of the Canadian Association for Information Science (2012) and Chair-elect of the Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (2018).

Deana Rohlinger is a Professor of Sociology at Florida State University. She studies mass media, political participation, and politics in America. She is the author of Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America (Cambridge University Press, 2015) as well as dozens of book chapters and research articles on social movements, political engagement, and mass media. Her new book, New Media and Society, will be available in Fall 2018 through New York University Press. She is the current Chair of the Communication, Information Technologies and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association.

Jana Shakarian is a Sociologist and Anthropologist specializing in the behavior of hacking groups, and co-author of several books on topics relating to malicious hacking and terrorism. She previously worked as a Staff Social Scientist for the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. Currently, she is the President and CTO of CYR3CON, an award-winning cybersecurity startup.

Yotam Shmargad is a Computational Social Scientist in the School of Government & Public Policy at the University of Arizona. In his research, he runs experiments, links and analyzes large datasets, and uses computer simulations and natural experiments to study how digital media augment the patterns of connectivity between people – the size, density, and diversity of our social networks – and the implications that these Big Nets have for our social and political lives. Shmargad’s work has appeared in the Journal of Interactive Marketing, the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Information Policy, and the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, among other venues. Before joining the University of Arizona as an Assistant Professor, Shmargad earned his PhD in Marketing from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Roberta Spalter-Roth, PhD, is a Senior Research Fellow at the George Mason University Center for Social Science Research and an affiliate faculty member in the Mason Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the American Sociological Association (ASA), where she was director of the Department of Research on the Discipline and the Profession for 17 years. Her particular areas of interest have included structure and process in higher education, work/family issues, cross-race networks, and the science and technology workforce. She was Principal Investigator of many studies on these topics, and the author of many articles and research briefs. She is currently working on a number of National Science Foundation-funded projects including a study of the factors that are related to promotion among racial and ethnic faculty members, and the creation of a Digital Archive project to find out who gets accepted and who gets rejected in ASA journals. Prior to her employment at ASA she was Research Director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, where she focused on parental leave, employment among low-wage women workers, part-time and non-standard work arrangements, and the phenomenon of work/welfare cycling. Also, she has been a faculty member in the Women’s Studies Program at the George Washington University, where she developed the Women in Public Policy Program and the American University, where she developed a social policy graduate program.

Alicia Wanless-Berk is an internationally recognized Researcher of Information Warfare and Propaganda, having identified models and patterns of information campaigns. Alicia has presented her work to senior government, military, and academic experts at Wilton Park, Oxford University, the Hedayah Centre, NATO’s ARRC, the NATO-USSOCOM Joint Senior PsyOps Conference, the UK’s JIAG, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Alicia’s work has been featured in CBC, Forbes, and The Strategy Bridge. She is currently the Director of Strategies at the Centre for Dynamic Research.

James C. Witte is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Director of the Center for Social Science Research, and Director of the Institute for Immigration Research at George Mason University. Witte has written numerous articles that have appeared in journals such as The European Sociological Review, Population and Development Review, and Sociological Methods and Research. He has also published three books, Labor Force Integration and Marital Choice, the Internet and Social Inequality, and The Normal Bar. The Normal Bar, co-authored with Chrisanna Northrup and Pepper Schwartz, was released in 2013 and made the New York Times bestseller list. Recent major projects have included the privately funded Institute for Immigration Research, the National Science Foundation funded Digital Archive Project, and the University Partnership with the University of Karachi funded by the US State Department and a study of civic of civic engagement and economic success among immigrant professionals, conducted with support from the Corporation for National and Community Service. Witte served as Chair of the Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association from 2005 to 2007.

Introduction To Volume 17: Networks, Hacking, and Media – Citams@30: Now and Then and Tomorrow

Barry Wellman, Laura Robinson, Casey Brienza, Wenhong Chen, Shelia R. Cotten and Aneka Khilnani

Since the beginning of CITASA’s sponsorship of Emerald Studies in Media and Communications (ESMC), the series has published research by CITAMS members and enriched the section’s sense of intellectual community. More recently, ESMC has also sponsored the Media Sociology Preconference and organized its closing plenary sessions. Given these fruitful relationships, as the 30-year anniversary of CITAMS approached, it seemed only natural to invite the CITAMS past chairs and community to contribute to a special volume celebrating the event. We invited current section chair Wenhong Chen and past chairs Barry Wellman, Shelia R. Cotten, and Laura Robinson to join forces with Casey Brienza, founder of the Media Sociology Preconference. Their mission was simple: find the best current scholarship highlighting the present state of our dynamic field and showcase contributions regarding the growth and history of the section with an eye to the future. To our delight, overwhelming response produced not one, but two volumes with lead editors Barry Wellman and Casey Brienza. The first of the two volumes – Networks, Hacking, and Media – CITAMS@30: Now and Then and Tomorrow – features scholarship on the state of the field by past CITAMS chairs, as well as a feast of interdisciplinary scholarship on networks and relationships. The second of the two volumes – The M in CITAMS@30: Media Sociology – probes the relationships between inequalities and media, as well as providing includes a scintillating array of scholarship on cultural production and consumption. Both volumes highlight some of the best of the vibrant, interdisciplinary scholarship in communication, information technologies, and media sociology.

This special 17th volume is entitled Networks, Hacking, and Media – CITAMS@30: Now and Then and Tomorrow. With contributions from former and current section chairs, the first section deals with the development of our section and its scholarship over the last 30 years. Authors Deana Rohlinger and Jennifer Earl lead this first section with their article entitled, “CITAMS at Thirty: Learning from the Past, Plotting a Course for the Future.” Viewing the section as both an intellectual enterprise and an organization, they explore key aspects of the section’s history with an eye to charting a stable and successful future. Their analysis draws on membership data from the ASA and reports by outgoing section chairs to highlight successful strategies for section evolution and development, particularly in terms of formalizing CITAMS’ governance. Contending that “CITAMS leadership works hard to update its mission, structure, and name in ways that accurately reflect a quickly changing field,” they also show the need for consistent good leadership by enumerating challenges that may be engendered by bad leadership. Rohlinger and Earl’s work provides important insights for future section leadership seeking to expand our section’s impact and reach, while steering clear of pitfalls.

Next, James C. Witte, Roberta Spalter-Roth, and Yukiko Furuya examine CITAMS’ activity vis-à-vis the review and publication processes of the American Sociological Review, considered by many sociologists to be a premiere publication venue. Their work, “Section Membership and Participation in the American Sociological Review Publication Process,” sheds light on the underrepresentation of our section members as authors and reviewers. They compare our section to the ASA Methodology Section by drawing on the newly created American Sociological Review (ASR) Digital Archive. Their findings show that:

… controlling for differences in the gender and age composition of the two sections, CITAMS members are significantly less likely than Methodology Section members to participate in the ASR publication process.

They find that CITAMS members are less likely than members of the Methodology Section to either submit their work for publication in ASR or be asked to review by ASR. Witte, Spalter-Roth, and Furuya suggest that, in the future, submissions by CITAMS members might grow through increased innovative collaboration with sociologists affiliated with other ASA sections with greater participation in ASR.

Edward Brent concludes the section with “How Information Technology Transforms the Methods of Sociological Research: Past and Future.” His work reviews a 30-year history of the section in light of significant IT changes that have impacted section research methods. He provides a valuable historical overview of the growth of computers and the social sciences from the late 1980s and early 1990s during which our section began. Interjecting his own experiences as an academic and software engineer, he also bookends the analysis with an overview of contemporary digital research methods. In his words:

This work is neither an unbridled and uncritical celebration of this increasing role of IT in research nor a slippery slope argument predicting inevitable doom. There are social pressures toward greater use of IT in social research. Such methods offer great promise. But there may be an argument for not transforming too fast. The issue of whether more automated methods of research are superior to less automated ones is not always based solely on the quality of the analysis.

Brent’s work closes with a consideration of the future of sociological research in light of continued technological evolution.

The second section of the volume begins with contributions by future section chairs and prominent section members. The scholarship provides examples of today’s prominent communication and information technologies as they apply to networks and relationships. The first article is “In Sync, but Apart: Temporal Symmetry, Social Synchronicity, and Digital Connectedness” by Mary Chayko. Mary Chayko connects the first section of the volume on section history with her work on a theme important to much section scholarship: relationships and community. Her work examines the “means and mechanisms by which digital connectedness, community, and solidarity are established.” Demonstrating how digital technologies contribute to social solidarity, she builds on Zerubavel’s concept of unity through simultaneity. Illuminating the importance of mediated “sociomental” connections, she argues,

The sociomental sharing of experience that can transcend space and time is foundational to social connectedness. It provides a means for people to establish intersubjectivity and common ground, obtain and exchange social capital, and build the social networks, relationships and communities in which they will become ensconced.

Chayko’s work foregrounds the themes uniting the second section of the volume – relationships and networks – in terms of the benefits and hazards of digital connectedness.

Benefits may be withdrawn when relationships fail, as we see in the next article that probes the darker side of mediating our relationships: “Romantic Dissolution and Facebook Life: A Typology of Coping Strategies for Breakups” by Anabel Quan-Haase, Andrew D. Nevin, and Veronika Lukacs. Studying young adults connected on Facebook to romantic partners, they show how digital media may increase the negative consequences of breakups by acting as a “high-stakes stressor”—a connection which is understudied in previous work. Here we see that once digital media engagements complicate romantic breakups, they generate negative experiences that necessitate coping strategies. In their words,

… Yet, some of the attempts to alleviate breakup distress in offline contexts can lead to new stressful situations on Facebook (Lukacs & Quan-Haase, 2015), which shows that coping strategies are complicated and context-dependent. This necessitates a new look at coping strategies as pertaining to the unique characteristics and affordances of Facebook.

Their exploratory study contributes a typology of seven Facebook coping strategies that they link to twenty-five actions that will be invaluable for future researchers.

From interpersonal romantic relationships we move to social networks in “Long Ties as Equalizers” by Yotam Shmargad. Using computer simulations, Shmargad examines the messages disseminated by competing groups to promote different points of view in various contexts from politics to marketing. With an eye to the potential impact of resource abundance and shortage on diffusion, he argues that the role of the social network structure is an important factor in “the inequalities in reach brought about by asymmetric access to resources.” Modeling asymmetric access to resources, and varying the number of places in a social network from where competing disseminators can “seed” their messages, Shmargad discovers that:

… when asymmetrically-seeded messages spread through the same social network, “long ties” – links connecting otherwise distant regions of the social network – decrease the disparities in diffusion brought about by unequal access to seeds.

Significantly, his research has important implications for future studies as he is also able to generalize this finding to “argue that information and communication technologies like Facebook and Twitter can foster dissemination equality by prioritizing interactions across long ties.”

The importance of analyzing networks is equally apparent in the next contribution entitled “Black-Hat Hackers’ Crisis Information Processing in the Darknet: A Case Study of Cyber Underground Market Shutdowns” by K. Hazel Kwon and Jana Shakarian. Their research examines black-hat hackers in the context of crypto-market shutdowns as crisis events. Kwon and Shakarian’s study of a Tor-based darknet market forum allows them to inquire into collective information processing. Taking advantage of both content and network analysis, their research takes advantage of user conversations regarding cryptomarket information to reveal how community intelligence can be gathered by black-hat hackers. They find that despite the monetary and penal risks to black-hat hackers, black-hat communities:

… as a hidden organization may be resilient to crisis events thanks to their OpSec strategy-oriented culture and fragmented network structure. That said, anti-sociality was aggravated facing a crisis, leading some users to break the norm of anonymity.

The complexity of their discoveries indicates the importance of studying networks, crisis events, and different kinds of social actors, particularly understudied populations.

The volume closes with “I Click, Therefore I Am: Predicting Clicktivist-like Actions on Candidates’ Facebook Posts During the 2016 US Primary Election” by Marc Esteve Del Valle, Alicia Wanless-Berk, Anatoliy Gruzd, and Philip Mai. Their timely research on Facebook political data allows them to determine the factors predicting “likes” in key political campaigns. Analyzing “likes” regarding the top three candidates from the 2016 US primary election – Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump – their results of an Ordinary Least Squared regression analysis showed:

… that the use of highly charged (positive or negative) emotions and personalized posts (first-person singular pronouns) increased “likes” across all three candidates’ Facebook pages; whereas visual posts (posts containing either videos or photos) and the use of past tenses were liked more often by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’ followers than by Trump’s followers.

Significantly, their study engages with larger questions regarding social media and deliberative democratic processes thanks to their consideration of organic engagement versus Facebook timeline algorithm and targeted ads.

In conclusion, the breadth of this research indicates the wide swath of scholarship taking place in the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association. Contributions on the history of the CITAMS section indicate the power of our past, while current work on networks, hacking, and relationships are strong indicators of the section’s future promise. This discussion will continue in the next of the two volume series CITAMS@30 entitled The “M” in CITAMS@30: Media Sociology.