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Sociology in the News
July 17, 2007
CBS News, New York
: Julie Albright of the USC College was quoted in an article about Adults and MySpace "while it's great that parents are experimenting with profiles and having fun, it's critical to remember that if you can see your kids' profiles, they can see yours, so, keep all your information family-friendly."
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July 25, 2006:THE MIAMI HERALD: Karen Sternheimer of the USC College was quoted in an article about kids who were taken to an R-rated movie during a city-sponsored day camp outing. Six staffers were disciplined after a parent complained. “Parents have a hard time accepting that children are more knowledgeable about the foul language or certain scenes in the movies than the adults are comfortable with,'' Sternheimer said.
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July 25, 2006: VARIETY: Barry Glassner of the USC College commented on the annual attempt by television industry types to figure out what the public wants to see. “Any direct connection from TV consumption to the culture at large is going to be wrongheaded and simplistic,” Glassner said. “You can take any shows from the period and read what you want into what they say about the culture.”
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July 24, 2006: THE SEATTLE TIMES: Julie Albright of the USC College was quoted in a story about rising plastic surgery rates among minorities. “We live in a beauty culture. We've always been bombarded with images of perfect people. Now, we have these procedures that give people a quick, easy way to attain these beauty standards,”Albright said. This was a Newhouse News Service story.
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July 7, 2006: ARIZONA DAILY STAR: Karen Sternheimer of the USC College was quoted in a story about parental monitoring of their children's MySpace Web pages. “We fail to teach kids things like skepticism about other people's claims, which is a great lesson for a kid with a page on MySpace,” Sternheimer said. “It's a great lesson in self-marketing, too.”
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July 7, 2006: ARIZONA DAILY STAR: Karen Sternheimer of the USC College was quoted in a story about parental monitoring of their children's MySpace Web pages. “We fail to teach kids things like skepticism about other people's claims, which is a great lesson for a kid with a page on MySpace,” Sternheimer said. “It's a great lesson in self-marketing, too.”
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June 16, 2006:THE TENNESSEAN: Karen Sternheimer of the USC College was quoted in a story about a street-level anti-drug advertisement campaign. One of the guerilla marketing ads was spray-painted onto a wall and read, "Meth Is Garbage." "I'm always a little bit skeptical with ads like these because they don't address the underlying issues," Sternheimer said."There are really economic factors that are leading factors to using or selling meth. If we miss that, I don't know how effective an ad is going to be."
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June 9, 2006: WPHT: Julie Albright of the USC College was interviewed about a new trend of photographers being hired to take racy pictures of couples getting ready for their weddings.
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June 2, 2006: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Julie Albright of the USC College was quoted in a story about a new trend of photographers being hired to take racy pictures of couples getting ready for their weddings. "The white gown and veil is a kind of performance or drag - like Madonna in her video for 'Like a Virgin,'" Albright said.
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May 29, 2006: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Michael Messner of the USC College was quoted about the national emergence of fight clubs, inspired by the movie "Fight Club," in which professionals beat each other up to take out their aggression. "Boys have these warrior fantasies picked up from popular culture, and schools sort of force that out of them," Messner said. In these fantasies, "the good guys always resort to violence,
and they always get the glory and the women." This story was carried widely.
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May 11, 2006: THE WASHINGTON POST: Karen Sternheimer of the USC College was quoted in a story about the Electronic Entertainment Expo and Congress' efforts to regulate video games. The video game industry is "the current bad boy of pop culture that politicians love to beat up on," Sternheimer said.
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May 3, 2006: VENTURA COUNTY STAR: Paul Lichterman of the USC College was quoted in a story about what the organizers of Monday's immigrant rights demonstrations plan to donext. "For this to become a movement there has to be more of an articulate sense of what exactly people want," Lichterman said.
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April 17, 2006: LOS ANGELES TIMES: Michael Messner of the USC College was quoted in a story about out-of-control college athletic teams. Duke University recently canceled its men's lacrosse season after allegations that members of the team sexually assaulted an exotic dancer. "I think it's dangerous to see [Duke] as an isolated incident," Messner said. "This is a really good opportunity for us to look at the
culture of men's sports and ask ourselves, 'If the shoe fits, wear it.' I think it's a systemic problem."
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April 6, 2006: NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Karen Sternheimer of the USC College was quoted in a story about recent studies that warn parents of the dangers of content available to children on a variety of media platforms ranging from television to portable game players. "We don't like to look at the social inequalities at the root of so many problems like violence, obesity and early pregnancy, so we blame it on [media like] TV," Sternheimer said.
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April 5, 2006: INSIDE HIGHER ED: Michael Messner of the USC College was quoted in a story about an alleged rape involving the Duke University lacrosse team. "Groups of men bond together through sexually aggressive activities. Sometimes it's just verbal boasting or joking. Sometimes it's watching porno, or creating porno by hiring strippers, and sometimes it might go to sexual assault or rape, and the line from one to the other can get real fuzzy when alcohol is involved," Messner said.
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March 18, 2006: CNN: Karen Sternheimer of the USC College was interviewed on "Anderson Cooper 360" about a string of shootings at Southern California Denny's restaurants. "It's something that we can relate to, we can visualize ourselves in that situation," Sternheimer said. "And that's what makes it more scary."
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March 15, 2006: ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS: Paul Lichterman of the USC College was quoted in a story about the scaling down of a Denver-based evangelical Christian nonprofit group known as the Promise Keepers. The group used to pack football stadiums with the faithful, but lately has been holding more meetings in people's homes. "Mass meetings and mass movements may be exciting and a way to affirm your faith, but they're not necessary for being a good evangelical Christian," Lichterman said.
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February 13, 2006: DECCAN HERALD (INDIA): Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted in a story about the storm that blanketed the Northeast with snow this weekend. Glassner commented on the media coverage of the storms. "There is a human tendency to generalize from one set of events to another," Glassner said. "If the recent hurricane season has been deadly, it follows that the winter season is going to be especially deadly even though they're unrelated."
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January 3, 2006: THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Vern Bengtson of the USC Davis School was quoted in a story about how multigenerational ties have increased in importance for families. "Because the increase in marital instability and divorce over the last several decades has weakened the ability of nuclear families to provide the socialization, nurturance and support needed by family members, I argue that kin across several generations will increasingly be called upon to provide these essential family functions in the 21st century," Bengston said.
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December 7, 2005: LOS ANGELES TIMES: Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted in a story about food tasting events. "You gain status in many social circles by having a broader, rather than a narrower, approach to eating," said Glassner, who just finished a book on American's eating habits. "Among the affluent, having consumed the latest delicacy deemed worthy by chefs, the local culinary elite and food professionals reinforces your savoir-faire, affirms your class, and dare we say it, refines your taste."
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November 30, 2005: THE SEATTLE TIMES: Pierrette Hondagneu-Soteloof the USC College was quoted in a story about how middle-class Latinos are increasingly hiring other Latinos for domestic work. Hondagneu-Sotelo said that most of the domestic work in this country has been done by poor immigrant women, or women of color.
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November 17, 2005: USA TODAY: Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted in a story aboutstrategies used by alcohol makers to market themselves to college students. "If you're going to attract a new group to your brand that has a chance of sticking over a lifetime, the college years are crucial," Glassner said.
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November 3, 2005: LOS ANGELES TIMES: Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo of the USC College was quoted in a story about what home life is like for Los Angeles County's estimated 62,000 Latina nannies. "They are forced to be away from their families and yet reminded at every instance what their families are being denied," Hondagneu-Sotelo said of these nannies.
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October 21, 2005: ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS: Michael Messner of the USC College was quoted in a story about the effects of a boat cruise party with a group of Minnesota Vikings football players that reportedly included strippers and sex. "Talk of sex with women, or even actual sex with women, becomes the locus through which the men perform masculinity for each other and through which they connect with each other," Messner said. "That sort of group behavior can easily cross into sexual assault, as we have seen in many high-profile cases
with college athletes." This story was carried in other affiliated outlets, including the Mercury News.
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October 5, 2005: LOS ANGELES TIMES: Karen Sternheimer of the USC College was quoted in a story about legislation directed at regulating video games. "With just about any new medium, there has been concern about the negative effects it might have on young people," Sternheimer said. "From movies to television to comic books to music and now video games, society tends to project its fears onto newer forms of pop culture. There's a generational divide that makes people on the other side nervous."
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September 28, 2005: FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM: Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted in a story about the fear in Texas that surrounded the approach of Hurricane Rita. Glassner, in comments he made to CBSnews.com's "Public Eye," said that the media has a way of overemphasizing "low-probability dangers while ignoring more serious ones."
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September 19, 2005: CBS NEWS: Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted on the "Public Eye," a CBSNews.com blog, about the media's hyped-up coverage of certain events and how that may have affected people's responses to the warnings about Hurricane Katrina. "The public gets a distorted perspective on the dangers that they're actually likely to encounter," Glassner said. "The dangers we are most likely to encounter are seen by people in the media as boring. And in some cases they are actually pretty mundane - the danger of dying in a bathtub, for example, is greater than from a terrorist attack."
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September 6, 2005: THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER: Michael Messner of the USC College was quoted in a story about women in sports. "It would be sad if Americans weren't ready to see co-ed team sports, but we're a country that doesn't seem ready to have a female vice president," Messner said.
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August 22, 2005: THE MERCURY NEWS: Karen Sternheimer of the USC College was quoted in a story about how Californians often seem more willing to contribute to causes for animals than things such as homelessness. "There is something unique about the California experience where sometimes we do value animals and certain causes over more practical issues," Sternheimer said. People give money to "what they define as helpless and innocent," she added.
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August 22, 2005: THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Vern Bengtson of the USC Davis School was quoted in a story about households in which three generations are living together. Bengtson said families are more cohesive than they have ever been in history.
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August 21, 2005: LOS ANGELES TIMES: Michael Messner of the USC College was quoted in a story about Latasha Byears, a former WNBA player who was accused of sexual assault in 2003. Byears believes another team has not hired her because she is a lesbian. Messner said the WNBA culture encourages lesbian players to be quiet about their sexuality. "It's OK to be who you are, but it's not OK to talk about it, and bring a male to the team party," he said.
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July 22, 2005: UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL: A study by Michael Messner of the USC College found that men's sports received 90 percent of reporting on broadcast news and highlight shows. This is approximately the same level as reported in Messner's previous study in 1989. Messner's study was also featured in Mike Penner's sports column in the Los Angeles Times. The study reported that women's sports received 6.3 percent of airtime in 2004, down from 8.7 percent in 1999.
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July 14, 2005: THE NEW YORK TIMES: Vern Bengtson of the USC Davis School was quoted in a story about the changing roles grandparents play in their grandchildren's lives. "For many Americans, multigenerational bonds are becoming more important than nuclear family ties for well-being and support over the course of their lives," Bengtson said.
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March 21, 2005: THE NEW YORK TIMES: Merril Silverstein of the USC Davis School was cited in a story about how higher divorce rates have led to extra grandparents for many children. Silverstein said almost half of all American families with children have at least one set of grandparents who have been divorced, compared to one in five in the mid-1980s.
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February 2, 2005: THE BOSTON GLOBE: An op-ed cited a 2001 study co-authored by Timothy Biblarz of the USC College. The op-ed addressed controversial comments about lesbian mothers made by new Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. Biblarz's study found no difference in the psychological well-being between children raised by gay or straight parents.
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January 28, 2005: THE NEW YORK TIMES: Vern Bengtson of the USC Davis School of Gerontology commented on the "pack retirement" trend, in which neighbors and friends move to the same retirement community. "It would make it much easier to move with people you know," Bengtson said. "It's kind of like having your own commune."
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January 26, 2005: LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS: USC's California Demographic Futures study of immigration demographics in California from 1980 to 2030 was featured. The study foresees improved education, voter participation and healthcare coverage for the descendants of immigrants to California. Co-author Dowell Myers, of the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development, pointed to misperceptions about the immigrant population's impact on California. "The immigrant presence is moderating," Myers said." ... The previous immigrants are now aging in place. They're settling in. They're setting down deep roots. They're climbing the economic ladder." This story also ran in the Long Beach Press Telegram and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune; KNBC-TV and Univision carried their own stories. Myers was also interviewed on KPCC-FM, while researcher Julie Park of the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development was interviewed on KFI-AM, KCLU-FM and Radio Seoul.
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January 19, 2005: FOSTER'S SUNDAY CITIZEN (New Hampshire): Karen Sternheimer of the USC College was quoted in a story about how violent video games might be a "risk factor" for aggression in children. "It's important to critically evaluate media content, but it's not a good way to solve social problems," said Sternheimer, author of "It's Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture's Effect on Children."
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November 30, 2004: THE HERALD: Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted in a column about the Queen of England's speech in which she announced eight new law and order bills. Glassner, the author of "Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things," said high levels of fear and anxiety pose dangers.
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October 26, 2004: ST. PETERSBURG TIMES:Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted in a story about how more Americans seem to be afraid. Glassner, author of "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things," said Americans have gotten into the habit of being afraid of one thing after another. In recent presidential campaigns, fear mongering has gone "through the ceiling," he said.
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October 26, 2004: VARIETY: Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted in Brian Lowry's column about how political advertising is attempting to generate fear among voters. Glassner, author of "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things," said if undecided voters "haven't been sufficiently frightened at this point, additional fear-mongering probably isn't going to work."
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October 19, 2004: SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted in a story about how the presidential candidates are trying to scare voters. Glassner said it's possible that neither President Bush nor Senator Kerry has a clear enough positive vision to communicate in 30-second sound bites, so running a campaign based on fear may be easier and more efficient.
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October 13, 2004, NEWSDAY: Malcolm Klein of the USC College was quoted in a story about a Los Angeles-based Salvadoran gang that now extends to the East Coast. Klein said although the gang extends east, people shouldn't assume that the two are connected. "They're not ripping off people in Hempstead and feeding Pico Union," he said.
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October 12, 2004, USA TODAY: Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted in a story about how firefighters are being repackaged into "heroes-for-sale" in the form of calendars, toys and films. "Once an image becomes chic - and society accepts it - it can take years to develop and market," he said.
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October 12, 2004, CNBC: Barry Glassner of the USC College took part in a panel discussion about fearmongering by the presidential candidates on "Dennis Miller." Also, portions of his keynote address at a Vancouver conference titled, "Law in a Fearful Society," were used during an episode of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s program "Ideas."
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October 11, 2004, NEWSWEEK: A study by Timothy Biblarz of the USC College and Judith Stacey, formerly of the College, was mentioned in a story about gay parents. The study found that children of gay parents have as much self-esteem as those of straight ones.
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September 27, 2004, THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: Michael Messner of the USC College was quoted in a story on the recently-banned practice of using attractive young women as "hostesses" for male college recruits. Messner said this practice creates a sense of entitlement young men feel when they are being recruited to play college sports.
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September 27, 2004, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: A new USC study about how historical increases in human life span are the result, in part, of lower childhood exposure to infectious disease was featured in Sharon Begley's Science Journal. The research by Caleb Finch and Eileen Crimmins - who are affiliated with both the USC Davis School of Gerontology and the USC College - linked this gradual yet steady increase in human life span since the early 19th century to lower childhood rates of exposure to diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. Those lower exposure rates meant less chronic inflammation in the blood that, decades later, can lead to heart attacks, strokes and cancers - the classic killers of old age. The study, published in today's edition of the journal Science, was covered by numerous other media outlets including, NBC News, National Public Radio, City News Service and KFI-AM.
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September 27, 2004, FAMILY CIRCLE: Elaine Bell Kaplan of the USC College was quoted in an article about parents' responses to teen drug use. Kaplan said searching a child's room for drugs should be a parent's last resort.
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September 27, 2004, THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: Manuel Castells of the USC College received a career achievement award from the American Political Science Association. Castells was one of 21 people honored at the association's annual meeting in Chicago.
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September 27, 2004, THE LONDON FREE PRESS: Barry Glassner of the USC College was mentioned in a column about fear. The columnist agreed with Glassner's contention that society is more afraid of the the new and unknown than the mundane, such as heart disease and car crashes. Glassner's book, "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things," was mentioned.
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September 27, 2004, FINAL CALL.COM: Malcolm Klein of the USC College was quoted in a story about proposed legislation that would make belonging to a gang a federal offense. Klein said the bill is inappropriate and shows that those who wrote it do not know much about street gangs.
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September 27, 2004, THE DAILY NEWS: A story featured an upcoming exhibit sponsored by Center for Religion and Civic Culture: "Traces of Identity An Insider's View into the L.A. Armenian Community." Don Miller was quoted.
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September 27, 2004, LOS ANGELES TIMES: Michael Messner of the USC College was quoted in a story about mothers playing in the WNBA. He said society expects women to be responsible for taking care of children, even if they are a family's primary breadwinner.
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September 27, 2004, CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted in a story about the popularity of cooking shows. Glassner said food television's pull is that it's pretty pictures of food poised in tempting situations. "It's titillating," he said.
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September 16, 2004, LOS ANGELES TIMES: Michael Messner of the USC College was quoted in a story about mothers playing in the WNBA. He said society expects women to be responsible for taking care of children, even if they are a family's primary breadwinner.
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September 10, 2004, FINAL CALL.COM: Malcolm Klein of the USC College was quoted in a story about proposed legislation that would make belonging to a gang a federal offense. Klein said the bill is inappropriate and shows that those who wrote it do not know much about street gangs.
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August 24, 2004, SACRAMENTO BEE: Barry Glassner of the USC College was quoted in a story about how most people worry about high-profile hazards, but ignore common dangers.
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