Reflections On Facebook Observations While I made my observations of musical artists’ publicity-propaganda on my Facebook page feed over a week ago, I observe this activity daily in my personal life so these observations are ongoing and continuous. Facebook is just the latest, but not necessarily the greatest addition to self-promotional-propaganda. There are thousands of platforms on the Internet… Read More
What Is Institutional Ethnography? What is institutional ethnography? At a basic level, institutional ethnography is the study of the social organization of everyday life. What it does not do is objectify the subjects or people into objectifications of the everyday world that one is studying. The social ontology of institutional ethnography, its underlying fundamental, essential principle, is that the… Read More
Facebook Promotional-Propaganda Observations While I completed this observation on 18 and 19 February, I observe this phenomenon daily on the Internet and in the external world. I have observed all varieties of propaganda in the everyday for far longer than Facebook has been around, Facebook exemplifies what is most fascinating about this phenomenon: the example of unintentional propaganda… Read More
Reflections on Subjectivity, Role, Access, Ethics (This is something that I have considered since working for local network television news. The readings lately and the other students viewpoint on this have just codified what I have known all along. Now I just have to find a way to research with this in mind. Stay tuned.) Everyone has a bias, and objectivity… Read More
Reflections on My Driving Research Interests My driving research interests are more like lifelong passions, as any glance into one of several bookshelves of my library will reveal. However, those interests are usually distilled into a few topics that contain a myriad of additional subjects. I am fascinated by sociology in general, but I am especially fascinated by how people react… Read More
Reflections on Who I am as a Sociologist Who I am as a sociologist is, by turns, a complex question, as well as one that will never be fully defined as I continue to evolve year by year, learning and researching people and their environments from the simple to the complex. How and why I arrived at this present destination is also complex,… Read More
Propaganda as Musical Pop Culture Part 2 And there is still more, some popular and some early seminal punk. We begin with Don Henley’s Dirty Laundry. As always, if you find or write any worthy of consideration, send them my way, and we may get to a few more additions and editions of these.… Read More
Personal Reflections on My Granny Josephine Pitti Kelsay Josephine Pitti Kelsay is my grandmother. Her presence looms larger in my life than any other. She still remains as strong an influence as she ever was, guiding my better judgement in learning, desires, and even dreams. Her memories, her laughter, her offbeat and lucid political commentary, and the cleanest dirty jokes you have ever… Read More
Propaganda And Goffman’s Face-To-Face Interactions While Erving Goffman expanded the scope and study of sociology to face-to-face interactions between individuals and small group gatherings, little has been said of the application of those ideas to propaganda on a personal level. I will argue that Goffman’s study of frame analysis and impression management apply to propaganda of various types that he… Read More