Sociology in Action Project

SOCI 100

Overview: What is This Assignment?

Apply what you have been learning in class to the social world around us. Go to an online interactive forum that is new to you. Read the comments, look at the visuals. Examine how people present themselves and how they behave. Think about how the culture of that setting compares to an online interactive forum you regularly participate in (you can also think of an actual in-person social setting or group). Take notes on what you see, and write between 3 (three) to 5 (five) full page double-spaced description and analysis. The title page and references are not included in this minimum.

Important Details: Choosing a Setting

Choose a setting or type of channel or feed that is different from what you are familiar with.

Are you mostly active on TikTok? Choose a different social medium. Do you regularly read and

maybe even post on a few Reddit communities? You can stay on Reddit, but choose topics with

a very different type of focus than yours — social vs. professional, academic vs. fun, etc. You

might need to make an account to see site posts. Feel free to use a throwaway email for it!

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of potential social media sites: Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Tiktok,

Twitter, or Tumblr; a group or company’s Facebook page; a Twitch channel or a subreddit on

Reddit. It should a space that you are not familiar with, and that you can compare with

somewhere you are familiar with.

How much to observe? This depends on the medium you choose. If the site is organized by

people or groups (TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) choose one or two people’s or groups’

pages or feeds. If it’s organized by topic (Reddit, Discord, Twitch), choose one or two topics.

Start with two weeks’ worth of posts and interactions. In some cases this could be a huge

amount; in others, not enough. You don’t need to read all 1300 responses to the twenty posts put up over two weeks! As a ballpark, you should go through about twenty computer monitor

screens’ worth of text. (This means, for instance, that if a lot of the content is pictures, you

should be looking at more than twenty screens!) You might do this in one session, or in a few

batches.

As you read, record your initial impressions. You will turn your notes, so write them in English

if you can. If that is more difficult, use a language that works best for you. Also, keep records of

what you see (turn these in, too): either copy & paste text you think you will talk about into a

document, along with the poster’s name and the date, or take screen shots. (On Macs, save a

picture to your desktop by using Cmd-Shift-3 to take a picture of your entire screen; use Cmd-Shift-4, and then go to a corner and drag to choose a rectangle that you want to take a picture of. On Windows, there are multiple ways. Here’s a good link with directions: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-toscreenshot-on-windows. If you use Linux, I assume you can figure it out yourself!)

Keep track of what you look at. Give me web addresses for the accounts/pages, and the date range for original posts that comments were made on. Get the specific links for posts or questions that you look at a lot, and that you think you will end up writing about.

Important Details: Making Observations and Taking Notes

Ideas of things to look for: What are people doing and how are they behaving? What norms do

you see in action? How and when do people interact with each other, and what does this suggest? Any cues about people’s social class? How is material or nonmaterial culture used? What symbols do you see? Are there any recurring or influential stereotypes? Pay attention to the social structure of your setting: do you see things that suggest specific power relations? How about latent and manifest functions? Are there in-references or jokes? Do not expect to be able to think about all of this(!), and don’t be limited to this list: everything we have learned is open to you. Also, pay attention to what is similar to and different from settings you are familiar with.

While you’re doing your initial read of your setting: don’t take such detailed notes about one

post or comment that you don’t get to the big picture. Mark something that stands out, write

yourself a brief note about why it stands out or what you noticed, and keep going. Once you’re

done with that session of reading, or with the responses to one post, or you’re at some other nice breaking spot, go back through your notes and fill them in with more details about your thoughts. Don’t assume that you’ll remember what you were thinking if you don’t write it down! Don’t write your entire paper here, but make sure you’ve written enough that you’ll remember what and why something was significant, what course content it connects to, and how.

What to Write

For your write-up: Tell me about this place as if I don’t know anything about the setting or

what goes on in it (I might not!). In your essay, in order:

1. In 5-8  sentences, identify and briefly describe your setting. What is it? What is its manifest social function? What is its basic structure (ie, organized by people or topic), and how does it work?
2. Spend 3-4 pages telling me about what you observed, and your analysis of it. When describing things remember to use relevant sociological terms, such as the “cultural capital” of someone you saw, or the “signified” associated with something you read. For each aspect of the setting you describe: tell me how what you observed illustrates or reflects a sociological phenomenon from class, what concept it is an example of, how something you have learned can help me understand what you saw, etc. Make sure to define sociological concepts, phenomena and the like. Include citations to definitions or other relevant course content.
3. Think of a comparable setting you are used to. You don’t have to do formal observations of this second setting, though you are welcome to revisit it if it would help. Spend about 1 page discussing how what you observed is similar to or different from it. What is a comparable setting that you are used to? Are there surprising similarities or differences? Do you have ideas about why some things might be the same or different?
4. In 5-8 sentences, summarize the paper by telling me what the most important things were that you learned about the setting you observed.

These sentence and page ranges are guidelines. You won’t have room to write about everything,so focus on the aspects that you find most interesting, important, surprising, etc. If you go to themaximum for each section, you’ll be over 5 pages.

Formatting Guidelines

Essays that do not follow these guidelines will have up to 5% deducted. Use Times New Roman 12pt font, double-spaced, 1” (2.54 cm) margins. Do not put extra space between paragraphs (as this handout does!): start each paragraph with an indent/tab. Number your pages! You should start with a title page (not part of the page count, should not be numbered), which should include: your essay title, your name, the due date, the course name, and my

Name. Include a References page at the end, which also does not count as

one of your pages. See information on Moodle about when and how to cite materials.

Turning in your essay and notes on Moodle.

Source Requirements

The course text (Cummings) must be meaningfully integrated into your analysis and cited in-text and included on a references list accordance with APA 7^th.

Upload your essay as a Word or PDF file. If you wrote your notes on paper, scan or take pictures of them to upload. It’s okay if your handwriting is bad, we want to see the originals! It’s fine if each page of notes is a separate file. If you typed your notes, upload them as Word or PDF. You can upload multiple assignment files to Moodle.Due at the end of week 5

Findings will be presented on Moodle!

Students will share their Sociology in Action projects through individual pre-recorded presentations. Presentations will be 5-7 minutes in length each. These presentations will be occur during our live week 6 Teams session.