Snoop Dogg is a Rasta now!

You know Snoop Doggy Dogg?  He's only gone all Rasta and that!  He's not a Dogg anymore, he's a Lion!   You should know about Rastafarianism because it's a good example for Ethnic Subculture/Identity etc etc.  Marcus Garvey, Haille Sellassie, Slavery, Jamaica, Lion of Judah, all that good stuff!

Has Snoop Dogg seen the Rastafari light, or is this just a midlife crisis? by Benjamin Zephaniah

Snoop Lion 'La La La'

Snoop Dogg/Lion/Whatever.

Censorship in Burma - It's not happening anymore, apparently.

BBC News - Burma abolishes media censorship‏

Syria's video activists give revolution the upper hand in media war

Interesting story, will help you to debate the issues on media control, particularly regarding whether the internet is loosening media companies/owners grip on information:

Here!

One Day In September

General journalism this, a good documentary on the 1972 Olympics, Israel v Palestine:

Watch it here!

UK School kids and the crushing hammer blows of inequality!

Yeah, so basically you're all doomed to a life of grinding poverty, unless you've got rich parents in which case you're laughing!

Read it here, then print it out to use as a blanket to protect you from the icy winds of poverty and despair.

Media Effects

Teenager relationship violence link to internet pornography admits Keir-Starmer

The Olympics and Class

Did you see the Olympics?  Great, wasn't it?  Obviously, the ability to jump higher/run faster is not that much of an achievement anymore, in fact it's pretty useless since we're not cave dwellers fighting each other for the scraps from a revently deceased Woolly Mammoth or running away from one of those old tigers with the massive teeth but it would be churlish to bring this up after our runners/jumpers/make-a-horse-do-a-dance-ers did so well. 

Anyway, from a sociological point of view the Olympics matter because in the last Olympics, which were somewhere abroad I assume (I didn't watch that one) most of the British Olympic Team (NOT 'Team GB'!  NEVER 'Team GB'!  'Team GB' is a nauseating Americanism and if you say it you are a traitor. FACT!) had attended Private School, so there was a debate about CLASS and INEQUALITY and people saying 'Blimey, these rich people seem to have unfair advantages due to their enormous wealth, yadda yadda yadda, say something less blindingly obvious whydontcha?  Anyway, this time round, there was a slight change to the debate as it seems a few more peasants/state school kids won medals.  Here are some articles discussing it:

1  2   3

Get a proper job you posh pillock.

Punk

Punk is one of the youth subcultures you should know about for AS level, here's some stuff about a punk band in Russia that I've mentioned before:

Pussy Riot: will Vladimir Putin regret taking on Russia's cool women punks?

Pussy Riot trial over Putin altar protest begins

Pussy Riot are a reminder that revolution always begins in culture

Do some research of your own, they've been sentenced to prison since I posted these.

And if you're too insular and British to care about what happens in other countries (congratulations, you ignorant buffoon!  Here's a link to the Daily Mail)  then here's something about a Punk Festival that still happens in the UK, although apparently most of the elderly punks who attend have to be kept alive by regular adrenaline shots and expensive machinery:

Rebellion festival: 'If the mohicans are wilting by Sunday, then it's a good year'

Iran.

It looks like the next step towards all-out global destruction will be a war with Iran.  I like to keep myself informed about exactly what sort of innocent civilians we will be blowing up next and so I have been watching the following documentaries.  If you would like to know more about Iran before some kind of nuclear apocalypse consumes us all then I suggest you watch them too!

This one is three hours long but that's because it's an entire three episode series collected into one video!  Watch it in instalments whilst eating crisps, like I did! Iran and the West BBC documentary

Rageh Omar Inside Iran  

Iran is not the problem

Campaigns control the message

The White House operates an extremely busy press office with a highly developed system for promoting material to enhance the president’s prominence. Any positive event within the executive — right down to lower-level agencies that otherwise don’t get much notice — is emphasized in press releases, conference calls, photo-ops and other created means.

Murdoch dominance created climate for press abuses, says Rusbridger

Guardian editor urges Leveson inquiry to consider 'dangers to democracy' of media power being concentrated in too few hands

Satanic Panic! Why People Believe Weird Things!

Moral Panics are very exciting, aren't they?  You need to know about them for AS and A2 so I've put other stuff on the blog in the past but here's some more, specifically relating to the 'satanic panic' that occurred in the US and UK in the 80's and 90's.  Below are some links to articles as well as a book and a video!  The book 'Why people believe weird things' is worth reading anyway, hence my decision to put a 'general journalism' tag on this post.  Enjoy!


A full stop to the Satanic panic

A BBC documentary reminds us how irrational were the fears of ritual abuse in the 80s and 90s. Yet the view that parents can't be trusted lives on.


When Satan came to town

Five families in Rochdale were wrongly separated
In 1990 the Devil came to Rochdale. 


Lost years of 'satanic panic' children

In 1990, families on a council estate in north Manchester woke up to every parent's worst nightmare. With no warning, police and social workers had come to take their children. 

Wiki on Satanic ritual abuse

The 'Martensville Nightmare' Ritual Abuse case

Wiki on Moral Panics

Free E-Book!   Michael Shermer - Why People Believe Weird Things.  I'm reading this at the moment, chapters on satanic panic and other stuff, very good.

Too lazy/stupid to read his book?  Why am I not surprised? Okay, pillock, watch the video instead.

Skeptic Magazine is very interesting, edited by Shermer.

The Powerful Control Media Coverage, Not Journalists - Business - The Atlantic Wire

The Powerful Control Media Coverage, Not Journalists - Business - The Atlantic Wire

How Does Violence In The Media Impact School Bullying?

How Does Violence In The Media Impact School Bullying?

Bradley Wiggins: What is a mod?

Read it here.

I assume this was the bike he won the Tour de France with?

£13tn hoard hidden from taxman by global elite

'Study estimates staggering size of offshore economy.  Private banks help wealthiest to move cash into havens.'  The Guardian

'Wealth doesn't trickle down – it just floods offshore, new research reveals.

A far-reaching new study suggests a staggering $21tn in assets has been lost to global tax havens. If taxed, that could have been enough to put parts of Africa back on its feet – and even solve the euro crisis'   The Guardian


Price of Inequality By Joseph Stiglitz - Book


What is 'trickle down theory'?  Wiki!

Will the Dark Knight Rises shootings revive the debate on 'copycat' crimes?

'If the gunman's mask was inspired by Bane, we will likely hear some depressingly familiar arguments about films inspiring violence – but pinning blame is a hazardous exercise'  The Guardian

Rupert Murdoch quits as News International director

'Move fuels rumours of sell-off of UK newspapers despite media mogul's reassurance that he is 'fully committed' as chairman'  The Guardian

Pink Stinks!

Pinkstinks is a campaign that targets the products, media and marketing that prescribe heavily stereotyped and limiting roles to young girls. We believe that all children – girls and boys - are affected by the ‘pinkification’ of girlhood. Our aim is to challenge and reverse this growing trend. We also promote media literacy, self-esteem, positive body image and female role models for kids.

Taken from their website here.

Gender-neutral? Harrods' new Toy Kingdom tries to end boy-girl divide

Here!

Harrods - Favourite shopping destination of Dictators and Crime Lords.

After Austerity: the widening gap between rich and poor - video

The economist Dean Baker and the TUC's Nicola Smith discuss why the economic gains of the past 30 years have gone disproportionately to the wealthiest section of society. Interviewed by Tom Clark at the TUC's After Austerity conference, they weigh up the arguments for capping executive pay, the provision of government tax credits and an increase in the minimum wage

video

The Lies of the Press

Mentioned in Collins textbook page 154.

The newspapers must also be held to account for the decision to invade Iraq.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 20th July 2004

Here!

Media Lens

What is Media Lens?

Since 2001, we have been describing how mainstream newspapers and broadcasters operate as a propaganda system for the elite interests that dominate modern society. The costs of their disinformation in terms of human and animal suffering, and environmental breakdown, are incalculable. We show how news and commentary are ‘filtered’ by the media’s profit-orientation, by its dependence on advertisers, parent companies, wealthy owners and official news sources..

Mentioned in Collins textbook page 154

Here

And if you have some time to spare...

A Comparative Review of Flat Earth News and Newspeak

Are Aaron Sorkin's women 'silent bearers of sexism'?

With 'The Newsroom' chugging along, critics have pointed out a pattern of sexism in Sorkin's work. (from The Guardian)
Here!

The Pentagon's grip on Hollywood

Watch here...

The military entertainment complex is an old phenomenon that binds Hollywood with the US military. Known as militainment, it serves both parties well. Filmmakers get access to high tech weaponry - helicopters, jet planes and air craft carriers while the Pentagon gets free and positive publicity.

The latest offering to come from this relationship is Act of Valor and it takes the collaboration one step further. The producers get more than just equipment – they have cast active-duty military personnel in the lead roles, prompting critics to say the lines have become so blurred that it is hard to see where Hollywood ends and Pentagon propaganda begins.  (from Al-Jazeera)



Enemy Image

Enemy Image overviews the history of the portrayal of war in television news from an American perspective. The film starts with the coverage of Vietnam where reports happened with little supervision, control or interference. Following this, The Pentagon takes action to control access by journalists to battle areas in subsequent invasions, such as the Invasion of Grenada — where journalists were excluded completely — to the first Gulf War, where news packages were provided directly from the military, to the embedded churnalism of the invasion of Iraq. Shown is the progressive tightening of control by the US military on the contact journalists have with soldiers and civilians in the war zone, in order that “never again will television raise the moral and political questions that face a people during war.”

Construction of the News - News Values - Citizen Journalism

The textbook is nice and straightforward about this, pages 149-153 need to be learnt and understood but, in my humble opinion, there’s nothing there that won’t make sense to you.

We should take a closer look at ‘News Values’, specifically the work of  Galtung and Ruge (1965) and  Spencer-Thomas (2008).  Here is a link to S-Thomas’ own website and his info on news values. 

Galtung and Ruge are covered quite comprehensively in textbook pages 152-153.

You need notes and understanding of their work!

We should also take a closer look at Citizen journalism because it is a new development linked to the internet...

Citizen Journalism

What is citizen journalism? (you need to have a short definition of this in your pretty little heads)

Here are some famous examples...

Salam Pax:

1  2

Arab Spring:

1

Is citizen journalism a good idea?

For and against citizen journalism, here  and what is the role and value of citizen journalism?  Here!

The overwhelming case for plurality

'This is not just about Rupert Murdoch – allowing media power to be concentrated in the hands of a few multibillionaires will impoverish society'  Here!'

In 1987 I returned to a country beset by class and inequality. And it still is.

'In 1987 the Observer's Robert Chesshyre returned from the US and was so shocked at Thatcher's Britain that he wrote a book about it. Now it has been republished in an era that remains eerily similar'   Here!


Why economic inequality leads to collapse.

'During the past 30 years, a growing share of the global economic pie has been taken by the world's wealthiest people. In the UK and the US, the share of national income going to the top 1% has doubled, setting workforces adrift from economic progress. Today, the world's 1,200 billionaires hold economic firepower that is equivalent to a third of the size of the American economy.'  Here!

Return to capitalism 'red in tooth and claw' spells economic madness

'Particularly in the United States and Britain since the 1980s, we have witnessed a return to the capitalism "red in tooth and claw" depicted by Karl Marx. The rich and very rich have become very much richer, while everyone else's incomes have stagnated'.

Here!

Google reports 'alarming' rise in censorship by governments

Search engine company has said there has been a troubling increase in requests to remove political content from the internet

Here!

Child poverty figures drop, but remain above 2 million

Article here





I only parked it there for a minute!



More Media documentaries!

Watch at least the first 15 mins of 'Orwell Rolls in his Grave'.  Full of fun facts about media control etc!
thoughtmaybe    this website has loads of excellent stuff.

Lots of media documentaries here!  such as this one Operation Saddam — America’s Propaganda War

More Leveson Inquiry...

Here...

'Ownership is the key to the corruption of the media

Murdoch's grip on British politics was the product of corporate control of the press. Ending it is a democratic necessity...'  (from The Guardian)


The Sun and David Cameron - 'We're in this together'

Stop and Search 2012

Police forces are up to 28 times more likely to use stop-and-search powers against black people than white people and may be breaking the law, new research from the official human rights body reveals.

Article here

Documentaries 2

Some more documentaries, not related to sociology syllabus but for general interest reasons I will put them here.

In this World  A harrowing but important story about the plight of refugees.

Dispatches - Meeting the Taliban

Dispatches - Children of Gaza

North Korean Labor Camps in Siberia

David Icke, The Lizards and The Jews

Inequality and Stratification - Reading resources

Basic Concepts - Inequality and Stratification

Inequality and Gender

Media Control – 20th Century

Some quotes from a book I’ve read on your behalf that relate to the A2 Media unit, power and control of the media – how the media influences the government and vice versa.

Rex Leeper, head  of the Foreign Office News Department, Feb 1935, ‘We really must find some way of guiding the BBC’s foreign comment more than we do’

Rupert Murdoch was altogether different from most of the newspaper magnates who dominated British journalism during the twentieth century.  Most of them had big political ideas they were determined to propagate, using their newspapers and the influence they had over public opinion and the political elite...Murdoch’s commercial position, by contrast, dictated the political position his editors were obliged to follow...it was always clear that his papers would support whatever line Murdoch thought would help his group’s profits.

Howlin' Mad Murdoch

After the Falklands, The Sun was Margaret Thatcher’s heavy artillery...The Daily Mail provided her with support which...addressed middle-class voters...But The Sun could bring new people to her cause in large numbers...

Thatcher's other heavy artillery!  Ha ha!  Do you see what I did there?  Brilliant!
 I'm wasted here, I really am.  Pearls among swine, darling, pearls among swine.

In the wake of the Falklands War Mrs Thatcher was unbeatable, yet Neil Kinnock (Labour Leader) represented a genuine long-term threat; and The Sun went to work on him...(later front pages included) ‘If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights’

Rupert Murdoch changed the character of every single newspaper he bought; even the News of the World.  When he met senior staff he told them ‘I didn’t come all this way not to interfere’.  One of the paper’s editors is quoted...as saying ‘He would come into the office and literally rewrite leaders which were not supporting the hard Thatcherite line’...’Murdoch, the paper spread out before him, would jab his finger at some article...and snarl ‘What do you want to print rubbish like that for?’ or, pointing to the byline of a correspondent, assert that ‘That man’s a Commie’

Kelvin MacKenzie, (Editor of The Sun in 1980’s), describes the typical Sun reader ‘He’s the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist, wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house, he’s afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers  and the weirdos and the drug dealers’.

Bucket of S***

When John Major (Prime Minister after Margaret Thatcher) called MacKenzie to ask about the Sun’s coverage of him, MacKenzie replied ‘Well, John, let me put it this way. I’ve got a large bucket of shit lying on my desk and tomorrow morning I’m going to pour it all over your head’

Alistair Campbell...wrote a book about his time in Downing Street, ‘The Spin Doctor’s Diary’...’Nobody ever said ‘We have to do this because Murdoch supports it’. But his views were always heard.  And they were heard ahead of many Cabinet ministers’.



Moody



Peter Mandelson, (spin doctor for Tony Blair) ‘Of course we want to use the media, but the media will be our tools, our servants; we are no longer content to let them be our persecutors’.

Sinister

All (except my notes in brackets) from John Simpson ‘Unreliable Sources – How the 20^th Century was reported’

Theories of Stratification - Functionalism and Marxism

Very good webpage on:

Functionalism


And an excellent textbook style excerpt on Marxism


This webpage includes critical evaluation and comparison of major theories of inequality offered by Marx, Weber and the functionalists.

Article on US income inequality

Mother Jones Magazine

Check out the funky infographics, people!

What is Weberianism?

Cheer up, Grandad.

Weber defined power as the chance that an individual in a social relationship can achieve his or her own will even against the resistance of others.

Max Weber has been described as the 'ghost of Marx'. He agreed with Marx that the ownership of property and capital were important dimensions of privilege within society, however not the only dimensions.

Weber argued that social inequality was largely a product of three dimensions: class, status and party.

Weber Inequality Theory

Good blogpost on the theory

Revision flash cards - and why not make your own?! What fun!

Private Jessica Lynch - Media control

Three videos to explain the story of Jessica Lynch as an example of government manipulation of the media.

Media Power and Control - Tony Blair at Leveson

Plenty of useful information here about power and control of the media

Never forget what Labour is up against: 80% of newspaper readership for a hundred years has belonged not just to conservatives, but mainly to extreme maverick press barons, using their power to control politics.

British Politics' very own version of The Fonz. 

Increase in female deviance/crime

Ministry of Justice figures from 2009 showed that annual arrests of teenage girls and women had reached record levels with more than 250,000 detained by police

Youth Justice Board figures show that the number of personal violent attacks by girls dealt with by youth offending teams rose by 48% from 10,412 in 2003 to 15.413 by 2008.  Also show sharp increases in the number of public order offences, up 37% to 5,852 and racially aggrevated crimes, up 113% to 758, committed by girls under 18 over the same period.

A report by the Institute of Criminal Policy Research suggested that the increase was due to women being more willing to commit and admit offences because society had changed it’s expectations avout their behaviour.

Source:  Gangland – Tony Thompson (2010)

A typical girl gang, these reprobates were responsible for causing global misery and have several 'criminal records'.
 Ha ha ha ha ha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahhahahahahahahhahahahhahahahhahahaahha!

Some articles about female crime...

Mum and sons drugs gang are jailed

A secretary nicknamed the Black Widow has been jailed for life after being exposed as a ruthless 'Mrs Fix- It' for gangsters.

Dead drug queen 'victim of revenge'International trafficker found dead in London flat was suspect in gangland killing of Colombian dealer

ASBO!

ASBO: What's this all about then?

Asbos 'to criminalise youngsters' (2004)

They don't all wear hoodies, and there is no need to bar them from shops. Young people give their view of the stereotypes they face

Asbo: The end of an era (2012)

'Crimbos' replace Asbos – but will they rush children into custody?

ASBOs weren’t much cop, but what about their replacement?

Another sociology blog that's better than mine...

Here  good revision resources on this page for the Youth Crime unit AS

Age and Inequality

Some stuff to watch and read...

Government challenged on fuel poverty- video and article

Ageist stereotypes in media - 1  and  2

Old bag sacked from BBC - here, then Rowan Atkinson says that's fine by him, primarily due to the fact he is not an old bag himself.

Nicholas Parsons, a man who is around 900 years old (making him quite young in terms of Radio 4 audience demographics) and not very funny (making him very funny in terms of Radio 4 comedy) says TV should employ more 900 year old men - here.

If you think old men should not be allowed to wear skimpy swimwear and massive medallions,
 then you are a foul ageist bigot! 

Different explanations of changes in the class structure.

Mentioned in the syllabus for A2, you should know more about this:

Booklet here!

More Racism!

Five Live survey suggests ethnic minority applicants still discriminated against in UK job market

'Shocking' racism in jobs market

The only black faces at the BBC are in the canteen, says McGovern

Senior MPs call for Met Police racism investigation  2

The Poverty Site

This site monitors what is happening to poverty and social exclusion in the UK. The material is organised around 100 statistical indicators covering all aspects of the subject, from income and work to health and education.

Poverty.org 

Look at the links on the left of their pages for graphs and info on gender/ethnicity/age related to inequality etc.

Strain Theory

Some sources of info on Strain Theory, as requested:

1   2   3   4   5  6   7

Gender and Crime

As requested, here are some extra bits and bobs about female crime, explanations for and the extent of. There's an interesting thing here made by students, for example, there's also some new resources on the studentshared area on school server.

Dorling and Weber

Just a couple of links to look at...

Danny Dorling - Why Social Inequality Persists

Max Weber, one of the three main "fathers of sociology," contributed to our understanding of the sociological perspective, to the nature of social change, and to the nature of social inequality.

Sociology Blogs - How to really do it.

 This blog is significantly better than mine, 'DJ Academe Teaching sociology with videos'   click here to go straight to the inequality stuff.  Here are a few of the videos...





and this MIA video is just tha bomb, peeps!

Black man records police officer's racist abuse

Watch video and read article

Brown Eyes vs Blue Eyes

http://ww.janeelliott.com/

wiki Jane Elliott

How Racist AreYou?



Jane Elliott, the American schoolmarm who would rid us of our racism.
American schoolteacher Jane Elliott invented the concept of diversity training in response to racial tension in 60s America. Forty years later she's trying the same techniques on British TV… with rather less success, writes Andrew Anthony.

Here!

Ethnicity and Inequality - Is Britain still racist?

The Naked Rambler



This man has balls.


 "We can either end up living a life that others expect of us or lives based on our own truth. The difference is the difference between living a conscious life or one that is unconscious. And that's the difference between living and not living."
Read this.


UPDATE: He's OUT!
 
UPDATE:  He's BACK INSIDE! 

UPDATE:  They think he's MAD! Or is it our CULTURE that's mad? YOU decide!

Inequality - The Gender Pay Gap

'The truth about why women are paid less - even if they ask for more.  New research shows that women who haggle over money are seen as 'less nice' by their bosses'.

Why having a penis is worth £10,000.  Tanya Gold on why women get paid less.

Equal Pay - The Facts
Equal Pay is still an issue. In the UK, women get paid, on average, 15.5% less than men. Why is this? And what can be done about it?

Gender pay gap widens to £10,500 for managers, CMI says.  The gap between how much male and female managers are paid has widened by £500 to £10,546 in the past year, a study suggests.