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Andrew M. Lindner reviews Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants.

Editorial staff play an essential role as gatekeepers within professional journalism. Citizen journalism has the potential to depart from routine journalistic practices and allow for more democratic posting of unmoderated content. Nonetheless, many citizen journalism web sites do have an editorial staff and no existing research has explored the contributions of editors to citizen journalism web sites. I theorize that the editorial staff on citizen journalism sites serve as legitimating organizational structures within the larger organizational field and, as citizen gatekeepers, who enforce journalistic routines. Using a content analysis of a sample (n = 326) drawn from the largest sampling frame of English-language citizen journalism web sites based in the United States to date (n = 1958), I examine the characteristics of citizen journalism web sites with an editorial model as well as how the presence of an editorial staff is associated with the practice of journalistic routines common in professional journalism.

Sociologist Andrew M. Lindner explores the increasing popularity of the research tool of content analysis and how innovation has given rise to new opportunities and new concerns.

Quantitative literacy is increasingly essential for both informed citizenship and a variety of careers. Though regression is one of the most common methods in quantitative sociology, it is rarely taught until late in students' college careers. In this article, the author describes a classroom-based activity introducing students to regression analysis in an introductory sociology course. Using a data set that draws on the students' quiz and exam scores, students learn the basics of interpreting regression analyses in a manner that is relevant to their own lives. The activity also encourages students to think critically about potential predictors of exam performance and how they could be measured.

The U.S. government engaged in unprecedented forms of mass surveillance in the twenty-first century. Users of the The Onion Router (Tor), an anonymity-granting technology, mask themselves from state surveillance and can gain access to illicit content on the Dark Web. Drawing on theory regarding "exposure" to surveillance, this study examines how two issue-attention cycles (related to the Edward Snowden state surveillance revelations and the Dark Web respectively) are associated with public interest in the Tor browser in the United States. Using data at the state-year level from 2006 to 2015, this study estimates fixed effects models, controlling for sociodemographics, the presence of journalism, tech, and political jobs, as well as multiple measures of state political ideology. The results indicate that state-years with greater popularity of Google searches related to the Snowden story had significantly higher popularity of searches for Tor. By contrast, there was no association between Dark Web search popularity and Tor search popularity. These findings are consistent with the notion that the Snowden incident increased Americans' sense of exposure, leading to interest in anonymity-granting technology.

All media are social -- Theorizing the media -- Who pays for it? -- In the hands of a few -- Big Brother knows you're watching -- The makers and the breakers -- Fear & loathing on cable news -- Doing gender and sexuality in media -- Unequal images in an unequal age -- Are we robots? -- Or are we rebels?

News outlets, sports coverage, and even Hollywood movies have highlighted the growing body of research documenting the long-term negative consequences of traumatic injury in athletics, particularly, (sports-related) concussions. Despite so much media coverage, little is known about how much attention members of the American public pay to sports concussion news. Disparities in attention to concussion news among sociodemographic groups may contribute to further inequalities in rates of concussions that stem from participation in collision sports. In this study, using a 2017 nationally representative survey of US residents (n = 964), we examine the social, political, and demographic correlates of individuals' attention to news about concussions in sports. Regression results indicate that older, more educated, Democratic-leaning respondents reported that they pay more attention to news about concussions. Additionally, respondents with a greater past competitive athletic participation and those who regularly watch baseball and football reported higher levels of attention to concussion news. These findings are consistent with previous research showing higher levels of news consumption and trust in science among the highly educated and Democrats. The increased levels among football viewers may be in response to the inclusion of concussion news in game coverage.

In the 2015/2016 season, the close link between big budgets and soccer dominance broke down in the English Premier League. Here, a look at what motivated the surprise and why American-style sport socialism still isn't likely to emerge in European leagues.

The Tor anonymity network allows users to protect their privacy and circumvent censorship restrictions but also shields those distributing child abuse content, selling or buying illicit drugs, or sharing malware online. Using data collected from Tor entry nodes, we provide an estimation of the proportion of Tor network users that likely employ the network in putatively good or bad ways. Overall, on an average country/day, ∼6.7% of Tor network users connect to Onion/Hidden Services that are disproportionately used for illicit purposes. We also show that the likely balance of beneficial and malicious use of Tor is unevenly spread globally and systematically varies based upon a country's political conditions. In particular, using Freedom House's coding and terminological classifications, the proportion of often illicit Onion/Hidden Services use is more prevalent (∼7.8%) in "free" countries than in either "partially free" (∼6.7%) or "not free" regimes (∼4.8%).

In the twenty-first century, Americans have put more of their lives online while the US government has expanded its mass surveillance apparatus. Interest in anonymity-granting technologies like The Onion Router (Tor) has grown substantially as citizens seek to protect their privacy. However, this same technology can be used to engage in illegal activity on the dark web. This study examines how interest in the dark web, public attention to the 2013 Snowden revelations, and metro-area political ideology are associated with public interest in Tor. We link data from multiple sources including Google Trends, the American Community Survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study for the forty-nine largest US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) from 2006–2015 (n=490). Broadly, we find that metro areas with liberal citizen ideology and greater interest in the dark web were more likely to search for Tor. When controlling for the level of interest in the dark web, the Snowden revelations of 2013 had no significant impact on interest in Tor. These findings suggest that the lure of the dark web and left-leaning ideological contexts offer stronger explanations for interest in anonymity-granting technology than the public attention brought to mass surveillance by the Snowden revelations.

This study examines processes that contribute to the underrepresentation of women in film by linking the depiction of gender in film to its impact on domestic box office returns. Drawing on a sample of widely distributed movies from 2000 to 2009 (n = 974), we test whether the box office under‐performance of films with an independent female presence results primarily from "downstream" public rejection or from an gendered "upstream" division of resources that provides greater studio support to movies about men. Using a series of multivariate regression analyses and controlling for genre, critical appraisal, arthouse label, being a sequel, and including a popular star, films with a female presence earn less at the box office. This effect, however, appears to be largely the consequence of movies that feature women having smaller production budgets, suggesting that the underrepresentation of women in film stems from "upstream" routines of film industry gatekeepers, not a lesser interest in stories about women in the minds of the public.