http://www.dailykos.com/main/4

and see

http://www.dailykos.com/

I can’t think of a real sniglet (“sniglet”?) but if you accept Adam’s suggestion, there’s always “feminist blogger X”. (Sorry, Adam.)

“Orin is a pretty smart guy, and I’m pretty sure he’s heard of sociology and demographics. I assume that he thought that both were too broad to be used as names for this particular subtopic.”

Criticisms were probably more about Orin being unwilling to use the words, sociology and demographics. Snarking at what people perceived as ‘too cybercool for school’. At least, that’s what mine was.

“If you heard someone say “There’s a thread about the sociology of the blogosphere,” would you understand that to mean “There’s a thread discussing the blogosphere’s gender/political/racial breakdown”? I doubt it.”

I’d expect it to be much more than that, possibly unuseably so, but if there wasn’t that information (or they couldn’t tell you where to find it), then I’d be surprised. And I’d figure that it wasn’t people who are actually interested in sociology or demographics contributing to the thread.

” If you heard someone say “There’s a thread about the demographics of the blogosphere,” you might suspect that it’s about gender, politics, and race—rather than about the many other things that demographics measures, such as income, profession, age, and more—but it wouldn’t be clear.”

Same as for sociology.

“I would guess that Orin is looking for a term that would make it clear. Neither “sociology” nor “demographics” would qualify, which I take it is why Orin wanted something narrower.

I’m not sure that there’s anything in common use which is that absolutely clear and precise, except for the phrase ‘gender/political/racial breakdown of the blogosphere’.

Meanwhile, I think of folk sociology as being the kind of informal explaining/theorizing about social life that people do all the time. It’s not intended to be systematic, but it is pervasive. (These days it’s also not insulated from disciplinary work, either: lots of folk explanations are now based on concepts from the social sciences that were once new but got reabsorbed into the culture—like meritocracy, say, or peer group, or social class.) Personally, I wouldn’t attach any contemptuous overtones to it, either, though of course it’s true that a lot of work in the sciences (of all kinds) emerges as a more systematic effort to see whether the folk account is right. And often it’s the results that refute folk explanations that are foundational for disciplinary identities.

I always enjoy the whole “folk” label. What exactly is “folk” anything, and how is it so designated? In this context I assume that “folk” means “any study done by anyone without a PhD”, but since the vast majority of humankind’s study and progress (if you are willing to cause it that) has been done by people without PhDs, how exactly did it acquire the contemptious overtones?

Cranky

Robert K. Merton, in a 1948 article called “The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.”

Welcome to the Long Tail of Emergent Democracy BloggerSphere as Wikified Smart Mobs.

But I’m just a Z-lister.

If you heard someone say “There’s a thread about the sociology of the blogosphere,” would you understand that to mean “There’s a thread discussing the blogosphere’s gender/political/racial breakdown”? I doubt it. If you heard someone say “There’s a thread about the demographics of the blogosphere,” you might suspect that it’s about gender, politics, and race—rather than about the many other things that demographics measures, such as income, profession, age, and more—but it wouldn’t be clear. I would guess that Orin is looking for a term that would make it clear. Neither “sociology” nor “demographics” would qualify, which I take it is why Orin wanted something narrower.

I need a term for the obnoxious practice of “raising awareness”.

Here it is: something