Cross Breeds

So, this can start out in one of two ways. It could be a joke: so, sociology and journalism get married and have a kid, what do they call it? Or, it could be a philosophical puzzle: sociology and journalism meet in a bar -- what would they talk about and what are the chances they go home together?

Actually, I'm not sure I mean only sociology (let's allow it to be social science in general for the moment) and I'm not sure how narrowly or broadly I'd want to define journalism here (shall we just say "media"?). In any case, here's the point: these two could, I think, use each other. In the best sense of "use," of course.

On the one hand, the social sciences offer a lot of insights about how humans behave and organize their worlds. There's a lot that's non-obvious (at least until it's pointed out) about how we do stuff that the best social science brings to light. But word doesn't much get out. Social scientists are often not so good at telling what they know in a compelling and interesting manner. On the other hand, this is precisely what the best "media folk" are good at -- they know how to tell a story in a manner that makes folks want to listen and want to come back for more next week.

So far, that sounds like the social scientists could certainly use the journalists, but what's in it for the latter? At the risk of injury to toes or feathers, it seems to me that sometimes "media" are oriented toward the unusual, the outlier, and in the worst cases the sensational as a way of generating "interesting-ness." That's not, at first, a problem -- something can be empirically interesting simply by virtue of the fact that it does exist and most folks have never encountered it. The rub comes when things glide toward suggesting (advertently or inadvertently) that the unusual is noteworthy because its actually more widespread than the reader thinks even though the story at hand is based on an N of 1 or 2 or 3 or 4.

This is what I call the "denominator problem" -- suppose I find 5 graduates at yesterday's graduation who are terrified that they'll never find a job. Could make a compelling story. But what if 95 other graduates have great job offers? It takes me over an hour to get some hot tape of graduates describing their panic. But what do five great quotes really say about the world. That's something that social scientists have spent a lot of time thinking about. Their business is basically this: how can you turn observations into information about the world and how can you be sure of how much faith to place in that information? For the social scientist, fact that it's hard for me to get five sources is data too.

Let me stop for a moment and assure the reader that I am not proposing one of those "I'll stop the world and melt with you" relationships. Alone time is important and there's certainly a place for activity at both ends of the continuum (with pure social science at one end and pure media/journalism at other). But there is, I think, a middle zone where some productive promiscuity* might occur. The purpose of this project is to explore that zone.

*Maybe not quite the right word. The dictionary definition includes "consisting of parts, elements, or individuals of different kinds brought together" which is what I mean. It adds, alas, "without order" and "without discrimination" which in the long run I don't mean. In the short run, though, maybe some disorderly experimentation would not be a bad thing.