Ian Sheinheit

SUNY: University at Albany, Sociology, Graduate Student

Yale University, Center for Cultural Sociology, Fellow

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Ian Sheinheit is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY. His research lays at the intersection of culture, media, and politics. Ian is currently working on a number of projects concerned with the transitions of the political news media field. His work analyzes the changes and impacts of digital communication technologies on politics, professionalism, journalism, and news content. Specifically, his research compares and analyzes the ways in which different news media content producers, during different historical or contemporary moments, report political events and wars, claim authority and legitimacy, and impact political campaigns. His dissertation is an exploration of the structural and cultural alterations occurring in the political news media field in the lead up to the 2004 and 2008 presidential election cycles with a topical focus on the Iraq War. Methodologically, Ian combines systematic content analysis, media event reconstruction, and narrative analysis. Ian’s work can be found in the journals Sociological Forum, Mass Communication and Society and PS: Political Science and Politics.
Supervisors: Ronald N. Jacobs and Richard Lachmann
Address: New York, New York, United States

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Shingo Hamanaka

Ryukoku University

Elisheva Rosman-Stollman

Bar-Ilan University

Yagil Levy

The Open University of Israel

Udi Lebel

Bar-Ilan University

Daniel Bar-Tal

Richard Lacquement

U.S. Army War College

Kandida Purnell

Richmond American University London

GODWIN OKON

Raphael Cohen-Almagor

University of Hull

Carl Conetta

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Papers by Ian Sheinheit

Death and the Times: Depictions of War Deaths in the United States and Israel From Vietnam and the Six-Day War to Iraq and Lebanon

Why has support for casualties in foreign wars declined in the United States since Vietnam? We co... more Why has support for casualties in foreign wars declined in the United States since Vietnam? We compare The New York Times’ very different depictions of war deaths in the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Then we offer an explanation for why there has been this fundamental transformation in the ways in which American war dead are regarded and valued. We find that the change is in retrospective interpretations of the war and in memorials to the Vietnam dead after that war ended rather than in public evaluations of the geopolitical interests of the U.S. or prospects for victory in either Vietnam or Iraq. We trace the deepening personalization of war dead to specific political and cultural events within the United States rather than positing a general change in Western attitudes toward death and war. We conclude by speculating on the implications of that change for future wars and propose a research agenda to extend our findings to other countries that have fought wars in recent decades.

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Death and the Times: Wartime Commemoration and Popular Opinion During the Vietnam and Iraq Wars

Authenticity and Carrier Agents: The Social Construction of Political Gaffes 1

Political campaigns require constant performance from politicians. This presents ample opportunit... more Political campaigns require constant performance from politicians. This presents ample opportunity for the occurrence of political gaffes. While it is not surprising that political gaffes can have a major impact on political campaigns, the process by which a gaffe is transformed into a meaning-laden defining campaign event is underanalyzed. To address this, we analyze and reconstruct the media trajectory of three instances, two involving Senate candidates (George Allen and Todd Akin) and one a presidential candidate (Mitt Rom-ney), in which gaffes were constructed into meaning-laden events. We find that constructing a political gaffe as a meaning-laden event is a deeply social process. Our research highlights the impact of sousveillance (surveillance from below) and the difficulty that political performers have maintaining consistent " authentic " performances. Recounting the trajectories of these three gaffes allows for a detailing of the diverse methods by which the hybrid media system was effectively mobilized by " carrier agents " (actors with narrative capacity and media know-how). Further, we find that these gaffes proved particularly salient because they were interpreted as embodying an authentic representation of the candidate while simultaneously violating emergent norms of inclusive democratic public discourse.

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Heroes and Victims: Depictions of War Deaths in the United States and Israel, 1960s to 2000s

Online Campaigning

Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2012

The research about online campaigning focuses primarily on the question of how, and whether, usin... more The research about online campaigning focuses primarily on the question of how, and whether, using information and communication technologies (ICTs) will reshape the political landscape, especially in Western democracies like the United States. Some of the research examines the ways that political campaigns are using or failing to use the Internet and its potentially democratizing affordances to engage more people more deeply in the electoral process. Other research examines the ways that citizens use or fail to use the Internet to get more involved in political campaigns. The results so far suggest a complicated picture. On the one hand, political elites, such as candidates, are increasingly using the Internet to engage supporters and mobilize them for the benefit of the campaign. On the other hand, there is evidence of increased political polarization, with those interested in politics becoming more so, and those uninterested in politics becoming even less involved and knowledgeable about politics. The research that exists focuses on established Western democracies, especially English-speaking countries. In addition, little research exists about online campaigning in countries politically organized in other ways, like dictatorships, in part because opportunities to use the Internet for political expression by elites or by citizens are limited, either because of poor Internet diffusion or because of authoritarian systems that limit free expression and dialogue between the government and the governed.

http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756841/obo-9780199756841-0059.xml

Good Ol’ Boy Talk versus the Blogosphere in the Case of Former Senator George Allen

Mass Communication and Society, 2013

ABSTRACT The unsuccessful 2006 reelection campaign of then incumbent Republican senator George Al... more ABSTRACT The unsuccessful 2006 reelection campaign of then incumbent Republican senator George Allen of Virginia is employed to discuss the emergent role of blogging in political discourse. We analyze reconstructed interactions between weblog and mainstream media coverage to argue that Allen&#39;s use of the racial slur “macaca” was successfully mobilized by progressive Virginia bloggers to create a negative narrative about Allen that was then picked up and echoed in many mainstream media outlets. In this case study, blogs were used as an important site of civil discourse that increasingly influences mainstream media coverage. Bloggers took advantage of changing mores that make it unseemly for high-level public officials to employ racially insensitive comments and effectively mobilized long-standing dramatic elements of a campaign narrative to shape discourse surrounding this Senate election.

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Skocpol, Theda (1947–)

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015

Theda Skocpol, currently the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard Un... more Theda Skocpol, currently the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, analyzes and researches the principal historical transformations of society. Skocpol’s work is an exemplar of historical comparative research. She has asked, and of course answered, ‘big’ questions: What are the causes of social revolutions? Why has the United States welfare state developed as it has? What is happening to American civic life and democracy? These three questions have guided the three distinct yet overlapping tracks Skocpol’s research has followed. The answers proffered by Skocpol and the concepts she developed and deployed to do so, causal historical analysis, state and polity autonomy, policy feedback, and diminished democracy, are described and discussed.

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