Abstract
Stimulated by debates on public sociology in the recent years I studied contributions of sociologists in daily newspapers in Austria. Although sociologists are rather present in the Austrian press, I argue this remains without noticeable effects on public opinion formation; the topics sociologists write and talk about are rather arbitrary and they lack factual content. Although my data refers to sociologists in the Austrian press, the study’s conclusions might be true to the wider sociological community: Through such exposure, a public profile of sociology cannot evolve. Furthermore, the article discusses criteria that prevent and complicate the relationship between sociologists and the press: avoidance of publicity, the problem of values and ideology, incompatibilities of language-games, divergence of relevance criteria, and deficient cultural empathy.
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Notes
The search routine was “*soziolog*” (the German equivalent to “*sociolog*”), the search-period ranged from December 17th 2003 to December 17th 2005. The result was a raw material of 3,253 articles and an analysis of 1,119 articles. Most of the articles had to be sorted out because they were no contributions by sociologists, but event notes, bulletin announcements of graduations, texts that mentioned something being “sociologically proven”, etc.
In the case of sociologists being quoted by journalists, the lack of facts can also be attributed to the journalists of course.
Data collection was a collaborative effort and I want to thank my colleagues Matthias Aberer, Lina Janes, Andrea Koch, Melanie Steiner, and Claudia Zimmermann.
Michael Burawoy pointed out, that, what he calls, traditional public sociology writes for “invisible” publics beyond academia and if this instigates public debate, “he or she might not actually participate in them” (Burawoy 2005).
For instance, in a New York Times article by Richard Bernstein in the November 26th, 2005, issue it said: “Mr. Irving’s arrest has provoked debate here, with some Austrians arguing that however objectionable his views, he ought to be allowed to express them. Christian Fleck, an Austrian sociologist, wrote a long article in Der Standard, a Viennese daily, on Wednesday saying that Mr. Irving had committed ‘an opinion offense against which it is not appropriate to evoke the danger of the resurrection’ of the Nazi Party.”
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Acknowledgements
Research underlying this paper was conducted while the author was in residence at the University of Graz, Austria. The project was initiated and funded by the “Oesterreichische Gesellschaft fuer Soziologie”—the Austrian Sociological Society. I would like to thank my colleagues for their useful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper: Christian Fleck, Christian Dayé, Werner Reichmann, and Stefan Laube.
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Revers, M. Sociologists in the Press. Am Soc 40, 272–288 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-009-9079-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-009-9079-9