what do you do?
a.i'm finishing up my phd in sociology at uc irvine. i spend most of my time reading, writing, teaching, emailing, and working on my research. my research involves doing a few things, including analyzing survey data and interviewing people about their lives, thoughts, and experiences
most of my work right now is about online conspiracy culture. more generally, though, i'm really interested in the complicated ways that people use technologies, and in the uneven ways that those technologies shape our lives — including what gets taken seriously, how we connect with each other, and who benefits
what is sociology?
a.sociology, broadly, is the systematic study of social life. sociologists spend a lot of time looking for patterns in how people live, interact, and group together, trying to get under the surface of things that usually go without saying
sociologists ask questions like:
- what things hold people together or push them apart?
- in what ways do societies and groups tend to change over time?
- what kinds of big and impersonal forces shape people's everyday personal lives?
- how do certain things come to be seen as natural, normal, good, or true?
- what would it take for things to work differently?
what do you mean by "conspiracy culture"?
a.when i say conspiracy culture, i mean the shared pool of ideas about how power works in private and what people do with those ideas. the ideas themselves vary quite widely: some ideas about powerful people conspiring line up with the "official version" of things (such as Watergate) and others don't (such as much of the lore around Jeffrey Epstein). i'm especially interested in this latter category. these are the ideas that get labelled "conspiracy theories," and the various people who devote their time and energy to learning, thinking, and talking about them find themselves in a unique spot
okay, but who are you?
a.offline, and outside of work, most people call me sam! i grew up in ohio and moved to southern california for grad school. i spend a lot of my free time doing things outside, and really enjoy going camping. i also spend a lot of time listening to, thinking about, and on occasion writing about music
i've spent a lot of time online. as of now, i post occasionally on my instagram and xwitter and spend lots of time observing in a variety of spaces. lifelong lurker here quite frankly
