Sociologist Available to Discuss Government Leaks and Policy within the Media

Washington, DC, July 25, 2017 — The American Sociological Association (ASA) has a sociologist available to discuss how leaks of classified information shape policy discourse.

Newswise — Christopher A. Bail is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar at the University of Michigan. His research examines how non-profit organizations and other political actors shape public discourse by analyzing large groups of texts from newspapers, television, public opinion surveys, and social media sites. His research has been published by Princeton University Press, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Sociological Review, and other leading publications. In his article, “The Public Life of Secrets: How Leaks Shape Policy Discourse,” he argues that leaks lead to a downward spiral of deception. His current projects examine the community-level predictors of violent extremism using Google search data, and how social networks influence political polarization on Twitter. Bail’s publications include: “The Fringe Effect: Civil Society Organizations and the Evolution of Media Discourse about Islam” and "The Configuration of Symbolic Boundaries against Immigrants in Europe” in the American Sociological Review.

 

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About the American Sociological Association The American Sociological Association (www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.