- Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States
David G Ortiz
New Mexico State University, Sociology, Faculty Member
- Sociology, Social Movements, Political Sociology, Data Analysis, Quantitative Methods, Cultural Sociology, and 19 moreSocial Media, Sociology of the Media, Online Communities, Online Media, Comunidades virtuales y redes y medios sociales online, Movimientos sociales, Latin America, Movimientos sociales. América Latina, Media and Democracy, Social Media, Internet, Democracy and Politics, Qualitative Research Methods, Repression, Social protests, Collective Action, Digital Media, Digital Activism, Social Media and Natural Disasters, Autocracies, and Social movements and revolutionedit
Can previously unacquainted, grieving individuals who use social media to organize and participate in decentralized mobilizations build strong, lasting social ties? If so, how? What is it about particular social media technologies and... more
Can previously unacquainted, grieving individuals who use social media to organize and participate in decentralized mobilizations build strong, lasting social ties? If so, how? What is it about particular social media technologies and platforms that might explain the strength and longevity of their social ties? Drawing on a case study of New Orleans bloggers who took part in a variety of contentious and non-contentious mobilizations after hurricane Katrina, we find that people who mobilize through social media like blogs can form strong and lasting social ties. We argue that this is partly because of the types of communication and interaction that blogs afford. We identify two types of affordances, mechanical and cultural, as distinct qualities of social media like blogs, and illustrate how they enable the building of strong, digitally mediated social ties among grieving people.
There is a lively debate on the relationship between digital media and civic participation. Some scholars argue that digital media adversely affect civic participation, others that the effect of digital media on civic participation is... more
There is a lively debate on the relationship between digital media and civic participation. Some scholars argue that digital media adversely affect civic participation, others that the effect of digital media on civic participation is negligible, and still others claim that digital media strengthens civic participation. Yet, most of this research is based on cross-sectional methodologies, treats digital media as a uniform entity, and overlooks new civic formations that better resonate with current social and technological environments. We address these criticisms with a retrospective case study of blogging in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Through in-depth interviews, supplemental survey data, analysis of blog posts, and field notes, we show how a number of New Orleans’ residents used blogs to organize and take part in a variety of civic actions in the months and years after hurricane Katrina. We discuss the implications of these findings for current debates on the relationship between digital media and civic participation.
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Scholars have recently begun to explore more nuanced ways of looking at the links between protest and repression, including consideration of the regime and other structural impacts on this dynamic relationship. This work contributes to... more
Scholars have recently begun to explore more nuanced ways of looking at the links between protest and repression, including consideration of the regime and other structural impacts on this dynamic relationship. This work contributes to this growing literature by employing Cox proportional hazards models to analyze daily data from 98 countries to study the exchanges between violent and nonviolent contention and repression under different regime settings. Results highlight the importance of considering the political setting when examining the dynamic contention-repression interaction, the need to account for both contentious actions' effects on state repression and state repression's effects on contention, and the fact that regime type categories should be further disaggregated in order to fully capture the particularities of this complex relationship.
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This study examines the relationships between collective violence, economic inequality, and repression. Some researchers propose that collective violence results from economic deprivation, while others emphasize the role of repression in... more
This study examines the relationships between collective violence, economic inequality, and repression. Some researchers propose that collective violence results from economic deprivation, while others emphasize the role of repression in producing violence. This study uses polynomial equations to analyze these relationships on 52 countries. Results suggest that collective violence varies as a cubic non-monotonic "N" shaped function of repression, while economic inequality is not directly related to violence. A strong military infrastructure is also found to deter collective violence. The combination of results supports the argument that extremely repressive regimes with weak military infrastructures tend to encourage a backlash of violence.
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We review the literature that identifies selection bias in media-based data and propose a theoretical model of the sources of these biases. Given the implications for validity and reliability, we conclude that newspaper data often do not... more
We review the literature that identifies selection bias in media-based data and propose a theoretical model of the sources of these biases. Given the implications for validity and reliability, we conclude that newspaper data often do not reach acceptable standards for event analysis and that using them can distort findings and misguide theorizing. Furthermore, media selection biases are resistant to correction procedures largely because they are unstable across media sources, time, and location. We end with a plea for more circumspect approaches to media data that fully and openly consider the implications of their inherent limitations.
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mediated processes of cultural trauma and repair in the wake of hurricane
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Can previously unacquainted, grieving individuals who use social media to organize and participate in decentralized mobilizations build strong, lasting social ties? If so, how? What is it about particular social media technologies and... more
Can previously unacquainted, grieving individuals who use social media to organize and participate in decentralized mobilizations build strong, lasting social ties? If so, how? What is it about particular social media technologies and platforms that might explain the strength and longevity of their social ties? Drawing on a case study of New Orleans bloggers who took part in a variety of contentious and non-contentious mobilizations after hurricane Katrina, we find that people who mobilize through social media like blogs can form strong and lasting social ties. We argue that this is partly because of the types of communication and interaction that blogs afford. We identify two types of affordances, mechanical and cultural, as distinct qualities of social media like blogs, and illustrate how they enable the building of strong, digitally mediated social ties among grieving people.
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