What drives the news coverage of social movements in the professional news media? We address this question by elaborating an institutional mediation model arguing that the news values, routines, and characteristics of the news media induce them to pay attention to movements depending on their characteristics and the political contexts in which they engage. The news-making characteristics of movements include their disruptive capacities and organizational strength, and the political contexts include a partisan regime in power, benefitting from national policies, and congressional investigations. To appraise these arguments, we analyze approximately 1 million news articles mentioning 29 social movements over the twentieth century, published in four national newspapers. We use negative binomial regression analyses and separate time-series analyses of the labor movement to assess the model’s robustness across different movements, time periods, and news sources. In each analysis, the results support the hypotheses based on the institutional mediation model. More generally, we argue that the influence of social movements on institutions depends on the structure and operating procedures of those institutions. This insight has implications for future studies of the influence of movements on major social institutions.

By Gregory Smithsimon NYU Press, 2022, 312 pages $30 (paper). https://nyupress.org/9781479861491/liberty-road/

By Robert E. Parker Lexington Books, 2022, 146 pages. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793625526/The-Misuse-Misrepresentation-and-Politicization-of-Statistics-in-American-Society

By Roberta Rehner Iversen Temple University Press, 2022. 198 pages. https://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000008448

By Larissa Buchholz Princeton University Press, 2022. 416 pages. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691245447/the-global-rules-of-art

Review of “Intersecting Lives: How Place Shapes Reentry” By Andrea M. Leverentz University of California Press, 2022. 270 pages. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520379435/intersecting-lives

Review of “Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China” By Ke Li Stanford University Press, 2022, 344 pages. https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=32710

Review of “Best Laid Plans: Women Coming of Age in Uncertain Times.” By Jessica Halliday Hardie University of California Press, 2022. 274 pages. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520297883/best-laid-plans

By Raúl Pérez Stanford University, Stanford University Press, 2022, 232 pages. $25.00 (paperback), ISBN 9781503632332. https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=30308

Review of “Qualitative Literacy: A Guide to Evaluating Ethnographic and Interview Research” By Mario Luis Small and Jessica McCrory Calarco University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2022. 230 pages. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520390669/qualitative-literacy

Review of “Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan” By H. Yumi Kim Oxford University Press, 2022, 248 pages. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/madness-in-the-family-9780197507353?cc=us&lang=en&

Review of “The Quantified Scholar: How Research Evaluations Transformed the British Social Sciences” By Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra Columbia University Press, 2022, 272 pages. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-quantified-scholar/9780231197816

Review of “Post Society” By Carlo Bordoni translated by Wendy Doherty Cambridge UK Polity Press, 2022, 182 pages. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Post+Society-p-9781509553914

Considerable sociological work shows that the human rights regime is rapidly expanding through isomorphic processes. We provide new insight into human rights diffusion through an analysis of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a global forum in which all states receive human rights recommendations from their peers. We convert the roughly 50,000 recommendations from the first two cycles of the UPR into a relational dataset of states making and receiving recommendations, inductively modeling this process of human rights diffusion through latent class regression. Building on research in the new institutionalism, we find that asymmetric relationships between states make it less likely for human rights recommendations to be accepted, with accepted recommendations tending to be more general and easier to implement. We argue that these partnership patterns provide evidence for normative corridors that give world society its shape. By drawing together world society approaches with relational sociology, we develop new insights into the structuration of human rights and normative change more broadly.

By Kathryn Abrams University of California Press, 2022, 304 pages. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520384422/open-hand-closed-fist.

By Sandra Eder University of Chicago Press, 2022. 328 pages. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo156724705.html

By Matías Dewey University of Texas Press, 2020, 296 pages. https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/dewey-making-it-at-any-cost.

By Christopher Seeds University of California Press, 2022, 278 pages.https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520379985/death-by-prison

Substantive racial integration depends on both access to cross-race friendship opportunities (demographic integration) and the development of stable and rewarding social relations (social integration). Yet, we know little about the relative stability of cross-race friendship nominations over time. Cross-race friendships are also experienced within social contexts, where other individual, dyadic, and contextual factors may simultaneously affect whether such ties persist. Based on longitudinal network data on over 2,000 students in multiple communities, we test whether cross-race friendships are more or less stable than same-race friendships. We find that cross-race friendships at first glance appear less likely to persist than same-race friendships, but cross-race ties become no less stable than same-race ties after accounting for other social factors, including reciprocity and shared friends. This pattern suggests a threshold process where strong, socially recognized ties embedded among peers face less threat to maintaining friendship stability.

By Robin Bartram University of Chicago Press, 2022, 224 pages. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo174780463.html.