A book written by Stephen Barnard, associate professor and chair of sociology, has been named the winner of the Best Book Award for the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS) section of the American Sociological Association.
Citizens at the Gates: Twitter, Networked Publics, and the Transformation of American Journalism, published in 2018, is an analysis of Twitter practices around newsworthy events like the Boston Marathon bombing, protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and the election of Donald Trump.
In the statement from the American Sociological Association, the organization praised the book as a wok that "skillfully combines Bourdieusian field theory and a wealth of empirical data gathered via mixed-methods including, but not limited to content analysis, digital ethnography, and social network analysis to paint a vivid picture of the way Twitter has reshaped American journalism."
Barnard, who joined the St. Lawrence faculty in 2014, had a second book published, All Media are Social - Sociological Perspectives on Mass Media in the spring of 2020 and was recently awarded St. Lawrence's prestigious Frank P. Piskor Faculty Lectureship for 2021. He received his B.A. (2005), M.A. (2007) and Ph.D. (2012) at the University of Missouri.
