User:Snowprof

I am Pamela J Shoemaker, professor emeritus of Syracuse University’s SI Newhouse School of Public Communications. I retired December 2015. My doctorate is from the University of Wisconsin.

My most prominent books are, , and

I am currently updating an essay on my theory of the relationship between the construct ‘deviance’ and the news. I propose that people survey the environment for deviant items, this process being adaptive in the sense of biological evolution—-people who attend to deviance in the environment are more likely to pass their genetic heritage to later generations. I also propose that cultural evolution determines changes in the definition of deviance over time and among cultures. Although attending to deviance has given us the news industry, and now including the social media, it is not always functional—-attending to deviance can make people more anxious. This could result in an avoidance of news, the selection of specific news items to consume, or the intake of a more general representation of reality. I believe that this accounts in part for the current social divisiveness, highly partisan politics, more partisanship in news (than during the latter part of the 20th century), and a high level of social anxiety.

I currently live in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA.

References

Pamela J Shoemaker and Stephen D Reese. (2014). Mediating the Message:  Media Sociology Theories. Routledge, New York.

Pamela J Shoemaker and Tim Vos (2009). Gatekeeping Theory. Routledge, New York.

Pamela J Shoemaker and Akiba Cohen. (2006). Routledge, New York.

Pamela J Shoemaker, James Tankard Jr, and Dominic Lasorsa. (2004). Building Social Science Theories. Routledge, New York.