By Aron Hsiao, November 2nd, 2012 
As Sandy hit the east coast, many of us were watching the situation closely. This meant watching not only big media but also Facebook and Twitter, where storm-related activity was plentiful. The social media news was personal, reporting on the storm not as a large-scale atmospheric system but as the weather outside the living room window. We know whose power was out, whose wasn’t; we know who saw flooding and who just saw rain; we know who was drinking wine and who was drinking beer. We even know approximately when many went to bed. Stories in big media and even in blogspace, on the other hand, tended toward the documentary: ConEdison transformer explosion on the lower east side; flooding up to 14th Street; partial building collapse on 8th Avenue.
While the latter group may have been much more informative in the conventional sense, the former group was much more illuminating. True, the “news” version of Sandy was formally conventional, but even in the details it was macroscopic and opaque. Each detail in big media was merely a data point supporting the larger context, the bigger story. Eighth Avenue, for example, was just another dot in New York City and, more generally, the Atlantic coast, while on social media, Eighth Avenue belonged to the people living there; it became a geography all its own, rather than a mathematical point in a much larger geography. In the news, Sandy was a national meteorological event. In social media, Sandy was the particular experience of an unusual afternoon and evening by a particular community.
As someone experiencing the event from afar, the difference was stark. It was difficult to emotionally reconcile the two accounts, to see them as treating one and the same reality. It still feels as though the connective tissue linking macronews to microblogging is missing. Where is the ontological middle ground? Does our cultural metaphysics allow for it?
Of particular interest, in any case, were the Sandy photos, which comprised three genres of reporting.
News media images. The news coverage of the event provided the predictable series of disaster shots—cars floating in . . .
Read more: Sandy and Three Genres of “Reporting”
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 28th, 2011 
This week I am proud to be a New Yorker. Our governor and our state legislature, which have not been a source of pride in recent years, distinguished themselves in noteworthy ways.
There was the normal stuff. A timely budget and new ethics law passed without much drama. And there was the extraordinary, a fundamental human rights advance. Marriage is no longer a heterosexual privilege in my home state.
I should add that there are many problems with Governors Cuomo’s approach to our economic problems, in my opinion: too easy on the wealthy, too hard on the poor and public employees. I hope that now that he has established himself as fiscally responsible, he will turn next year to more directly addressing the suffering of working people and the poor. I am not a fan of the economically conservative, socially liberal blend.
In fact, the establishment of the new marriage contract right has both advantages and disadvantages for specific gay couples, as was observed by Katherine M. Franke in a New York Times op. ed. piece. There is less openness about the inclusion of partners in insurance coverage, more restrictions. The marriage option should not become a marriage compulsion. And I am also not sure how progressive this development is. It is noteworthy that the advance of gay marriage ties people to a traditional state sanctioned relationship, something which wise conservatives have noted (including Gary Alan Fine in a private exchange we had). Gays in the military and gay marriage, seen in this light, are important conservative advances. No wonder former Vice President Cheney is a supporter of gay marriage.
Yet, marriage equality is something that is truly significant, going well beyond the details of the marriage contract and political ideology. It formalizes a fundamental advance in human rights and dignity. Another opinion piece in the Times gets at the true significance of the moment, Frank Bruni’s “To Know Us Is to Let Us Love.” He underscores how spectacular the advance is in comparison to what he had hoped for . . .
Read more: Marriage, Equality, and Dignity
By Iddo Tavory, December 12th, 2010 
Iddo Tavory recently began teaching at the New School, in New York, after completing his Ph.D. at UCLA, in Los Angeles. His areas of research focus include the sociology of religion, temporality and interaction. -Jeff
Last week I went to MoMA. Since I came to New York I got more “culture” than ever before. It isn’t that Los Angeles had no great museums, but something about New York—or perhaps the fantasies of the city that I had—spurred me to go to museums much more. The exhibition I went to was Abstract Expressionist New York, which I was particularly excited about: New York art, shown in New York.
In other words, it is a bit like listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in California, only far more highbrow. As my partner and I were walking around, we were trying to make sense of the paintings, to decide if we like De Kooning and Motherwell, to “get a feel” for this kind of art. Though we both come from middle-class families, neither of us feels really comfortable around modern art, say, after early Expressionism or Cubism.
It isn’t that we don’t like it, it’s just that we don’t feel like we know how to evaluate it. It isn’t that we aren’t moved, it is almost as if we don’t know how to be moved. It is a strange sensation, looking at a painting and trying hard to be moved. Being moved, after all, shouldn’t involve trying. That’s the whole idea with emotion.
In fact, we do learn to be moved. More precisely, we learn ways to open ourselves to the possibility of being moved. Through the process known in sociology as “socialization,” we learn the knowledge, skills and preferences that will shape the choices we make, the direction we take.
This isn’t only a nice sociological idea, but something that we found out first hand when we were leaving the . . .
Read more: MoMA KIDS: Teaching Art Appreciation
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