By now you have probably heard that the runaway balloon supposedly containing a six-year-old boy was a hoax, according to his mother's admission. The story received hours of “breaking news” coverage on October 15, and has since consumed countless hours of news coverage about the scam perpetrated on the news networks and concerned viewers.
If French sociologist Jean Baudrillard were still alive, I dare say he would not be surprised that a father would allegedly cook up such a scheme, or that he contacted the local news, the police, or the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). He might even say he’s surprised it took so long for something like this to happen.
As I recently blogged, Baudrillard described our contemporary mediated age as one where the boundary between image and reality has blurred to the point where they can no longer be neatly separated. Where once we might have had clearer distinctions between entertainment and reality, the two have fused, and the 24-hour news cycles and the Internet have helped them come together.
It has never been easier to enter into what was once a rarified space of celebrity: with YouTube and “reality” television, fame is increasingly based on promoting one’s private life rather than on professional achievements. It’s not that there weren’t people who were “famous for being famous” in the past, but we have so many more avenues to achieve instant celebrity now. There are more celebrities and they get famous faster. We likely forget about them more quickly now too.
Cable news is a big part of this equation. In competing for viewers of “fictional” programming and the myriad of other entertainment choices we have now, the news has morphed into infotainment: a hybrid that is a perfect example of Baudrillard’s idea of hyperreality.
Baudrillard suggests that hypperreality creates a uniquely entertaining experience, what he called the “thrill of the real.” This thrill is something we might experience when that “Breaking News” banner unfurls on the screen. But the thrill constantly weakens and extinguishes itself unless something even newer happens. So news becomes more about live action excitement than analysis and investigation.
Perhaps that’s why the same networks that pre-empted their regular programming to cover this story for hours later turned on the family by trotting out angry commentators condemning the family and talking with legal analysts about the charges they should face. The news networks sent reporters to dig up dirt on the family and reported that they couldn’t find evidence that the parents worked steadily, and interviewed neighbors and other acquaintances on camera to malign the father’s character.
Let’s face it, the news networks that covered this event got Punk'd (another example of postmodernity where celebrities thought they were living their private lives but were in fact part of a television show) but seem reluctant to admit it. Maybe behind the scenes news directors will see this as a wake-up call about the folly of chasing shiny objects—literally in this case—during a time when they could be covering other more meaningful stories in greater depth. I’d like to think that the next time a story like this “breaks”—and you know there will be a next time—news directors will think carefully about how much attention it really deserves.
Yes, the Heene parents deserve the bulk of blame for breaking the law, and for using their children to fulfill their own dreams of fame. They took advantage of our fascination with the real, the private, and the exciting. While they might not reap the financial rewards for diving into the fishbowl for the rest of us to watch, many clearly have (I believe their names are Jon and Kate).
All of this recalls the 1998 movie, The Truman Show, where Jim Carrey’s character finds out that his entire life is actually a television show, and that everyone in his life has been cast by the producers. Truman is devastated to find out that his whole world is a set.
Fast forward a decade later, and many people clamor to turn their lives into a television set, to convert their friends and family members into cast mates. Yes, money and attention are huge motivators. Baudrillard might add that the “real world” and the “television set” can no longer be distinguished from one another. It could be that many of us feel like life might be more thrilling if someone was watching, and that to matter in the twenty-first century is to be observed by others, a character in our own Truman Show. What other sociological theories do you think might help explain this phenomenon?
As Sally Raskoff recently blogged about, the news of Roman Polanski’s arrest has sparked a conversation about how we think about rape and sexual assault of children. If Polanski loses his extradition fight and returns to the United States, he will return to a very different country than the one he fled. In 1978, the year he became a fugitive, the Rams still played in Los Angeles, Jimmy Carter was president, and the average price of a gallon of gas was 61 cents.
And as the New York Times recently noted, Polanski would also return to an America that has decidedly different mores about sex than we did during the 1970s. While in some ways we might have more liberal attitudes about sex, we are much more likely to condemn sexual assault today than we were in the 1970s, especially if children are involved.
Much of the sexual openness we attribute to the 1960s actually took place in the following decade, after birth control became more widely available. Oral contraceptives only became legal for unmarried women in all 50 states after the 1972 Supreme Court decision Eisenstadt v. Baird, which effectively legalized sex between unmarried men and women. Sex outside of marriage was technically illegal in many states, although these laws were not enforced often, but they remained on the books in some states until the Supreme Court ruling struck them down.
By the 1980s, sex was no longer viewed as an expression of freedom—with the discovery of AIDS, it was potentially dangerous. Ideas about recreational sex began to shift during the late 1980s and early 1990s as the disease spread and teen pregnancy rates rose.
Adults’ attitudes about teen sex are less lenient today too. In 1986 the General Social Survey, a nationally representative household survey, first asked respondents about their attitudes about teen sex (defined in the survey as sex between fourteen- to sixteen-year-olds). That year 67 percent of respondents answered that it was “always wrong,” compared with 73 percent in 2006, the most recent year for which we have data.
Just as concerns about consensual sex began to rise, legal responses to rape became more serious in the 1980s. For example, spousal rape was often considered an oxymoron, and it wasn’t until 1993 that all 50 states recognized it as a crime.
Acquaintance rape, or sexual assault committed by someone one knows, (and frequently called “date rape”) had barely entered everyday language in the 1970s, and states only began passing rape-shield laws – which made a victim’s sexual history and physical appearance inadmissible in court – in the 1970s. Michigan was the first state to pass a statute in 1974, with most states passing their own by the early 1980s.
Awareness about sexual violence had been increasing during the 1970s, thanks to small conscious raising groups and books published by feminist authors like Andrea Dworkin (Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality, 1974) and Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, 1975). These books were influential in literary and academic circles, but with the explosion of confessional daytime talk shows on national television in the 1980s, such as Oprah (which debuted in 1986), a much larger swath of the population heard stories from survivors of rape and child sexual abuse further opened the eyes of the public to sexual violence and led to calls for tougher punishment for sexual offenders. Allegations of sexual abuse at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California made for scandalous headlines in the 1980s, though all involved were acquitted in 1990.
Also drawing media attention were celebrity accounts of abuse. Former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur spoke publically about being sexually abused by her father in 1991. That same year, 1960s teen star Sandra Dee spoke of similar victimization from her step father.
In response to the increasing awareness about sexual abuse, social workers, medical professionals, and educators were expected to be on the lookout for tell-tale signs in children they encountered. Dramatic headlines kept sexual abuse in the news: Ellie Nesler famously shot her son’s accused molester in court in 1993, the same year that Polly Klaas was abducted from her bedroom by a stranger, and later found dead, causing national outrage and later prompting the passage of California's Three Strikes law, which mandates life in prison for an individual’s third felony conviction.
Public contempt for those that harm children—especially if the harm is sexual—rose to a fever pitch in the 1990s. Celebrities such as Woody Allen and Michael Jackson were accused of sexual abuse. (Allen was never charged; Jackson was charged in 2003 and later acquitted). Widespread allegations of sexual abuse by priests rocked the Catholic Church. Reports of sexual abuse allegations against teachers, coaches, and others became regular news stories, and from the coverage it seemed that children were under constant sexual threat.
Perhaps because of our increased awareness and concern about sexual violence, rates of rape have declined significantly since 1977. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, a nationally representative survey conducted annually by the U.S. Department of Justice, respondents in 1977 aged twelve and older were almost three times more likely to have been raped than those who completed the survey in 2008.
Child sexual abuse cases have been declining along with reductions in rape. A study conducted at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire found a 50 percent reduction in national sexual abuse rates between 1992 and 2006. While accurate measures of all cases of sexual abuse are impossible, this decline is still important, particularly at a time when awareness about abuse might encourage more reporting.
But concern about sexual violence against children has not subsided. If anything, it has increased. The public is seldom aware of decreases in crime. Add to that fears about new media, like social networking sites on the Internet and anxiety about sexual imagery in pop culture, and concerns about young people and sex only increase.
Polanski would have been better off dealing with his case—and fighting alleged prosecutorial misconduct—in the 1970s. Not only would attitudes about sex and acquaintance rape have been more favorable to him in the 70s, it would have been the right thing to do, given his admission of guilt.
Karen Sternheimer asks sociologists at the University of Southern California what advice they would give to students taking sociology exams for the first time or writing papers for a sociology class.
On September 18th, the CBS daytime drama Guiding Light aired its final episode after 72 years on the air (fifteen years on radio and 57 on television). Ratings declined as they have for many soap operas over the past few years, leading to the network’s decision to end the longest running program in television history. Both my grandmother and great-grandmother watched the show religiously, and its end represents the passing of more than just a television show. It marks a major social shift.
Daytime melodramas became popular during a time when women spent less time in the paid labor force than they did in the early and later years of the twentieth century. In pre-television radio days, these dramas became known as soap operas because manufacturers of cleaning products advertised heavily to the mostly female audience.
The content of the soaps offered an escapist fantasy of outlandish plots that could temper the tedium of regular housework. For the uninitiated, soap opera characters regularly commit infidelity, plot each others’ deaths, come back from the dead, grow from childhood to adulthood after a year’s absence, and marry and divorce at a rate that would make Elizabeth Taylor’s eight marriages seem normal. Good and evil characters can change overnight and even come back in the form of another person, especially if a surgeon managed a scar-less face transplant.
When I would visit my grandmother, I would hear the plot twists unfold to dramatic music, watch the camera zoom into an actor’s dramatic facial expression and think that this style of storytelling seemed so different than many other programs on the air today.
One might argue that reality shows are a twenty-first century answer to twentieth century melodramas. For those who watch them, reality shows suggest that we are getting an inside glimpse into someone’s private life, usually someone whose life is marked by drama (or edited to highlight--if not produce--dramatic incidents). Most viewers are now savvy enough to know that reality shows are not entirely unfiltered windows into participants’ lives, but it is their illusion of reality that is part of the interest.
This fascination highlights some of the ideas of postmodern theory, particularly French sociologist Jean Baudrillard. According to Baudrillard, the real and the simulated are no longer distinguishable. He argues that in our media age, images of reality and reality itself interact so much so that they have become interchangeable.
You can think of this as like a mirror that reflects an image from another mirror so much that the original image can no longer be identified. Baudriallard calls the outcome of this endless interaction hyperreality, and suggests in his 1983 book Simulations that we are fascinated by the "thrill of the real," particularly because in his view "reality" has imploded with simulation.
There are certainly limits to the application of postmodern theory, but it might help us understand why traditional twentieth century soaps are watching their audiences dwindle. Yes, with more women in the labor force fewer are at home during the day to watch television. And as women have more opportunities outside of the home they might find their lives less mundane and therefore would be less interested in melodrama.
Despite including younger characters, part of the soaps’ recent challenge has been that their audiences have aged and younger viewers have not begun watching in large number. A 2008 Boston Globe article describes how producers attempted to adopt the style of reality shows to attract new viewers. In particular, they sometimes use smaller cameras to mirror the informality of reality shows. But perhaps the biggest hurdle is that soaps are a product of twentieth-century modernity. Audiences may now prefer to observe people “being themselves” in our hyper-mediated age.
We can also look at the genre itself and see how it does not reflect our postmodern condition, where reality itself seems more entertaining than fiction. Soaps are deliberately unreal, asking viewers to enter a fantasy world and suspend their disbelief. We know the characters are played by actors, even if sometimes fans blur the boundary and think of the actor as their character. But the actors and producers make no claim that their character is real.
Realities shows like the Real Housewives and the Kardashian family shows, however, ask us to enjoy the illusion of reality itself by suggesting to us that these programs are depictions of real events. The stories are not limited to a television time slot: events can develop in blogs, tweets, texts, or even in the news, as pregnancies or marriages are reported by the press. Further complicating things, reality show participants are called casts and shows can win Emmys.
I think back to my grandmother, who to my knowledge had no interest in reality shows, and her mother before her, who knew nothing of them since she lived well before they existed. For those coming of age in an era of multimedia, a fantasy melodrama might not be as interesting as something that bleeds into many other forms of media. Rather than just different content, the different forms of media attract audiences today. How else might Baudrillard’s theory help explain today’s media environment?
I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book Outliers: The Story of Success, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in a sociological perspective of what factors enable some people to achieve more than others. Although not a sociologist, Gladwell is a journalist with a knack for explaining sociological and social psychological concepts in a clear and interesting manner.
While the American ethos of success suggests that it is the result of talent and hard work, Gladwell examines factors that sociologists refer to as social structure—things beyond our individual control—to understand what else successful people have helping them on their journey. Let’s be clear: skills and hard work are important, but so is timing. And one of the most important things to time well is something none of us can choose—when we are born, and to whom we are born.
Sociologist C. Wright Mills describes the importance of timing in his classic 1959 book, The Sociological Imagination, where he notes that all of our life chances are shaped by the intersections of our own personal biographies and history. Gladwell provides numerous examples of this, finding that the so-called Robber Barons who became America’s captains of industry in the late 1800s were mostly born within a few years of each other. People like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were born just a few years apart in the 1830s, as were many other business titans who amassed great wealth. Was there something particularly profitable in the water back then? Lessons taught in school at that time that would have led to their incredible achievements?
As Gladwell points out, their timing couldn’t have been better. Yes, they likely worked hard and had brilliant business minds. But they also came of age just as the industrial revolution was exploding in America. They were able to get in on the ground floor of advanced capitalism.
Of course people have gotten very rich before and after this period, and Gladwell describes how being born in the mid 1950s was particularly fortuitous for those interested in computer programming development (think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, both born in 1955). It also helped to be geographically near what were then called supercomputers, the gigantic predecessors to the thing on which you’re reading this post. Back in the 1960s, when Gates and Jobs were coming of age, a supercomputer took up a whole room and was not something most youngsters would have had a chance to see, let alone work on. But because of their proximity to actual computers, both Gates and Jobs had a leg up on others their age and had the chance to spend hours and hours (10,000 of them in Gladwell’s estimation) learning about programming.
We can apply this model to more than just financial success. Think about what opportunities your own biography and history have afforded you. How has when, where, and to whom you were born shaped your life today?
I tried to think about the intersection of my biography and history to imagine how timing might have led me to write this post or to read Gladwell’s book in the first place.
As a member of “Generation X”, I was born following the massive baby boom. As you can see in the graph on the left, after a peak in the mid 1950s, the number of births sharply declined. How might this have affected me? As Gladwell describes, children born after booms like I was have the benefit of smaller class sizes. An unprecedented number of schools were built for Baby Boomers in the years before I was born. When my cohort was ready to go to school, there were newly-built buildings waiting for us, especially for people like me who lived in well-funded suburbs. (My hometown boasts that residents have never rejected a school levy in its entire history).
When I was in elementary school in the mid 1970s, there were so few students that many classes were combined: first and second graders had the same teacher, as did third and fourth graders. Looking back, this provided me with some unusual opportunities.
For one, a child in my district often had the same teacher for two years in a row. This teacher had the opportunity to know us better, and help us develop our strengths and provide lessons that could target any weaknesses. They would recommend us for special enrichment opportunities based on our talents too; there was a “Special Talents Program” we called STP where a few kids would spend time with the art teacher, in the music room, or reading additional books if we seemed particularly interested.
Another advantage: because children would necessarily have different skill levels in the same classroom, and might be nearly two years apart in age, a big difference for six- and almost eight-year-olds, the teachers would work with us in small groups, and sometimes one-on-one. Having small classes helped with that effort too.
We would be placed in small groups, sometimes based on reading level, sometimes based on more random factors (like where we happened to be sitting that day) and learned lessons with far more individualized attention. We were also given “contracts” by our teacher, who would meet with each student individually and assign lessons from workbooks based on our own level of achievement in reading, math, or another subject. We would then be able to work individually, return to show our work to the teacher, who would sign off on the “contract” that we had completed the assignment. We would also get individual help if we needed it from the teacher or occasionally from a student teacher if our classroom had one at the time.
Because I was a bit precocious as a child, this school structure really enabled me to thrive. Rather than get bored by a lesson designed to reach children at all levels, I could work as quickly as I wanted to and sometimes discover topics that I wanted to learn more about, and do separate research on my own. I also had college-educated parents who had taught me to read well before I entered school, frequently bought me books and could answer most of my questions if I had them.
Couple these factors with the lingering 1960s ethos which promoted experimental methods of learning and you have a better understanding of how the accident of my time and place of birth created an additional advantage. By the 1980s, when I went to middle school and then high school, this individualized learning model disappeared in favor of more traditionally structured classrooms, as the political backdrop shifted. There was one centralized lesson, one assignment for the whole class, and less one-on-one time with teachers. I got bored a lot more often.
So that’s the history portion of how my opportunities might have been shaped. Let’s bring biography back in.
You might have read about my elementary school days and thought, what’s to stop a kid from doing as little as possible? And what about children who aren’t willing or able to work independently?
I’m guessing there are many children who would not thrive in this independent environment that was so well-suited for me. Having the teacher meet with another group or another student one-on-one presented many opportunities for chit-chat and goofing off (I did my fair share of that too). So individual personality, work ethic, and talents do matter. They’re just not the only things that matter. How has your biography intersected with history to produce opportunities (or barriers) for you?
When I was growing up, I loved going to an amusement park about 20 miles away from my home during the summer. To get there, we had to drive for what seemed like forever on a two-lane highway through what I thought was the middle of nowhere. I lived in a suburban area not too far from the mythic place Leave It to Beaver’s home was supposed to be located. The rural landscape felt foreign, someplace to drive through on our way to someplace else.
Years later, my mother moved into a new development a few miles past the amusement park. It was a big change from where I grew up, but had a retreat-like atmosphere. Similar developments sprang up in the area with names reminiscent of grand estates: Barrington, Hawthorn, and Hidden Valley to name a few. Off of two lane highways, each development features homes that are nearly identical in size, design, and color and include amenities like private lakes, club houses, pools, and golf courses. A five-star resort across the street from my mother’s development attracts corporate groups, weddings, and diners to the highly acclaimed restaurants on the property. This is a major change from an area of forests and farms and a far-flung amusement park.
I have watched this area morph into what some call “ruburbia”: a fully suburbanized community whose rural character is now more about style than substance. More commonly called exburbs, or outer-ring communities further removed from a central city than traditional suburbs. People who move there today will no longer find the small town lifestyle that likely attracted people in the past, but instead remnants of small town “charm” with all the amenities of most American suburbs: restaurant chains, fast food, big box stores, and eventually office buildings. In a region whose population has been shrinking over the last several decades, this area has seen a boom from just over 8,000 residents in 1980 to over 14,000 in 2005. While this growth has expanded the once small-town’s tax base—especially by drawing young affluent families—the shift into suburbia has brought with it some of the things residents might have hoped to avoid by moving to ruburbia in the first place.
One of the town’s initial attractions was its lush forests. When my mother bought her home, there were trees as far as the eye could see in her backyard, and realtors sold the property in part based on the serenity and privacy the trees provided. Now just a smattering of trees remain behind her house, and her view is mostly of house built a few years later. To add insult to injury, the homeowners often hold loud parties into the night during the summer. So much for serenity.
Of course, the environmental impact of cutting down trees trumps the inconvenience to the homeowners who once enjoyed looking at them. Deer with no place else to go often dart into traffic. The shade trees once provided is gone, so now people require greater use of air conditioning in the summer. And while it might seem as though the economic downturn might slow development, developers are still clearing land in hopes of attracting new business to the area. Acres once covered with trees have been cleared to make way for new developments like the one visible in the background of the photo below. For Sale signs, like the one in the foreground of the photo below, offer unoccupied land throughout the area.
Despite the signs indicating that several existing homes are for sale, many acres of land have been cleared to expand one housing development. While the housing bubble never affected this area as severely as other communities in the region, high unemployment in the state will likely make it more difficult to sell many homes, which can be significantly higher than the region’s median home price.
The acres surrounding big box stores, as pictured below, have also been cleared, leaving just a handful of trees and planting lawns in their place, which require a great deal of water to maintain. At one strip mall, two of the major chains, Circuit City and Linens ‘n Things, have gone out of business. The Linens ‘n Things store is still vacant, and yet a sign just beyond this open space advertises that the land is for sale in case retailers would like to build a new store in the space.
Before the development frenzy began, the landscape was dotted with small houses and businesses like the one pictured above, a store that advertises feed and live bait to passersby. I recently went inside the shop for the first time. It was empty and the owner was glad to have potential customers to show around.
She told us that the building was constructed in 1899, but may soon be bulldozed to make way for an office building. The owner doesn’t want to sell it, but she is afraid that eminent domain laws will force her out. I was surprised to hear that a building like this would even be considered for demolition, primarily because there were so many other areas of cleared land with no buildings, not to mention those spaces near the strip malls. Across the street from an outlet mall, the shop now seems to lend some of the rural authenticity that the new chain restaurants and big box stores do not. Even for those bent on new development, I assumed that keeping a few of these places around could add to the “small town charm” that could cynically be used to attract business.
I’m not bashing my mother’s community—I enjoy visiting and still find it a relaxing place to be (except when caught in traffic on the once rural roads now serving as major suburban arteries). What other social consequences of “ruburbia” can you think of?
Photos courtesy of Linda Sternheimer
A recent episode of The Daily Show satirized both left wing and right wing cable news shows for using questionable poll data in their broadcasts. Regardless of your political orientation, this clip is a great introduction to some of the core concepts sociologists use in research methods and statistics: survey construction, sampling, and margin of error. Think about these issues as you watch the video below.
1. Survey construction
Did you notice the wording of the questions in the polls? Good surveys should not suggest how respondents should answer them, but some of the polls included wording that could certainly bias responses. Note how some of the questions in this clip tend to encourage one response or another, particularly the questions about taxes. Most people would respond negatively to a general rise in taxes. But there are a wide variety of taxes (sales and income taxes to name a few), and rates vary based on a variety of factors (such as location, income level, and family size). By contrast, the tax that excludes most potential respondents (raising taxes only on a small percentage of Americans) is more likely to generate favorable results.
A good survey question is worded as neutrally as possible and is specific so that respondents are very clear about the meaning of their response. A good question about taxes would be clear on what specific tax rate would change, by how much, and for whom. The word “tax” is so loaded that another word might even be used in its place, such as fee or levy.
2. Sampling
Let’s say we’ve written good survey questions. Our next step is to administer our survey to an appropriate sample.
What is a good sample? That depends on which group we are trying to learn about. If we want to get the opinion of sociology majors from across the country, then we certainly wouldn’t want to poll people who pass through the center of a couple campuses. For one, we would get a lot of non-sociology majors, and secondly, a small number of campuses would not adequately measure the nation’s sociology majors.
Many polls reported on the news imply that they represent views of Americans. That might seem like a daunting task, but it is possible to get a sense of public opinion this way.
You might be thinking that with a population around 300 million, it is nearly impossible to sample a thousand or so people and claim to know what Americans are thinking. To do so, pollsters need to construct a probability sample, which means that every American should have an equal opportunity to be chosen at random to be part of the sample.
Hypothetically, you can think of a random sample as similar to putting everyone in the population’s name in a huge hat which is shaken so anyone’s name can potentially be pulled.
But there isn’t a hat that big, nor is it practical for someone to write everyone’s name down on a slip of paper. Pollsters often rely on measures which are admittedly imperfect. One of the most common is random digit dialing, where a computer calls random phone numbers in hopes of getting respondents.
Have you ever gotten one of these calls? If you’re like me, you get a lot of calls that interrupt your busy day or evening, and caller id allows you to ignore the numbers you don’t recognize. This has created sampling challenges: if there are consistent patterns in who is more or less likely to participate then your survey results might be skewed.
So there are no perfect samples, but there are some really imperfect samples, like the ones in the Daily Show clip above. Some internet and television polls make no attempt to create a probability sample, so their responses are limited to the demographic already watching or logging onto their site.
There are also other factors which might make someone more or less likely to participate. For instance, if a television show asks you to text your response, viewers might be more likely to participate if their cell phone plan has generous texting privileges. Beyond that, some people are more motivated to respond than others. So these polls might be fun, but they are not very useful gauges of public opinion. That’s what “results not scientific” means if they flash it on the screen. But often shows do not.
3. Margin of Error
Even the polls with well-written questions and the best possible samples are approximations of public opinion, rather than a perfect reflection of what people really think about an issue. While we might not ever be 100% certain that a probability sample reflects the true opinion of a population, thanks to probability theory, we can be 95% confident that the actual opinion lies within a certain range.
Here’s an example. Gallup regularly conducts job approval surveys of political leaders. In an August 2009 survey, they found that 31% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. As you can see from the graph below, the approval rating appears to have fallen from previous months.
But every poll has a margin of error, since surveys are approximations rather than perfect reflections of a population’s beliefs. The margin of error is a measure that takes into account the sample size and the amount of variation of responses. In this case, the margin of error is ±4, meaning that we can be 95% certain that between 27% and 35% of Americans approve of the job that Congress is doing.
Now, if I were a member of Congress I wouldn’t be too excited about this range of scores, but because it is within the range of scores from earlier months we probably cannot say with confidence that Americans’ approval of Congress is declining. But no matter how you look at it, it’s pretty low.
You might notice that news shows reporting polls rarely discuss the meaning of the margin of error, if they mention it at all. Keeping this important measure in mind, you can use your sociological imagination to think critically about the next poll you hear about in the news.
This summer has presented an interesting contrast regarding health care in the United States: those who have excessive access and those who have none.
The investigation into the sudden death of Michael Jackson has led to questions about doctors who bend over backwards to please their wealthy patients—sometimes living with them, being on call 24 hours a day, and allegedly overprescribing medication. This discussion is taking place while the nation is trying to figure out how to provide basic health care to millions of uninsured Americans.
Think about how many details from the Jackson investigation you know: the name of the drugs he allegedly used, names of former doctors, and his medical conditions. Now think about how many details of the proposed health care legislation come to mind….Judging from the breadth of misinformation out there (like the canard that the plan promotes "death panels" to kill the elderly), I’m guessing that most people are clearer on the problems that come with having a celebrity “doctor feel good” than they are on the more common problem of having no doctor at all.
We’ve heard the reports alleging that Jackson's doctor was paid $150,000 a month and was living in his house, and that Jackson supposedly had prescriptions filled by numerous doctors, sometimes under false names. Because of my research on celebrity culture, I have been asked to comment on this issue several times this summer, mainly on why a doctor might compromise ethical (and in some cases legal) standards when their patient is a celebrity.
Doctors are like anyone else who can be lured by the excitement of joining a celebrity’s inner-circle. Certainly not all doctors or even all who treat celebrities would feel this way, or would let such feelings violate good medical practices, but there can be huge financial rewards in doing so. Other wealthy people might be excited to seek this doctor’s care if he or she becomes known as a “doctor to the stars,” and this perceived exclusivity can mean a lot of money, even if the doctor is no better (or is even worse) than the average physician. A celebrity’s doctor can even become a celebrity themselves, with a reality show or their own product line and speaking engagements that keep the money coming in as insurance reimbursements decline.
When the potential for money and fame enter into the medical decisions a doctor makes, trouble can follow. Most of us who need to see a doctor go to their office; they don’t come to us. They see us on their schedule and often keep us waiting well beyond the agreed upon appointment. By contrast, celebrity doctors might see the patient whenever the celebrity needs them, thus realigning the balance of power normally maintained in a doctor-patient relationship. Celebrities could become clients before patients; if they don’t receive the services they believe they are paying for the doctor might risk a large income decline.
The vast majority of us will never have the problems that result from a doctor trying too hard to curry favor with us because of a big payday. In the same city where celebrities can have doctors living in their homes, thousands recently waited in long lines to see a doctor during a week long free clinic set up by the Remote Area Medical Foundation, a non-profit agency that was first created to treat people in developing nations and remote rural areas. In the nation’s second largest city the uninsured often get no treatment on a regular basis.
If we are insured, either through private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, doctors receive pre-negotiated and shrinking reimbursements for the services they perform. Some doctors have even stopped treating patients with Medicare or Medicaid because they cannot afford to stay in business if they do so. Still others are no longer “in network” providers for any insurance company, meaning that even insured patients have to pay the difference between the insurance reimbursement and the doctor’s bill.
Celebrities serve as visible representations of wealth in America. Rather than thinking about these differences in health care as only between celebrities vs. non-celebrities, it’s important to consider how social class more generally predicts the amount of access to health care we receive. And increasingly, this lack of access is not just a problem of the poor.
A growing number of people considered middle income have no health insurance; according to The Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey, 50 percent of low-income families, 41 percent of moderate income households and 18 percent of middle-income families went without health insurance for part or all of 2007. Fewer employers offer health insurance, according to a 2008 report by the National Coalition on Healthcare.
Traditionally, middle income families have received health insurance from their jobs. But that is changing. According to the Commonwealth Fund’s survey, in 2000, 70 percent of employers offered insurance; in 2007 just 60 percent did. For employers that do offer insurance, premiums have also skyrocketed from an average of just over $7,000 a year in 2001 to over $12,000 in 2007, making health insurance increasingly unaffordable to many working families who earn too much for state or federal aid. According to a 2008 report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, the number of uninsured Americans rose by 8.6 million between 2000 and 2006.
The Jackson investigation reveals more than a single human tragedy; it also exposes some of the inequities in our health care system. Ironically, having too much attention from doctors probably contributed to Jackson’s demise and the coroner’s decision to rule his death a homicide, while many millions more suffer from too little medical attention, negatively impacting their health and well being.
Taking a sociology class for the first time? In this video, sociologists attending the American Sociological Association's annual meeting give advice to students studying sociology. Thanks again to those who participated!
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