Google recently released a new feature that allows website visitors to easily search the site they are on for specific content. If you look to the bottom right-hand corner of your screen, you will probably see this new, and useful, feature.
With Google’s new search ad you can see suggested search terms for content on our website. While you browse our website you may see a blue ad at the bottom right-hand side of your screen. This button is a new form of ad from Google that will categorize content on our website for readers so you can see articles similar to the one you are reading. One such search term that was suggested to me was “The Public and Their Platforms: Public Sociology in the Era of Social Media.”
This is actually the name of a book that we cite by Mark Carrigan and Lambros Fatsis. But it is a book title that Google believed was a good search term to categorize content on our website. And, actually it works well as a fascinating search term, so let’s look at some of the content across our sites that Google suggests fits in this category.
Digital Technology, Social Media, and Public Sociology
As you can imagine many of the titles on our website that appear in this search include reference to digital technology and social media. One of the most titles is The Role of Digital Platforms in Public Sociology. In this article Dr. Rituparna Patgiri who teaches Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati, discusses the role of blogs in public sociology. Dr. Patgiri directly cites the book of which this search term is titled, so again, this is one of the most obvious articles on our cite that would show up.
Another article that emerged in this search is one titled, Sociologists, The Tech Industry Needs You! This is an article written by Dr. Iga Kozlowska. Dr. Kozlowska is an applied sociologist working in tech and gives an insiders look into the demand for sociological skills and knowledge in the industry. While this is not exclusively about public sociology, the articles mention of social media and technology was enough for Google to include it in the search.
More Public Sociology Articles from Applied Worldwide
One of our articles about Sociology and industry called, Sociology and Computer Science: An Emerging Field, showed up in the search. The introduction to this article begins, “The dynamic intersection of sociology and computer science has given rise to a field that explores the complex relationships between human society and the digital world.” So, you can see that once again we have a search result that is pretty closely related to the original search term of, “The Public and Their Platforms: Public Sociology in the Era of Social Media.”
The final article related to digital technology and social media that showed up in this search was one titled, Colorado Mesa University Sociology Students on Twitter. This article is a summary of a project we worked on with Dr. Brenda Wilhelm, a sociology professor at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Colorado. We worked with Dr. Wilhelm to help train sociology students in professional practices on social media.
Odds and Ends Articles
While most of the articles resulting from this search were closely related to the search term, others were less directly related. Take for instance our article titled, The Sociological Imagination and Thanksgiving . This was an article written by Dr. Stephanie Wilson where she uses basic sociological concepts to conduct an analysis of Thanksgiving. It is a great article to assign students around the time of the holiday, but does not offer much value to the original search term.
Two more articles have a similar tertiary connection to the original search term. One called, Sociology and Journalism: The Dualistic Appeal, and another titled, The Social Construction of Gender and Reproductive Health. Both articles offer valuable analyses of social issues but neither is directly related to, “The Public and Their Platforms: Public Sociology in the Era of Social Media.”
Final Thoughts on Public Sociology and Social Media
As you can see Google has categorized a great deal of our content as “The Public and Their Platforms: Public Sociology in an Era of Social Media.” In fact the articles listed above are only the results from page one of the search. There were a total of 7 pages of results.
For the most part all of the articles in the search were closely related to the suggested search term. I did not know whether Google’s new ad form would be valuable to our readers or not, but after a couple assessments including this one, I feel confident suggesting that everyone take a look at the search results when you see these ads.
