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Welcome to The Sociological Cinema!

This site is designed to help sociology instructors incorporate videos into their classes. Check out our blog and search our growing database of video clips. Each clip is tagged with appropriate sociological themes and organized for busy instructors. We invite you  to join in the discussion to comment on how you have used the videos in your classes, and to submit a clip of your own. Enjoy!

Recent Activity

Video of the Week

In the last couple weeks political pundits have settled on criticizing the Obama Administration for its role in a handful of "scandals." For some time now, loud accusations have persisted that the Administration failed to protect a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi during an attack that left four Americans dead. More recently, the Administration is being blasted for playing either a direct or indirect role in allowing the Internal Revenue Service to target Tea Party groups that applied for tax-exempt status.

Irrespective of whether these "scandals" are truly failures of the Administration, they are certainly newsworthy. But do they truly deserve the current level of media attention? One wonders why so much energy is expended on blaming the Obama Administration for what happened in Benghazi, rather than for failing to craft policies that would compel American retailers to cease working with manufacturers who rely on dilapidated factories, such as the one that recently collapsed in Bangladesh and killed at least 1,800 workers. One also wonders why speculation about President Obama's role in the IRS scandal is front page news, while there is no speculation about whether the president failed to do enough to curb what is now the highest concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in all of human history.

Our video of the week examines the political economy of the mass media and sheds light on why certain stories make it into the news while others slip into obscurity ... Read more / Add comment.

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