Gaye Tuchman
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Gaye Tuchman is an American sociologist. She is a
professor emerita ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...
of sociology at the
University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...
. Tuchman is best known for her 1978 book, ''Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality'', about the sociology of news production. She is a past president of the
Eastern Sociological Society Eastern Sociological Society is a non-profit organization with a mission of "promoting excellence in sociological scholarship and instruction". It publishes a peer-reviewed journal ( Sociological Forum) and holds a yearly academic conference An ...
.


Early life and education

Tuchman grew up in
Passaic Passaic ( or ) is a city in Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the city was the state's 16th-most-populous municipality,New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
. She attended
Passaic High School Passaic High School is a four-year community public high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grades from Passaic, in Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as part of the Passaic City School District. The school ...
, where she was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. She earned an undergraduate degree in English and American Literature from
Brandeis University Brandeis University () is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located within the Greater Boston area. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational university, Bra ...
in 1964. She went on to earn master's (1967) and doctorate (1969) degrees in sociology, also from Brandeis. Her doctoral dissertation was titled ''News, the Newsman's Reality''.


Career

Tuchman was an assistant professor at
State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...
from 1969 to 1972. After that she worked as a professor of sociology at
Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the New York City borough of Queens. Part of the City University of New York system, Queens College occupies an campus primarily located in Flushing. Queens College was established in 1937 and offe ...
until 1990. From 1990 onwards, she was a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. In 2012 she earned the title of emeritus professor. Tuchman has served as president of the Eastern Sociological Society, vice-president of
Sociologists for Women in Society Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) is an international organization of social scientists—students, faculty, practitioners, and researchers—working together to improve the position of women within sociology and society in general. Histor ...
(she was one of 18 co-founders), a member of the council of the
American Sociological Association The American Sociological Association (ASA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology. Founded in December 1905 as the American Sociological Society at Johns Hopkins University by a group of fi ...
, and the Board of Directors of Society for the Study for Social Problems.


Research

Tuchman is mostly known for her book ''Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality'' that applies the concepts of
social constructivism Social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowledge according to which human development is socially situated, and knowledge is constructed through interaction with others. Like social constructionism, social constructivism states that ...
and framing in a qualitative study of media production in New York City. Tuchman describes how Together with Herbert Gans' ''Deciding What's News'' and Todd Gitlin's ''The Whole World is Watching'', Tuchman's ''Making News'' has become one of the seminal texts for the sociology of news production in mass media. She was the first to describe, built on in-depth qualitative analysis, how news are the product of institutions, especially of journalists' strategies to manage their work, how news value is not an inherent property of events but a negotiated social process in which organisations select events from the daily abundance of potential news. In her perspective, the self-legitimation of media through the usage of visual codes, narrative and visual conventions through which they "radiate an aura of representation" , but at the same time add to legitimizing dominant institutions and individuals, and the media's self-perception as committed to claims of objectivity, are important parts of this process, as well as scandalization as active management of social controversies to attract attention. Tuchman has also studied the role of gender in cultural and media production Since the 1990s, Tuchman has been mainly active in the sociologies of culture (including media), gender, and higher education, using ethnographic methods and occasionally historical methods in sociology.


Publications

* * *


References


External links


Gaye Tuchman's page at the University of Connecticut
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tuchman, Gaye Living people American sociologists American women sociologists Brandeis University alumni University of Connecticut faculty 1943 births