This piece originally appeared in Wray, M., Daniels, J., & Fetner, T., (eds.) Promoting Sociological Research: A

Toolkit. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association, 2016. http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/documents/ASA/pdfs/Promoting_Sociological_Research_Toolkit.pdf

Accessing Emergent Online Content via RSS

Michael V. Miller, University of Texas, San Antonio

RSS (i.e., Rich Site Summary) is an application with great practical value. RSS allows one to easily stay

abreast of emerging online text and multimedia content, but without having to continually visit

distributor websites (e.g., news organizations, scholarly journals, and bloggers) as it automatically

forwards the latest content to users. In short, RSS brings content to you—you don’t have to go to it. RSS

has been available since the early 2000s, but remains an underused web technology. There are

numerous RSS reader applications from which to choose. Virtually all are free, although securing special

features or eliminating sponsoring ads may require nominal fee. The reader used to create the model

discussed here is provided by Protopage (http://protopage.com). Protopage is not one of the better-

known services, but has a clean display format, includes multiple options, and is easy to learn how to

use.

Some Features of SociologyUTSA Model

The RSS model I’ve assembled is available at http://www.protopage.com/sociologyutsa. Also, a

screencast video describing the model is available at http://youtu.be/wNbDA_nVHBY. SociologyUTSA

consists of a start page (SOCIOLOGY News / Websites / Blogs), and several broad content areas

(Sociology Journals, Teaching Sociology, Online Teaching, Theory, and Methods/Statistics), as well as a

series of specialization pages, including such areas as Deviance/Crime, Family/Marriage, Population,

Religion, and Stratification. Also included are pages on a number of related themes. For example,

instructors teaching given courses would likely be interested in sites and content listed on relevant

specialization pages, but they might also find useful information and class materials on Teaching

Sociology, Multimedia Resources, Academic Videos, and Humor pages. Likewise, instructors teaching

research methods courses would find relevant resources on both Methods/Statistics and Data

Visualization pages.

On any given page, each widget (i.e., box-like display) represents an RSS feed from a content distributor.

I have them generally arranged in vertical alphabetical order. The main exception to this are topic news

feeds from Google News and the New York Times, which are commonly located in the upper right-hand

corner of pages to promote ease in finding. The other exception to alphabetical arrangement relates to

webpages that might be of interest to users, but are either static or without RSS link. These are

commonly found in the upper left-hand corner of pages. For example, on the Sociology Journals page, I

include three such webpage widgets in that location (List of Sociology Journals, Directory of Open Access

Journals, and Retraction Watch) through which users can access relevant materials (note: webpages can

be expanded out for fuller view by clicking and grabbing the small left/downward pointing arrow located

in the lower righthand corner edge of the widget). Each RSS widget lists the most recently posted piece

of content at the top of the list. Such items will usually appear in the widget within minutes of being

uploaded online by content distributors. I have all widgets set to list the latest 22 pieces of distributed

content. Use of the scroll function located on the right-side of the widget allows for full viewing of

posted titles. Moving the mouse cursor over the title provides brief description of the post, and clicking

on the title, links one directly to the content at the distributor website. Sites were included in the RSS

reader on the basis of several rules of thumb beyond relevance to the field of sociology or work as a

sociologist (inclusion, by the way, in no way indicates judgments about quality).

For blog sites in particular, a basic criterion was posting recency. Numerous blogs have been created by

sociologists over the past decade, although many do not appear to be active. Blogs were only included if

they made at least one post during 2013-2014. Also technical problems precluded several otherwise

quality sites from inclusion. For example, sociologists interested in integrating edgy and timely

documentaries into classes should find the Vice collection worthwhile (http://www.vice.com/videos).

However, the site is disruptive in that videos from there play automatically in the Protopage widget.

Finally, as presently constituted, the reader includes only English language websites, blogs, and journals.

RSS is particularly helpful in trying to stay current with new journal articles (see Sociology Journals).

Some publishers provide excellent RSS facilitation. Sage, for example, offers several options that can be

employed for most of its titles, including OnlineFirst, which lists and gives access to pre-print articles,

and recent issues, which includes articles just appearing in print form, as well as those in several earlier

issues. However, a few publishers do nothing to promote RSS linkage. (Wiley, which publishes several

sociology journal titles of note, indicates that it includes an RSS function, but I have never been able to

get it to work.) Nevertheless, one can still become aware of new articles from such journals by

inspecting their linked static webpage. (Again, by clicking and grabbing on to the small arrow located in

the lower right-hand corner, the widget can be expanded out to enable access to the journal’s table of

contents.)

RSS is critical for systematic monitoring of new web content. Creation of RSS pages allows for exposition,

arrangement, and access to resources of potential value to faculty and students. RSS can promote

numerous teaching and learning objectives, including familiarizing users with the great variety of sites

and resources available on the Internet, encouraging users to explore specific materials of interest, and

of course, helping users to stay current with emerging scholarly articles, news stories, blog posts, and

multimedia. RSS reader services are plentiful and free, and can be easily adapted for use by various

entities, including professional organizations, libraries, academic departments, and individual faculty

members and students. Employ SociologyUTSA for your own purposes. In turn, please let me know

about additional sites you believe should be included. I also encourage you to develop your own RSS

collection. This one is too large and unwieldy for most users to efficiently monitor, and besides, you’ll

likely want to have a collection you can tailor to your own interests. Note that there are numerous

tutorials available online that offer help in setting up an RSS reader, but also feel free to contact me

(michael.miller@utsa.edu) should you have questions.

Michael Miller is an associate professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio, Department of Sociology. His

teaching and research interests include social inequality, work and occupations, the U.S./Mexico border, and more

recently, how academic disciplines can best incorporate online media into instruction. His work in Teaching

Sociology highlights the value of a video pedagogy: http://www.slideshare.net/soconceptual/teaching-sociology-2014-

andristcheppdeanmiller