It was an honor to receive the 2026 Kathy Charmaz Early-in-Career Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interactionism. A huge thanks to my mentor Gary Fine and the many others who have supported my career.
Hannah Wohl
@hannahwohl.bsky.social
Associate Prof of Sociology at UCSB. Author of Bound by Creativity. Ethnographer of culture, markets, platforms. Currently writing about the porn industry.
Join us for the Culture Section's inaugural Stuart Hall Award lecture by Dr. Ben Carrington, “‘The University is a Critical Institution, or it is Nothing’ - Stuart Hall, The Elephants’ Graveyard and the Sociology of Race.” Register here: emory.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
New pub! @MargotHanley and I coauthored this article on anthropomorphized artificial intelligence in @BigDataSoc. We show how engineers make technology that conveys what we call "shifting personhood" by selectively designing anthropomorphic qualities. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Producing shifting personhood: How designers anthropomorphize artificial intelligence - Margot Hanley, Hannah Wohl, 2025
Anthropomorphized artificial intelligence has become increasingly ingrained in the fabric of everyday life, yet sociologists know little about how it is produce...
journals.sagepub.com
My latest op-ed, "The Market’s Judgment on OnlyFans Has Nothing to Do With Money," was just published in @barronsonline. I argue that the stigmatization of porn and other "sin stocks" has led investors to undervalue economically profitable assets. www.barrons.com/articles/onl...
The Market’s Judgment on OnlyFans Has Nothing to Do With Money
Any other company with these eye-popping revenue numbers would spark a bidding war, Hannah Wohl writes in a guest commentary.
barrons.com
I'm proud to be a member of ASA and grateful for Adia Harvey-Wingfield's leadership. A huge win for free speech and higher education. democracyforward.org/updates/foia...
Court Rules for Public Schools and Educators, Rejects Trump-Vance Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on Public Education - Democracy Forward
democracyforward.org
Crucial read: eliminating tip taxes while requiring cross-platform reporting creates new vulnerabilities for the very workers it claims to help. Data flows from Venmo to IRS to ICE surveillance is disguised as worker protection. The often invisible power of platforms is profound and multiplicative.
Julia Ticona@jticona.bsky.social · last yr."No taxes on tips" was supposed to help low-wage workers, but because of the platforms used for tipping and Trump's steamrolling of data protections, it may instead have dire consequences for them. @hannahwohl.bsky.social, Lindsey Cameron, & I in Newsweek today. tinyurl.com/yc27dah7
"No taxes on tips" was supposed to help low-wage workers, but because of the platforms used for tipping and Trump's steamrolling of data protections, it may instead have dire consequences for them. @hannahwohl.bsky.social, Lindsey Cameron, & I in Newsweek today. tinyurl.com/yc27dah7
The Hidden Dangers of Eliminating Taxes on Tips | Opinion
Instead of holding consumers accountable for sharing their data responsibly as privacy laws currently do, we must hold platform companies and our government accountable for the responsible stewardship...
newsweek.com
New op-ed! I coauthored this in @Newsweek.com with Lindsey Cameron and @jticona.bsky.social on how the "no taxes on tips" provision actually increases surveillance over precarious workers and the dangers of sharing data across platforms. www.newsweek.com/hidden-dange...
The Hidden Dangers of Eliminating Taxes on Tips | Opinion
Instead of holding consumers accountable for sharing their data responsibly as privacy laws currently do, we must hold platform companies and our government accountable for the responsible stewardship...
newsweek.com
I'm delighted to share that my op-ed on the dangers of requiring age verification for porn sites--as the Supreme Court will soon be deciding on--was just published in @thehill: thehill.com/opinion/tech...
Americans have been dangerously misled about porn age-verification laws
Porn has long been the canary in the coal mine for other restrictions against free speech.
thehill.com
Methods question: Are there ethical concerns with interviewing people who are under company NDA policies (assuming they are voluntarily sharing this info and the data is fully non-identifiable)?
I'm delighted to share that Max Besbris and I won the 2025 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award from the ASA Consumers and Consumption Section for our article, "Relational Brokerage: Interaction and Valuation in Two Markets," published in Qualitative Sociology. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Relational Brokerage: Interaction and Valuation in Two Markets - Qualitative Sociology
Across various markets, consumers rely on brokers to help them select goods. How do brokers shape consumers’ valuation? We address this question by drawing from two independent but analogous ethnograp...
link.springer.com
Northwestern Sociology is the best! Who else would invite me to colloquium on prospective student visiting day to talk about my porn research AND make me a book cake?! 🍰 ☺️
Check out our new article in @us.theconversation.com!
Alondra Nelson@alondra.bsky.social · 2y ago"Our immersion in the porn and ride-hailing industries brought us to a Kafkaesque conclusion: Workers join these labor markets to escape 'the man,' only to find the man replaced by the often opaque logic of platforms and their algorithms." --Hannah Wohl and Lindsey Cameron
I convened a group of scholars around the theme "platform" last year. A goal was to think beyond and across individual platforms to better understand their power. In this smart piece, members of the group write about the vulnerability of gig workers across sectors theconversation.com/unlikely-bed...
Unlikely bedfellows: How platform companies shortchange porn performers and ride-hailing drivers alike
The porn and ride-hailing industries both attract workers seeking autonomy. Neither fully delivers.
theconversation.com