Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life - Paperback

by Mary T. Chayko (Author)

What does it mean to live in a superconnected society?

In this new revised, updated edition of Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life, Mary Chayko continues to explore how social life is impacted when communication and information technology enters the picture. She provides timely analysis of such critical issues as privacy and surveillance, online harassment and abuse, and dependency and addiction, while examining new trends in social media use, global inequalities and divides, online relating and dating, and the internet of things. The new edition highlights such issues as technology and mental health, digital public policy and law, and the author's own research on bias and stereotyping in digital environments. Throughout, she considers how individuals, families, communities, organizations, and whole societies are affected. The author's clear, nontechnical discussions and interdisciplinary synthesis make the third edition of Superconnected an essential text for any course that explores how contemporary life is impacted by the internet, social media, mobile devices, and smart technologies.

The text is accompanied by the author′s Superconnected Blog (superconnectedblog.com) which includes lecture slides, discussion questions and assignments, and short podcasts for each chapter that summarize key ideas.

Author Biography

Mary Chayko is a sociologist, interdisciplinary Teaching Professor, and Director of Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studies at the School of Communication and Information (SC&I) at Rutgers University. She is also an affiliate member of the graduate faculty of the Department of Sociology, an affiliate member of the faculty of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, and a Faculty Fellow in Residence at the Honors College, all at Rutgers. Dr. Chayko received a BA in Communication and Psychology from Seton Hall University, an EdM in Counseling Psychology from Rutgers University, and an MA and PhD in Sociology also from from Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the impact of the internet and digital technology on community, society, and self. She is the author of Portable Communities: The Social Dynamics of Online and Mobile Connectedness and Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age (both with SUNY Press), as well as many published articles. She also co-edited the anthology Pioneers in Public Sociology: Thirty Years of Humanity and Society (Sloan Publishing). Dr. Chayko speaks and publishes widely on techno-social life, and has been honored with Rutgers' Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching and as a Faculty of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Contributor to Undergraduate Education.