An information society is a society where the usage, creation, distribution, manipulation and integration of information is a significant activity. Its main drivers are information and communication technologies, which have resulted in rapid growth of a variety of forms of information. Proponents of this theory posit that these technologies are impacting most important forms of social organization, including education, economy, health, government, warfare, and levels of democracy. The people who are able to partake in this form of society are sometimes called either computer users or even digital citizens, defined by K. Mossberger as “Those who use the Internet regularly and effectively”. This is one of many dozen internet terms that have been identified to suggest that humans are entering a new and different phase of society.
Media ecology theory is the study of media, technology, and communication and how they affect human environments. The theoretical concepts were proposed by Marshall McLuhan in 1964, while the term media ecology was first formally introduced by Neil Postman in 1968.
New media are communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for the influx of interactive CD-ROMs for entertainment and education. The new media technologies, sometimes known as Web 2.0, include a wide range of web-related communication tools such as blogs, wikis, online social networking, virtual worlds, and other social media platforms.
The global digital divide describes global disparities, primarily between developed and developing countries, in regards to access to computing and information resources such as the Internet and the opportunities derived from such access.
Mizuko Itō, sometimes known as Mimi Ito, is a Japanese cultural anthropologist who is a Professor in Residence and Director of the Connected Learning Lab in the Department of Informatics, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Her main professional interest is young people's use of media technology. She has explored the ways in which digital media are changing relationships, identities, and communities.
Digital anthropology is the anthropological study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology. The field is new, and thus has a variety of names with a variety of emphases. These include techno-anthropology, digital ethnography, cyberanthropology, and virtual anthropology.
Children's culture includes children's cultural artifacts, children's media and literature, and the myths and discourses spun around the notion of childhood. Children's culture has been studied within academia in cultural studies, media studies, and literature departments. The interdisciplinary focus of childhood studies could also be considered in the paradigm of social theory concerning the study of children's culture.
Daniel Miller is an anthropologist who is closely associated with studies of human relationships to things, the consequences of consumption and digital anthropology. His theoretical work was first developed in Material Culture and Mass Consumption and is summarised more recently in his book Stuff. This work transcends the usual dualism between subject and object and studies how social relations are created through consumption as an activity.
Online ethnography is an online research method that adapts ethnographic methods to the study of the communities and cultures created through computer-mediated social interaction. As modifications of the term ethnography, cyber-ethnography, online ethnography and virtual ethnography designate particular variations regarding the conduct of online fieldwork that adapts ethnographic methodology. There is no canonical approach to cyber-ethnography that prescribes how ethnography is adapted to the online setting. Instead individual researchers are left to specify their own adaptations. Netnography is another form of online ethnography or cyber-ethnography with more specific sets of guidelines and rules, and a common multidisciplinary base of literature and scholars. This article is not about a particular neologism, but the general application of ethnographic methods to online fieldwork as practiced by anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars.
Helena Wulff is professor of social anthropology at Stockholm University. Her research is in the anthropology of communication and aesthetics based on a wide range of studies of the social worlds of literary production, dance, and the visual arts.
The sociology of the Internet involves the application of sociological or social psychological theory and method to the Internet as a source of information and communication. The overlapping field of digital sociology focuses on understanding the use of digital media as part of everyday life, and how these various technologies contribute to patterns of human behavior, social relationships, and concepts of the self. Sociologists are concerned with the social implications of the technology; new social networks, virtual communities and ways of interaction that have arisen, as well as issues related to cyber crime.
A mobile phone is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area, as opposed to a fixed-location phone. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture and therefore mobile telephones are called cellphones in North America. In addition to telephony, digital mobile phones support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, multimedia messaging, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications, satellite access, business applications, video games and digital photography. Mobile phones offering only basic capabilities are known as feature phones; mobile phones which offer greatly advanced computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.
Paul M. Leonardi was the Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was also the Investment Group of Santa Barbara Founding Director of the Master of Technology Management Program. Leonardi moved to UCSB to found the Technology Management Program and start its Master of Technology Management and Ph.D. programs. Before joining UCSB, Leonardi was a faculty member in the School of Communication, the McCormick School of Engineering, and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Mimi Sheller is Dean of The Global School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, USA. From 2009–2021 she was professor of sociology in the Department of Culture and Communication, and the founding Director of the New Mobilities Research and Policy Center at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She is widely cited and considered a "key theorist in mobilities studies" and specializes in the post-colonial context of the Caribbean.
The study of global communication is an interdisciplinary field focusing on global communication, or the ways that people connect, share, relate and mobilize across geographic, political, economic, social and cultural divides. Global communication implies a transfer of knowledge and ideas from centers of power to peripheries and the imposition of a new intercultural hegemony by means of the "soft power" of global news and entertainment.
Professor Gerard Goggin is an Australian media and communications researcher at the University of Sydney. He has produced award-winning research in disability and media policy alongside other contemporary works on digital technology and cultures.
Cyborg anthropology is a discipline that studies the interaction between humanity and technology from an anthropological perspective. The discipline offers novel insights on new technological advances and their effect on culture and society.
Kim Sawchuk is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies, Research Chair in Mobile Media Studies, and Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies at Concordia University in Montreal Canada. A feminist media studies scholar, Sawchuk's research spans the fields of art, gender, and culture, examining the intersection of technology into peoples lives and how that changes as one ages.
Dal Yong Jin is a media studies scholar. He is Distinguished SFU Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada where his research explores digital platforms, digital games, media history, political economy of communication, globalization and trans-nationalization, the Korean Wave, and science journalism. He has published more than 30 books and penned more than 200 journal articles, book chapters, and book reviews. Jin has delivered numerous keynote speeches, conference presentations, invited lectures, and media interviews on subjects such as digital platforms, video games, globalization, transnational culture, and the Korean Wave. Based on his academic performance, he was awarded the Outstanding Scholar Award from the Korean American Communication Association at the KACA 40th Anniversary Conference in 2018, while receiving the Outstanding Research Award from the Deputy Prime Ministry and Minister of the Education of South Korea. He was also awarded ICA Fellow, which is primarily a recognition of distinguished scholarly contributions at the International Communication Association Conference held in Paris in 2022. Jin has been interviewed by international media outlets, including Elle, New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, The Guardian, The Vancouver Sun, Chicago Tribune, The Telegraph, Wired, LA Times, and China Daily as one of the world’s leading scholars on Korean pop culture and these subject matters.
Adriana de Souza e Silva is a Brazilian/American communication professor, information technologist, academic, and author. She is a professor in the Department of Communication at the North Carolina State University and Director at the Networked Mobilities Lab.
