Communication and Technology

With the sudden rise in the popularity of social media, smart phones and other technologies, it is more important than ever to study how new media is changing the way that people communicate. Technology has a profound effect on the way that we speak, write and even how we think, and by understanding how technology affects communication, we can see how interpersonal skills will change in the first half of the 21st century and how our culture will adapt to these changes. The articles in this category discuss new communication-based studies and research. We will consider rising trends in social media and offer insight to research to show how new media affects communication on both a macro and a micro scale.

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Less Than 20% of College Students Use Twitter

June 2, 2011 coms 0

Twitter is seen as a major social media tool and cultural influence, but does it play as large of a role as everyone believes? Research by Northwestern University finds that Twitter is mainly used by those who are interested in celebrity and entertainment news, and that only 17.8 percent of college students actually used Twitter in 2010.

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How the Academic World Is Using Social Media

June 1, 2011 coms 0

Professors are adapting the way they educate to keep up with technology’s rapid changes. Social media is not a tool that was always used in the academic world, but as our world embraces sites like Facebook and Twitter more everyday, academia has seen it as an opportunity to grow the ways in which they teach and collaborate.

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Is Social Media the Next Tech Bubble?

May 31, 2011 coms 0

Recent valuations of social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others like them have led some to believe they are over-valued. Is this the 1999 dot com bust all over again?

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Almost Half of Facebook Users Have Profanity on Their Wall

May 26, 2011 coms 0

As employers increasingly look at Facebook profiles of potential candidates, the use of profanity on their walls plays an important role in the perception of these potential employees. A recent study by social media monitoring service, Reppler, scanned the Facebook walls over 30,000 users and found some surprising statistics.

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Visual Rhetoric: Graphic Design and Social Science Students Team Up

May 24, 2011 coms 0

For years now, the London School of Economics (LSE) has been partnering up their graphic design students with social science students at the London College of Communication (LCC) to create visual rhetoric, like infographics, which better communicate their data and research more effectively to the public.

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Will the distracting nature of media multitasking change advertising?

May 5, 2011 coms 0

In today’s world of television, cell phones, computers, and other media, multitaskers typically praise their skill as an effective way to navigate this hundred mile an hour culture. Turns out, their confidence may be mistaken. According to a new study on media multitasking by Boston College researchers, multitasking is only driving people to distraction. So, what does that mean for advertisers? Which medium is best?