Media, Technology, and Society: Theories of Media Evolution

In Media, Technology, and Society, some of the most prominent figures in media studies explore the issue of media evolution. Focusing on a variety of compelling examples in media history, ranging from the telephone to the television, the radio to the Internet, these essays collectively address a series of notoriously vexing questions about the nature of technological change. Is it possible to make general claims about the conditions that enable or inhibit innovation? Does government regulation tend to protect or thwart incumbent interests? What kinds of concepts are needed to address the relationship between technology and society in a nonreductive and nondeterministic manner? To what extent can media history help us to understand and to influence the future of media in constructive ways? The contributors' historically grounded responses to these questions will be relevant to numerous fields, including history, media and communication studies, management, sociology, and information studies

SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE INTERNET

The Internet is a critically important research site for sociologists testing theories of technology diffusion and media effects, particularly because it is a medium uniquely capable of integrating modes of communication and forms of content. Current research tends to focus on the Internet’s implications in five domains: 1) inequality (the “digital divide”); 2) community and social capital; 3) political participation; 4) organizations and other economic institutions; and 5) cultural participation and cultural diversity. A recurrent theme across domains is that the Internet tends to complement rather than displace existing media and patterns of behavior. Thus in each domain, utopian claims and dystopic warnings based on extrapolations from technical possibilities have given way to more nuanced and circumscribed understandings of how Internet use adapts to existing patterns, permits certain innovations, and reinforces particular kinds of change. Moreover, in each domain the ultimate social implications of this new technology depend on economic, legal, and policy decisions that are shaping the Internet as it becomes institutionalized. Sociologists need to study the Internet more actively and, particularly, to synthesize research findings on individual user behavior with macroscopic analyses of institutional and political-economic factors that constrain that behavior.World Wide Web, communications, media, technology

A Taxonomy of Communications Demand

Demand forecasts are an essential tool for planning capacity and formulating policy. Traffic estimates are becoming increasingly unreliable, however, as accelerating rates of use and new communications applications invalidate conventional forecasting assumptions. This paper presents an alternative approach to the study of telecommunications demand: build aggregate estimates for demand based on the elasticity of demand for bandwidth. We argue that price elasticity models are necessary to grasp the interaction between Moore-type technological progress and non-linear demand functions. Traditional marketing models are premised on existing or, at best, foreseeable services. But in a period of sustained price declines, applications-based forecasts will be unreliable. Dramatically lower prices can cause fundamental changes in the mix of applications and, hence, the nature of demand. We consider the option of posing demand theoretically in terms of service attributes. Our conclusion is that the positive feedback loop of technology-driven price decreases and high-elasticity demand will quickly make it possible to base forecasts on bandwidth elasticity alone. Industry analysts and policymakers need models of consumer demand applicable under dynamic conditions. We conclude by drawing implications of our demand model for network planning, universal service policies, and the commoditization of communications carriage

The Dynamics of Public Attention: Agenda‐Setting Theory Meets Big Data

Researchers have used surveys and experiments to better understand communication dynamics, but confront consistent distortion from self‐report data. But now both digital exposure and resulting expressive behaviors (such as tweets) are potentially accessible for direct analysis with important ramifications for the formulation of communication theory. We utilize “big data” to explore attention and framing in the traditional and social media for 29 political issues during 2012. We find agenda setting for these issues is not a one‐way pattern from traditional media to a mass audience, but rather a complex and dynamic interaction. Although the attentional dynamics of traditional and social media are correlated, evidence suggests that the rhythms of attention in each respond to a significant degree to different drummers .Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106877/1/jcom12088.pd

The Seven Deadly Sins of Communication Research

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/74955/1/j.1460-2466.2008.00382.x.pd

Researching the comparability of paper-based and computer-based delivery in a high-stakes writing test

International language testing bodies are now moving rapidly towards using computers for many areas of English language assessment, despite the fact that research on comparability with paper-based assessment is still relatively limited in key areas. This study contributes to the debate by researching the comparability of a highstakes EAP writing test (IELTS) in two delivery modes, paper-based (PB) and computer-based (CB). The study investigated 153 test takers' performances and their cognitive processes on IELTS Academic Writing Task 2 in the two modes, and the possible effect of computer familiarity on their test scores. Many-Facet Rasch Measurement (MFRM) was used to examine the difference in test takers' scores between the two modes, in relation to their overall and analytic scores. By means of questionnaires and interviews, we investigated the cognitive processes students employed under the two conditions of the test. A major contribution of our study is its use - for the first time in the computer-based writing assessment literature - of data from research into cognitive processes within realworld academic settings as a comparison with cognitive processing during academic writing under test conditions. In summary, this study offers important new insights into academic writing assessment in computer mode