This course explores whether and how emerging digital technologies (social/mobile/wearable media, virtual worlds and games, sensor-laden devices and environments, robotics, drones, implantable chips, artificial intelligence, etc.) contribute to disruptive changes in relationships, organizations, societies and selves. Multiple perspectives on communication, information, and media will be applied in analyzing the extent to which the structure, norms, and dynamics of modern social life have changed and have experienced continuity, and the conditions under which such changes can be considered disruptive. Micro- and macro-level processes and outcomes (interpersonal, cultural, political, global) of emerging digital technologies will be examined. This course is an interdisciplinary offering (Communication, Journalism and Media Studies, and Library and Information Science) in the Digital Communication, Information, and Media minor at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University.
About Professor Chayko
DR. MARY CHAYKO is a sociologist, Teaching Professor of Communication and Information, and Director of Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studies, for the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. She directs the Digital Communication, Information and Media minor (DCIM) and the Gender and Media minor at SC&I. She received a B.A. in Communication and Psychology from Seton Hall University and an Ed.M in Counseling Psychology, and an M.A., and Ph.D. in Sociology, from Rutgers University. Dr. Chayko’s research is on the impact of the Internet and digital technology on society, community, 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; and Pioneers in Public Sociology: Thirty Years of Humanity and Society with Sloan Publishing, plus many published articles. A mentor in the Rutgers honors program and the athletics department, and an affiliated faculty member in the Rutgers Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies Departments, Dr. Chayko has been honored as a Rutgers University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Contributor to Undergraduate Education.