Communication in the Digital Age: New Frontiers

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Proposal

Abstract

Digital technologies, social media, and countless online applications create the infrastructure and interface through which many of our interactions take place today. This societal change is interesting in itself: it poses new questions about how we socialize and engage in public, but also how we build a sense of identity and delimit the private domain. It is also interesting because the ubiquitous adoption of new technologies produces, as a byproduct, new ways of observing the world: many of our interactions now leave a trail of digital footprints that, if followed, can help us unravel the complexity of society –and take us to the eye of the hurricane of social order and change. Using digital data to tackle interesting questions and advance our research agendas requires partnerships across disciplinary boundaries that are still uncommon. Social scientists and computer scientists have never been closer in their goals of trying to understand communication dynamics. This pre-conference workshop builds on a popular panel discussion at ICA2014 and aims to create a platform to discuss recent research at the intersection of computational and social science approaches to integrate knowledge and address the big puzzles that beat at the heart of communication research.

This workshop is Sponsored by the NSF Digital Societies and Technologies Research Coordination Network, the NULab at Northeastern University, and the DiMeNet Research Group at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sub Unit

• Sponsored Sessions

Chairs

• Brooke Foucault Welles, Northeastern U

• Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon, U of Pennsylvania

Participants

• Nick Beauchamp, Northeastern U

• Deen Goodwin Freelon, American U

• Drew Berkley Margolin, Cornell University

• Ericka Menchen-Trevino, Erasmus U Rotterdam

• Katherine Ognyanova, Northeastern University

• Katy Elizabeth Pearce, U of Washington

• Jaime Settle, William and Mary

• Aaron Shaw, Northwestern U