What does it mean to live in a superconnected society?

Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life brings together insights about digital technology and society from the many literatures in which author Mary Chayko is immersed: sociology, communication, psychology, media and technology studies. The result is a groundbreaking analysis of contemporary social life as it is influenced by the internet, social media, and mobile devices. Individual chapters explore topics such as how digital technology helped to shape the modern information age; information sharing and surveillance; digital socialization and development of the self; digital inequalities; global impacts; and the impact of the internet and digital media across social institutions.

The author’s clear non-technical discussions and interdisciplinary synthesis make Superconnected an essential text for courses in all departments that examine how social life is affected when information and communication technology enter the picture.

About the Author
Mary Chayko has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Rutgers, is a Teaching Professor of Communication in the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, and Director of Interdisciplinary Studies. Dr. Chayko speaks and publishes widely on the impact of the internet and digital technology on community, society, and self. She is the author of Portable Communities: The Social Dynamics of Online and Mobile Connectedness (named a 2009 Social Science Bestseller by Library Journal and runner-up Book of the Year by the Association for Humanist Sociology) and 2002's Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age, both with SUNY Press, plus many published articles. Co-author and editor of the 2010 anthology Pioneers in Public Sociology: Thirty Years of Humanity and Society (Sloan), Dr. Chayko also participates in the "public sociology" movement that advocates scholarship that directly benefits people in their everyday lives and inspires civic engagement and social justice.