In August 2026, I had the great pleasure of keynoting the pre-conference symposium on Media Sociology at the American Sociological Association’s annual conference, for the section on Communication, Information Technologies and Media Sociology (CITAMS).

My talk was titled “Human-Nonhuman Social Bonding: Understanding Mediated Generative Relationships” and it was an outgrowth of my work on superconnectedness that is featured in most of my books and published articles. In short, I argue that we have been primed to feel a sense of perceived bonding with nonhuman others since childhood, when we anthropomorphized our toys and dolls and clung to security blankets and stuffed animals. We also readily, and freely, bond with animals, media figures, fictional characters, and all kinds of nonhumans. Are AI chatbots and smart device personas really so different? (Well, yes…but the more interesting spoiler alert is how similar they can be.)

I’ll be continuing to develop these ideas in my research in the Behavioral Informatics Lab at Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information (SC&I), and to present them in such venues as the Association for Humanist Sociology annual conference in October 2026 and the Southwest Popular and American Culture Association annual conference in February 2027.

I’ve published three new articles on the educational uses of emerging digital technologies in the new Cognella volume “Teaching Communication, vol. 4.” I also contributed a template for a graduate course in Social Media.  More on this edited volume here:

Teaching Communication is an innovative series designed to help communication instructors develop a course for the first time or to guide teacher-trainers as they work with new teachers in formal classroom settings or informal mentoring sessions. Providing theoretically grounded research-based guidelines for teaching communication effectively, each volume in the series provides robust suggestions for what to teach and how to teach various communication topics.

Volume IV: Instructional Resources contains more than 150 teaching resources such as syllabi, activities, assignments, and rubrics that can meet the needs of nearly any instructor style, institution, class size, course delivery format, and topical area.

The resources are organized by those for introductory courses; those dealing with history and ethics; those for courses on theory, followed by those for methods and those relative to public relations, advertising, and gender/race/class/culture courses. The last part contains course-specific resources in 13 areas, such as persuasion and argumentation, health communication, media studies, interpersonal communication, multimedia journalism and production, sports communication, and others. Featuring resources designed by experts in teaching communication, this volume provides a comprehensive compilation of course descriptions, learning outcomes, suggested activities, class assignments, and more to support and supplement communication curriculum.

Providing readers with the knowledge and skillsets they need to become effective educators, the Teaching Communication series is an exemplary resource for courses and programs in teaching communication.

I recently returned from Calgary, Canada, after delivering the keynote address for the Oct. 26 ASIS&T (Association for Information Science and Technology) Social Media Special Interest Group workshop on social media research. The keynote was based on the Superconnected book, and was titled “Becoming Superconnected: Investigating the Process and Experience of Digital Social Interaction.” Fantastic workshop and conference! For more on ASIS&T:

https://www.asist.org/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/man-in-finance-nyc-women-rcna157741

Here’s the trailer for the book — all you need to know about it in under a minute!

The book:

• Gathers findings from multiple fields that overlap — including communication, sociology, psychology, media studies, and information and data science — so that key understandings and insights can be integrated to give a comprehensive picture of modern techno-social life.
• Opens with a short, engrossing history of internet and digital/mobile/social media to provide context for the chapters that follow.
• Recognizes that the entire world is not “superconnected” and contrasts high-tech societies with those that are less developed technologically.
• Incorporates excerpts from face-to-face and email interviews from my 20-plus years of research to illustrate relevant points.

I’m thrilled that the third edition is available in time for adoption for in Digital Technology and Society-type courses, and for general readership too, of course. It is intended to speak to multiple audiences. Please click around this site to see the supplemental teaching resources available, including editable lecture slides, discussion questions, assignments, and podcasts. Here is the new trailer for the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIgzAKUJxew.

Free review copies of Superconnected are available from SAGE Publications at https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/superconnected-the-internet-digital-media-and-techno-social-life/book259314?priorityCode=0B0686.

Click on the photo of the book on the right sidebar to order it on Amazon.

Please contact me with any requests for editable lecture slides or to do guest lectures or speaking engagements. More instructional materials to support Superconnected are found throughout this site.

My thoughts on this, published by NBC News Online.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/what-50-years-spent-internet-worth-humanity-ncna1073656

 

Rutgers Today interviewed me about the relevance of my research on digital connectedness to the global coronavirus crisis. You can read the Q and A, which includes some of my suggestions for keeping connections strong online and offline, here:

Strengthening face-to-face connections online during Covid-19 pandemic https://www.rutgers.edu/news/strengthening-face-face-connections-online-during-covid-19-pandemic

Why do so many of us “shame” those with whom we disagree? This is a common behavior online, which can become even more pernicious in times of crisis, as in the global coronavirus pandemic. See more in this article by Amanda Hoover for NJ.com, to which I contributed.

Why we’re shaming NJ residents who don’t social distance.

https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/05/why-were-shaming-nj-residents-who-dont-social-distance-even-though-it-wont-make-them-stay-home.html

In research published in JASIST, The Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, my colleague at Rutgers’ School of Communication and Information Vivek Singh, our students Raj Imandar and Diana Floegel, and I have found occupational gender bias to be prevalent in images on several mediated platforms. Our work has implications for the design of platforms and algorithms and for gender equity and fairness, and has received considerable international attention. It will be highlighted in the third edition of Superconnected, slated to be published in Fall 2020.

Here is a story about the research in Rutgers Today: https://news.rutgers.edu/occupational-gender-bias-prevalent-online-images-rutgers-study-finds/20200204#.Xlamu2hKg2w

Here are several links to media stories about the research:

Telengana Today. Online images reinforce gender stereotypes. https://telanganatoday.com/online-images-reinforce-occupational-gender-stereotypes

ET&T Magazine. Online images reinforce engineering stereotypes. https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2020/02/online-images-reinforce-engineering-stereotypes/

Physics.org. Occupational gender bias prevalent in online images, study finds. https://phys.org/news/2020-02-occupational-gender-bias-prevalent-online.html

Hyperallergic.com.Online Images Reinforce Gender Biases Around Professions, Study Says. https://hyperallergic.com/541323/online-images-reinforce-gender-biases-around-professions-study-says/

Business Standard. Occupational gender bias prevalent in social media images: study. https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/occupational-gender-bias-prevalent-in-social-media-images-study-120020401232_1.html.

…and here is the link to the actual article on JASIST.

https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/asi.24335