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.