I received a batch of reviews from the students in Prof. Mihaela Popescu’s course in Digital Media and Communication at California State University – San Bernardino.

Thanks so much, Mihaela, for reaching out to share these with me!

And from more seasoned scholars:

“Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. From kids to seniors, we are the greatest generations: communicating, networking, and creating information and media constantly and collaboratively. In this lively, wide-ranging book, Mary Chayko tells you how and why we are the most superconnected society ever.” — Barry Wellman, Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto (retired), co-director, NetLab Network, and author (with Lee Rainie), Networked

“Dr. Mary Chayko provides a splendid tour of how social media came to be, what they are used for today, and what they are doing for and to us. Clearly written, Superconnected makes a fine introduction to the subject for students and general readers alike.” — James E. Katz, Feld Family Professor of Emerging Media, Boston University, and author (with Michael Barris and Anshul Jane), The Social Media President

“Mary Chayko has crafted a most remarkable work in Superconnected. Rarely have I seen a writer at such ease in identifying and explaining both the essential techno-social building blocks of information and communication technologies and the rich, fascinating behaviors associated with them. Sharing and surveillance, emotion and presence, hacking and activism, crowdsourcing and accountability, friending and dating, multitasking and stress — these are just a few of Chayko’s inspired and informed topics. The work of a topnotch scholar and master teacher, Superconnected is inviting and compelling, friendly and challenging, unique and vital. It is the book I have been waiting for — perfect for any undergraduate class on information and communication technologies.” — Christena Nippert-Eng, Professor of Informatics, Indiana University, and author, Islands of Privacy

“Superconnected is a provocative, thoughtful and thorough examination of the contemporary digital state of affairs. It will educate, provoke and inspire readers to form new perspectives on the consequences of new media in everyday life.” — Steve Jones, UIC Professor of Communication, University of Illinois – Chicago, and editor, New Media and Society

“Mary Chayko’s Superconnected is an indispensable,interdisciplinary guide to the complexities of life in the digital age. Engagingly written and masterfully covering a wide range of essential and nuanced topics, it is a unique text that is ideal for any reader who wants to know how our current techno-social condition emerged and the promises and pitfalls of living in it. An outstanding text that deserves to be adopted across the disciplines.” — Evan Selinger, Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, and author (with Brett Frischmann) of the forthcoming Being Human in the 21st Century

“In Superconnected, Mary Chayko gives the reader a grand tour of the digital world. From history to hypertext, from the web to wireless, from cognition to community, from proxemics to participation to power, from the self to sharing to surveillance, from romance to rights and from group to globalization…it is all here to be enjoyed in her insightful work.” — Rich Ling, Shaw Foundation Professor of Media Technology, Nanyang Technological University, and author, Taken For Grantedness

“Superconnected is captivating in its approach as it dispels old myths and provides new insights into the functioning of a digital society. No other text provides such in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of such a wide range of issues, weaving together theory and on-the-ground examples, and local and global understandings, of how the internet and digital media/technologies have radically transformed many aspects of modern life.” — Anabel Quan-Haase, Associate Professor of Sociology and Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, and author, Technology and Society

“Writing in a clear and lucid style, Mary Chayko explores the impact of internet and digital media on many aspects of our lives, examining issues ranging from friending and liking to surveillance and global inequalities.  The book is highly readable, an ideal text for undergraduate students as well as the general public who are interested in such topics.” — Shanyang Zhao, Professor of Sociology, Temple University

In-depth, scholarly reviews:

The most definitive feature of digital society…is the extent to which people across the world are now connected by new devices. In making this the central focus of her work, Chayko’s Superconnected is immediately a key text for digital sociology. Superconnected is an encyclopaedic guide to digital society, a society characterised by new forms of ‘techno-social life’ unlike those of previous eras. Yet Chayko offers something other contributions to digital sociology do not, she invites her readers to actively participate in shaping this new society. She does this by mapping the new spaces in which people can assemble and express themselves, and the various obstacles they may face. The result is an inspiriting compendium of what characterises digital society. ” — Tom Redshaw, Lecturer, Salford University, in Sociologyhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0038038519880114

“Superconnected would serve well as an introduction to the work of this particular community of scholars in sociology, communication, technology, and media studies. The book covers a lot of ground in a small number of pages and its central premise grows organically from the literature, making it a useful tool for setting up the landscape of this literature. Superconnected presents recent scholarship while grounding it in classic sociological theory, making it a useful teaching tool for undergraduate courses. Additionally, the prose is concise and clear without an abundance of jargon, making the text approachable for undergraduates or lay readers.” — Angela Kristin VandenBroeck, Binghamton University, in Information, Communication and Society https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1346137

“Reading Superconnected takes the reader on a comprehensive exploration of the most recent issues that the digital revolution has opened up in our societies. Chayko explains our condition of superconnectedness as the result of a triple revolution: the internet, mobile media and social network sites have brought the world to an unprecedented technological and social superconnection. This has profound implications on the lives of individuals and communities about which the book provides one of the most complete existing overviews.” — Marco Gui, Associate Professor, University of Milano-Bicocca, in Sociologica https://boa.unimib.it/retrieve/handle/10281/262473/381879/Chayko_Gui_Sociologica-rev.pdf

“Basically, Mary Chayko’s Superconnected provides a very comprehensive survey on the nature of techno-social phenomena exploded since the birth of the Internet and how they have evolved today. As Bertrand Russell has claimed in his History of Western Philosophy (1945), men who founded modern science had two merits which are not necessarily found together: immense patience in data analysis, and great boldness in framing hypotheses (pp. 527–528); Internet and media studies, as well as Chayko’s book, have their strength in data analysis, but most books are quite weak in providing a depth theoretical framework. Chayko’s book is a precise and huge reservoir of media studies tools, including the way in which the major social theorists have analysed the digital media phenomenon.” — Antonio Marturano, University of Rome Tor Vergata, in Management Learning https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1350507617693726