Emerging Media and Technology

emerging media technologies play important roles in culture and communities. 

Research in this area examines how emerging technologies open up new possibilities in terms of freedom of expression and access to information, but also addresses the complex ways that power is negotiated within these new media. It also explores the opportunities that arise for creating social movements and social change but also the accompanying threats that may be presented to democracy and freedom. Moreover, this research explores new technologies as sites of cultural expression and representation.

recent research by our faculty has addressed:

  • The role of social media in politics and political discourse

  • The intersection of digital journalism, mobile technologies, and public discourse

  • The impact of information and communication technologies on urban revitalization efforts
  • Computer-mediated communication
  • Virtual and  cyber communities and social media
  • The social implications of big data and algorithms
  • Video games and gaming culture
  • Embodied computing (wearables, embeddables, ingestibles, implantables)

Faculty

Emerging media and technology news

Explore the latest emerging media and technology news from our faculty below.

2020

August 2020: Dr. Adrienne Shaw co-authors “Beyond texts: Using queer readings to document LGBTQ game content” in the journal First Monday.

March 2020: M&C doctoral student Abdullah Almalki successfully defended his dissertation "Tracing news on Twitter: Forces shaping news consumption and perceptions in Gulf Country media systems."

February 2020: Dr. Adrienne Shaw has been appointed to be the Director of Temple’s brand new Cultural Analytics graduate certificate program for the next two academic years.

2019

10/7/19: Dr. Adrienne Shaw speaks at Bradley University in an event co-sponsored by the Interactive Media Department and the Common Ground (LGBTQ+) student organization.

9/25/19: Dr. Adrienne Shaw and colleagues publish an annotated bibliography on Feminist and Queer Game Studies as part of Oxford bibliographies in communication.

9/18/19: Dr. Wazhmah Osman presents keynote address "Selling surveillance and strikes: The racialized line between killer and craft drones," at the Life Under Drones Symposium at Pacific Lutheran University.

4/15/19: Dr. Adrienne Shaw and doctoral student Hocheol Yang publish article "Counting Queerness in Games: Trends in LGBTQ Digital Game Representation, 1985-2005" in the International Journal of Communication 

4/15/19: Dr. Adrienne Shaw publishes book chapter "Leisure Suit Larry and LGBTQ representation" in the edited anthology How to Play Video Games from NYU Press.

4/15/19: Dr. Adrienne Shaw publishes the Rainbow Arcade Catalog. The catalog was published by winterwork in Berlin as part of the exhibit at the Schwules Museum she co-curated, and was just released to Kickstarter backers.

3/28/19: Doctoral student Urszula Pruchniewska successfully defends her dissertation "Everyday Feminism in the Digital Era: Gender, the Fourth Wave, and Social Media Affordances."

1/28/19: Dr. Andrew Iliadis gives talk “Semantic Media: Who’s Building Meaning into our Machines?” at the University of Toronto. 

2018

11/20/18: Dr. Logan Molyneux and co-authors publish “Media work, identity, and the motivations that shape branding practices among journalists: An explanatory framework” in New Media & Society.

11/16/18: Doctoral student Kun Xu successfully defends dissertation "Media Are Social Actors: Individuals' Social Responses to Social Robots and Mobile Phones.”

8/15/18: Dr. Bruce Hardy and Dr. Jessica Castonguay publish article “The moderating role of age in the relationship between social media use and mental well-being: An analysis of the 2016 General Social Survey” in Computers in Human Behavior.

Courses

Students who have an interest in emerging media and technology can register for the following classes:

  • Emerging media and communication
  • Communication institutions
  • Social media scraping and computational textual analysis
  • Content analysis
  • Media ethnography
  • Digital qualitative research methods