UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Distinguished Professor S. Shyam Sundar is editor of the first-ever “Handbook of the Psychology of Communication Technology” (2015, Wiley).
The volume serves as a source for seminal and cutting-edge research on the psychological aspects of communicating with emergent media technologies.
“The last 20 years have witnessed an explosion of communication technologies, from the Internet to mobile phones to social media,” said Sundar. “These technologies have fundamentally changed the way we communicate.”
The purpose of the handbook is to understand the appeal as well as the addictive potential of these technologies, he said. It contains 25 chapters by leading scholars studying both positive and negative aspects of human interactions with computers, smartphones, games and robots. Together, they cover a variety of contexts, ranging from dating sites to online classrooms to health and wellness applications.
“This is a book scholars and several academic disciplines have been waiting for,” said Peter Vorderer, president of the International Communication Association. “It connects the latest knowledge and expertise using new technologies with the psychological conditions and effects of it.” As founder and co-director of the Media Effects Lab in the College of Communications at Penn State, Sundar was among the first to publish refereed research on the psychological effects of digital media interfaces and has been identified as the most published author of Internet-related research in the field during the medium’s first decade.
A frequently cited source and former chair of the Communication and Technology Division of the International Communication Association, he is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication.
He teaches courses in the psychology of communication technology, media theory and research methodology. His research is supported by the National Science Foundation, Korea Science and Engineering Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Services, among others.