The Conduct and Consequence of Research on Digital Communication

Abstract

Research on digital communication is best served by concentrating not on current technological tools, but rather on the novel processes of social and communicative change to which such technologies are often closely linked. Thus, scholarship should consider contemporary technologies mainly as manifestations of underlying phenomena rather than as particular objects of study and should cultivate a focus on the capabilities that span technologies. Theories in this domain, in turn, must concentrate on what is exceptional about technologies in terms of the psychological, social, and behavioral mechanisms that help to comprehend them in the long term. Seen this way, the key to understanding technological mediation is remarkably consistent even in the face of radical technological change.