The Handbook of the Psychology of Communication Technology

Recent years have seen an explosion in the design, deployment and diffusion of communication technologies. Scholars in communication, psychology and related fields have been at the forefront of this information revolution, contributing new theories and conducting exciting empirical studies. The Handbook of the Psychology of Communication Technology offers an unparalleled source of influential and cutting–edge research on psychological aspects of communicating with and via new media technologies, bringing together an impressive assembly of communication and psychological issues. User psychology is at the heart of the communication revolution. This unique text focuses on how aspects of the technology interact with aspects of human psychology. It features authoritative chapters by contributors who are leading scholars in their respective subfields, and who represent a broad range of academic disciplines and cultural perspectives, reporting their corpus of work and synthesizing it in the context of the field. Together, they cover diverse psychological aspects of communication technologies, dealing with the latest developments, how these most recent communication technologies have been utilized in both negative and positive ways, and provide insights that not only advance our knowledge about human–technology interactions but also inform the design of new technologies.

S. Shyam Sundar (PhD, Stanford University) is Distinguished Professor and Founding Director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at The Pennsylvania State University. 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 & Technology division of the International Communication Association, Sundar is currently editor–in–chief of the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication .