ABSTRACT
This chapter considers what it means to communicate in a world where digital devices are ubiquitous. It begins by looking at how digital technologies allow us to create multimedia messages, consume digital messages in new ways, communicate interactively, and gain unprecedented access to information. The chapter next goes on to consider the affordances of personal media, illustrating how persistence, visibility, spreadability, and searchability impact our lives.
New media are changing us in positive ways, yet they come with costs. The chapter discusses how preoccupation with digital devices can lead to internet addiction and can make it difficult to concentrate on offline tasks, resulting in shallower, more superficial thinking. It goes on to show how the social capital provided by digital communication can be offset by negative effects including context collapse and diminished privacy.
The chapter ends by looking at how personal media function in friendships and in the creation, maintenance, and dissolution of romantic relationships. It also discusses pressures to create idealized identities. The chapter concludes with a brief consideration of online etiquette. New media enhance and complicate our lives. In the twenty-first century competent communicators must master both face-to-face and mediated communication.
