About the Authors

Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach is Professor of Communication and Sociology in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. She is Principal Investigator of the Metamorphosis Project (www.metamorph.org) which advances a communication infrastructure perspective on urban community under the forces of globalization, new communication technologies, and population diversity. Ball-Rokeach is the author or editor of seven books: Understanding Ethnic Media (with M. D. Matsaganis & V. S. Katz), Violence and the Media (with R. K. Baker), Theories of Mass Communication (with M. L. DeFleur), The Great American Values Test: Influencing Belief and Behavior through Television (with M. Rokeach & J. W. Grube), Media, Audience and Society (with M. G. Cantor), Paradoxes of Youth and Sport (with M. Gatz and M. Messner), and Technological Visions: The Hopes and Fears that Shape New Technologies (with M. Sturken and D. Thomas). She has published numerous articles in such journals as Communication Research, Journalism Quarterly, Mass Communication and Society, American Sociological Review, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Communication, New Media and Society, Social Problems, and The American Psychologist.

Ekaterina Basilaia has been a researcher and scholar for over seven years. Ekaterina also lectures at the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU). Ekaterina holds three degrees. She obtained her BA in English and MA in linguistics at Tbilisi State University. In addition, Ekaterina has obtained an MS in Mass Communication at San Jose State University. Other recent publications include “The natural framing of military conflict news. The 2008 war in Georgia in Resonance, Izvestia and The New York Times” in the Central European Journal of Communication.

Shelley Boulianne completed her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007. She conducts research on media use, public opinion, as well as civic and political engagement, using meta-analysis techniques, experiments, and surveys. She also conducts research on survey research methodology, particularly on how to increase response rates to surveys. She is currently working with the Alberta Climate Dialogue, which is an international group of researchers engaged in a five-year project to study public deliberation about climate change in Alberta.

Pamela Jo Brubaker is an assistant professor in the Department of Communications at Brigham Young University. She holds a Ph.D. in mass communications from The Pennsylvania State University and a master’s degree in mass communication from Brigham Young University. Her research focuses on the impact and use of new media for strategic communication campaigns, political communications, etc. Brubaker has approximately seven years of professional public relations experience in the technology industry, including positions in corporate and agency settings. She currently teaches courses in public relations research and strategic communications campaigns.

Robert T. Cserni is a graduate student researcher at the Department of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His research topics include gender and sexuality, social networks, and organizational behavior. He is currently working to apply big data analyses to the study of masculinities. Robert has a Master’s degree in organizational sociology from the University of Haifa in Israel (2012), where he studied the effects of Internet usage on LGBT youth’s social capital. His B.A. in psychology and human services (2009) is also from the University of Haifa.

Aaron B. Culley is Associate Professor of Sociology at Wingate University. His research agenda encompasses two general areas of interest. The first includes investigations into the specific belief and behavior of American Evangelical Protestants, in terms of their specific theological beliefs and how those intersect with their ideas and actions in terms of contemporary social and political issues. The other involves consideration of broader developments in the development of sociological theories, including how older theoretical notions can be re-interpreted and informed by more recent theoretical ideas and perspectives, as well as informed by current empirical research.

Zack Hayat is a faculty member at the Sammy Ofer School of Communications, at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel and a collaborating researcher at NetLab, The University of Toronto. Hayat earned a BA in communications and computer science and an MA in communications at the University of Haifa, Israel. Dr. Hayat earned his PhD at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. His research focuses on the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and personal networks. He is particularly interested in how emerging technologies may enable or hinder the transfer of information and support within personal networks. Specifically, Dr. Hayat study research collaboration and the role ICTs play in forming and sustaining collaborative ties. In his PhD dissertation Dr. Hayat used the social network analysis framework to study the formation and evolution of research collaboration networks, as well as factors that contribute to productive collaboration. Dr. Hayat's research has been supported by the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program (OGS), Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) of Canada, and the Mitacs-Accelerate Program.

Michael Horning is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Virginia Tech. He holds a Ph.D. in Mass Communications from The Pennsylvania State University and a Masters in Communication and Media Technologies from The Rochester Institute of Technology. His research is focused on the social and psychological effects of communications technologies. He uses an interdisciplinary approach in his research that draw from both media effects and human computer interaction traditions. Prior to his appointment at Virginia Tech he worked in the Computer-Supported Collaboration and Learning Lab at Penn State with a team of researchers to develop and test location-aware news aggregation software. His current research has been focused on developing and testing mobile and web-based applications that support engagement with local news and community service organizations. He has also published papers on the effects of communications technologies on political and civic engagement.

Donald Lewis Shaw, director of the Mountain Conference Program in Communication Research, is a journalism scholar and professor, retired U.S. Army Reserve officer and writer who has taught at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 1966. Now Kenan emeritus professor, he also has been visiting professor at six universities and lectured at dozens more. He is best known for his work, with Max McCombs of Texas, on the agenda-setting function of the press. He is author or co-author of 10 books and scores of scholarly articles and papers. He served in the U.S. Army Reserves, N.C. Army National Guard, and U.S. Army for 32 years. In 2011, the Selective Service System awarded him a Distinguished Service Award for his 15 years as North Carolina State Director. He has been awarded the Paul Deutschmann Award for scholarly achievement and a Presidential Citation Award for career achievement for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. In addition, he has earned the Harold L. Nelson Award for career achievement as well as the Dinerman Award for public opinion. In 2012, Shaw was initiated into the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame.

Randy Lynn is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology, graduate lecturer, and graduate research fellow at George Mason University. His research interests include digital technologies, critical youth studies, education, social networks, and inequalities. He received his M.A. in sociology from the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2009, and subsequently accepted a Presidential Scholarship to continue studies at GMU. He is a former graduate research fellow at GMU’s Center for Social Science Research, and is currently a fellow at GMU’s Institute for Immigration Research. He has also participated in programs at the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect at Cornell University, the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland, and the Internet Institute at the University of Oxford (UK). Randy’s dissertation will explore the social foundations of educational technology initiatives in contemporary U.S. high schools. His work has been published in academic books and journals, and has been featured in the Huffington Post.

Guang Ying Mo is an instructor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. She is also a long-time member of the interdisciplinary NetLab research network. Dr. Mo’s research examines how network organizations influence the creation of innovations. She focuses on network structure’s effects on individual members’ performance and team productivity. In particular, she studies the relationship between diversity in scholarly networks, collaborative ties across disciplinary boundaries, and innovative outcomes. Dr. Mo combines social network analysis, multilevel models, and qualitative analysis to investigate the complexity of research collaborations.

Katherine Ognyanova is a postdoctoral researcher at the Lazer Lab, Northeastern University, and a fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University. She does work in the areas of computational social science and network analysis. Her research has a broad focus on transformations of the media system, political and civic engagement, and the impact of technology on social structures. Her past experience includes work with the Annenberg Networks Network, the Center for the Digital Future, the World Internet Project, the USC Metamorphosis Project, as well as a fellowship with the Federal Communications Commission. Katya received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science, and M.A. degrees in Communication and Virtual Culture. For more information visit Katya’s website at www.kateto.net or follow her on Twitter at @Ognyanova.

Sue Carroll Pauley currently serves as Chair of the Department of Sociology at Wingate University. Having an early background in social services, she brings an interest in problem solving to her academic pursuits. Mate selection, work/family and generational issues are topics which are emphasized and explored in her Family Sociology courses. In addition, she enjoys directing students in career exploration in her Human Service courses.

Nancy Horak Randall is the Harry and Frances Cannon Professor of Sociology and Human Services at Wingate University. Her research agenda focuses on social distance, including a community study which utilized survey research to examine social distance among Mexicans, whites, and blacks in a suburbanizing county in the southern US. She also studies behavioral indicators of social distance, such as Facebook friend lists and Twitter followers. She is currently focusing her research activities on understanding the process of adoption of social media by baby boomer and silent generation women.

Jen Schradie is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, based at the Toulouse School of Economics. She received her PhD from the Department of Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley with a designated emphasis in New Media from the Berkeley Center for New Media. She has a master’s degree in sociology from UC Berkeley and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School. She studies social class, social media, and social movements. Her broad research agenda is to interrogate digital democracy theories with empirical data. After she published two articles on digital production inequality in Poetics and Information, Communication and Society, the publicity she garnered from these publications earned her the 2012 Public Sociology Alumni Prize at UC Berkeley. With a National Science Foundation Grant, she researched the relationship between technology and democracy among social movement and labor organizations in the American South. Currently, she is examining what she calls Silicon Valley Ideology and its intersection with French society’s digital labor practices. Before entering academia, Schradie directed six documentary films, including, “The Golf War – A Story of Land, Golf and Revolution in the Philippines.” Most of her films, however, focused on social movements confronting corporate power in the American rural South. Schradie’s documentaries have screened at more than 25 film festivals and 100 universities.

Ilan Talmud (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1992) is Chair of Graduate Studies in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Haifa. His publications are in the areas of network models of economic sociology and Internet studies. Among his recent publications are the book (with Gustavo Mesch) “Wired Youth: The Social World of Adolescence in the Informative Age” (Routledge, 2010), and the chapter “Economic Sociology” (in Sociopedia: The Online Encyclopedia of the International Sociological Association).

Christopher M. Toula has an MA in Media Studies from Penn State and a BA with honours in Film Studies, Video Production and Creative Writing from Bucks New University. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication at Georgia State University. Mr. Toula currently teaches Communication Law, Public Speaking, Media Ethics, Media Research Methods and Media Writing at Georgia State. His research areas include the following: critical globalization theory, political and economic rhetoric, law and international communication. He has given 11 conference presentations since 2008 and been published in the journal Cultural Studies.

Chris J. Vargo specializes in the use of computer science methods to investigate social media using theories from the communication and political science disciplines. Research methods of specialization include: text mining, machine learning, computer-assisted content analysis, data forecasting, information retrieval and network analysis. Chris accomplishes these tasks through computer programming with Python and UNIX. These abilities have enabled collaboration with scholars Dr. Donald Shaw and Dr. Maxwell McCombs, as they begin to test mass communication theories with big data online. Chris recently co-authored the book “Content is King: News Media Management in the Digital Age,” which is currently in press. Here Chris relies on his technical expertise and highlights approaches media managers can take to better market and profit from their online news content. His dissertation continues this research focusing on virality and diffusion on social media. Chris has three degrees in Advertising & Public Relations: a Ph.D. from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.A. from The University of Alabama and a B.A. from The Pennsylvania State University. His background includes real-world public relations and digital marketing experience at SonyBMG Music, Porter Novelli and Fox/Dreamworks. In addition, Chris has worked in the IT field for over six years.

Barry Wellman codirects the virtual NetLab Network at the University of Toronto. Wellman is the co-author (with Lee Rainie) of the award-winning Networked: The New Social Operating System and more than 200 papers with more than 80 coauthors. With fellow NetLabbers, his research has focused on the triple revolution: the intersection of the turn to social networks, the proliferation of the internet for communication and information, and the always-available digital media. Wellman is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and has received career achievement awards from the Oxford Internet Institute, the International Communication Association, the International Network for Social Network Analysis (which he founded in 1976), and both the Community and the Communication/Info tech sections of the American Sociological Association.

James C. Witte is a professor of sociology, Director of the Center for Social Science Research (CSSR) and Director of the Institute for Immigration Research (IIR) at George Mason University. Witte, who earned his PhD from Harvard in 1991, has been a professor at Clemson University and Northwestern University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Carolina Population Center and a lecturer in sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His ongoing research looks at ways to use the internet to collect social science data and on the similarities and differences between online and off-line societies. Currently he is also serving as Co-PI on a major State Department funded initiative to reinvigorate the social sciences in Pakistan. Dr. Witte has written numerous articles that have appeared in journals such as The European Sociological Review, Population and Development Review andSociological Methods and Research. He has also published three books, Labor Force Integration and Marital Choice, the Internet and Social Inequality and The Normal Bar. The Normal Bar, co-authored with Chrisanna Northrup and Pepper Schwartz, was released in 2013 and made the New York Times bestseller list.