INTRODUCTION

KEY TERMS

Communication Media Repertoire: “the collection of communication channels and identifiable routines of use for specific communication purposes within a defined community,” created through use of said community for its intended and sometimes unintended purposes (Watson-Manheim and Belanger 2007 p. 268, as cited in Watson-Manheim, 2011, p. 176-77)

Cues Filtered Out Studies: studies that assume, for the most part, that mediated conversation is inherently inferior to face-to-face interactions due to a lack of social cues (Fulk and Collins-Jarvis 2001,  as cited in Baym, 2010, p. 54)

Domestication: a process in which technology becomes part of everyday life and no longer viewed as an agent of change (Baym, 2010, p. 24)

Dystopian: a vision of a world made worse through technology by emphasizing fears of “losing control, becoming dependent, and being unable to stop change” (Baym, 2010, p. 28)

Dystopian Alternative: “a fear that new media will take people away from their intimate relationships as they substitute mediated relationships or even media use itself for face-to-face engagement” (Baym, 2010, p. 36)

Foggy Mirror: a term used by researchers (Ellison et al., 2006) to refer to limitations for users of social networking sites in self-knowledge and the discrepancy between what they believe to be true of themselves and what is deemed "true" by others (Baym, 2010, p. 118)

Identity Demarginalization: a theory that “the anonymity of online groups allows people to engage in riskier self-disclosure” and can create positive changes for individual self-perception (McKenna and Bargh, 1998, as paraphrased by Baym, 2010, p. 84)

Impact-Imprint: a perspective in which technologies affect history by transferring “their essential qualities” to their users and thereby imprint their qualities on users’ individual and collective psyches (Fischer, 1992, as cited in Baym, 2010, p. 26)

New Logic (of cultural technologies): “a set of exercises through which those exposed to its influence were to be transformed into the active bearers and practitioners of the capacity for self-improvement that culture was held to embody” (Bennett 24, as cited in Gilpin, 2011, p. 236)

New Media Literacies: “a set of cultural competencies and social skills which young people need as they confront the new media landscape.” (Jenkins et al., as cited in Rheingold, 2008, p. 99)

Participatory Media: a “shift in the way our culture operates” through the possibility for today's young people to have a voice in shaping the world through technological tools such as blogs, wikis, social networking sites, podcasts (“a program made available in digital format for automatic download over the internet”), mash-ups (“something created by combining elements from two or more sources,” such as a piece of music or a film clip), digital storytelling, and more (Jenkins et al., as cited in Rheingold, 2008, p. 99)

Prescriptive Theorist: one who thinks that communities must renew themselves and act better in civic engagement to redeem themselves from past neglect and ignorance (Putnam and Feldstein, 2003, as cited in Parks, 2011, p. 107)

Preferential Attachment: we are more likely to visit web pages that have more connections and a higher number of nodes than ones with fewer. This is also referred to as “Matthew Effect” and “cumulative advantage”(Barabasi, 2011, p. 8)

Social Network Theorist: one who approaches the concept of communities by “delineating the nature of social ties within physical and mediated settings” (Hampton and Wellman, 2003, as cited in Parks, 2011, p.  107)

Social Contract Theory: “consumers assume an implied social contract when exchanging information in a transaction” (Fogel and Nehmad, 2011, p. 154)

The Social Construction of Technology: a perspective that “focuses on how technologies arise from social processes and argues that “people are the primary source of change, in both technology and society” (Baym, 2010, p.24 and 39)

Social Shaping of Technology: a perspective between technological determinism and social constructivism that says, “People, technologies, and institutions all have power to influence the development and subsequent use of technology”(Baym, 2010, p. 44-45)

Signaling Theory: a theory developed in both biology and economics that “describes the relationship between a signal and the underlying quality it represents” (boyd and Donath, 2004, p. 72)

Syntopian Perspective: the view that new technologies can be simultaneously enabling and disabling (Katz and Rice, 2002, as paraphrased by Baym, 2010, p. 46)

Technological Determinism:  the view of new technologies as casual agents that enter “societies as active forces of change that humans have little power to resist” (Baym, 2010, p. 24)

Technological Determinism in Digital Media: a rhetorical stance, opposed to utopian rhetorics, that focuses on the “authenticity of identity and well-being of ‘real’ relationships” (Baym, 2010, p. 38)

Uses and Gratifications Theory: a theory based on the premise that users of media are “active and goal-directed” and are thus “aware of the needs they are attempting to satisfy” (Lin and Jeffres, 1998, as paraphrased by Kaye, 2011, p. 212)

Utopian: a vision of a world improved by technology (Baym, 2010, p. 28)

Utopian Rhetorics:  an emphasis on the possibility that “technology will liberate true selves from the constraints of geography and the shackles of marginalized social identities and empower them to enrich their offline relationships and engage in new online relationships” (Baym, 2010, p. 38).