Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age

by Mary Chayko

How do we become connected to people we have never met in person? From celebrities to faraway relatives, from favorite writers to thinkers to people we meet on-line, we form a host of subtle, invisible, but very real social connections with distant others. In Connecting, Mary Chayko investigates how physically separated people manage to create a sense of connectedness--a "meeting of the minds"--and feel undeniably, if unexpectedly, bonded. Through dozens of personal accounts, the book considers the social "fallout" of connecting with absent others--the benefits and hazards--on our societies, communities, relationships, and individual selves. The result is a comprehensive yet intimate look at social bonding as it is rarely an examination of the bonds and communities we form across great distances, and even across time, in the age of the Internet.

Genres: Nonfiction

252 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2002

About the author

Dr. Mary Chayko is a sociologist, Teaching Professor of communication and information, and Director of Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studies at the School of Communication and Information (SC&I) at Rutgers University. She is also an affiliate member of the graduate faculty of the Department of Sociology and an affiliate member of the faculty of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers. She received her B.A. in Communication and Psychology from Seton Hall University, Ed.M. in Counseling Psychology, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Rutgers University.

Dr. Chayko's research is on the impact of the internet and digital technology on community, society, and self. She is the author of Superconnected: the Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life (2nd edition, 2018, SAGE Publications), and has created podcasts, lecture slides, and discussion questions for the book that are available on the book blog http://superconnectedblog.com.

She is also the author of the award-winning, Portable Communities: The Social Dynamics of Online and Mobile Connectedness (2008) and Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age (2002), both with SUNY Press, as well as many published articles.

Dr. Chayko speaks nationally and internationally on the topic of digital technology and its societal impacts. She has been honored by Rutgers University with the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching (2019) and as a Rutgers University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Contributor to Undergraduate Education (1994).

In her spare time, she is a singer and flutist in a folky, social justice-oriented band with fellow sociologists Jim Pennell and Corey Dolgon, whose CD Songs of Peace and Justice can be heard on her website http://marychayko.com.Undergraduate Education. Her website contains excerpts from her published works, media appearances, and even some of her music. In her spare time, she is a singer and flutist in a folky, social justice–oriented band with fellow sociologists Jim Pennell and Corey Dolgon, whose CD Songs of Peace and Justice can be heard on the website.