Prof. Mary Chayko received the 2015 Best Paper award from the Social Informatics special interest group of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) for her article Techno-Social Life: The Internet, Digital Technology, and Social Connectedness published in the journal Sociology Compass. In it, she argues that the digital realm tends to be experienced as an emotional, intimate, “real” reality; that the online has become enmeshed with the offline rather than experienced as a separate context or environment; and that digital connectedness tends to prompt, rather than deter, face-to-face interaction and local community ties.
