Scott Campbell, Pohs Professor of Telecommunications and associate professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, will be a featured guest February 29 through March 4 at Oʻahu university campuses, including two free public lectures at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa on February 29 and at the Hawaiʻi Pacific University (HPU) Aloha Tower Marketplace on March 2. He will present two lectures in his “Social connection and solitude in an era of perpetual contact: Old and new perspectives on mobile communication and everyday life” series.
With the evolution of the traditional analog cell phone into a digital platform, mobile communication has become the fastest diffusing communication technology in history. Along with its rise to critical mass, and ultimately saturation, a growing body of research and theory has developed to identify and explain the social implications of mobile communication.
This two-part series of talks will engage with research and theory in the field of mobile communication studies to address questions about how (and how much) people are socially connected through the technology as well as implications for the other side of the perspective: solitude.
UH Mānoa lecture: February 29
Campbell will present a short talk titled “Implications of mobile communication for social connection,” followed by a panel discussion of those ideas with Brett Oppegaard, assistant professor in the School of Communications at UH Mānoa and guest scholar Sun Kyong (Sunny) Lee, assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma. The talk will be held Monday, February 29, 4:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m. at Hamilton Library, Room HL2K on the UH Mānoa campus.
HPU lecture: February 29
A longer lecture by Campbell, “Implications of mobile communication for solitude,” develops his ideas about mobile solitude and then integrates those with ideas about connection. The lecture will be held Wednesday, March 2, 5:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m. at HPU’s Aloha Tower Marketplace, Multipurpose Room 2.
More on Scott Campbell
Campbell’s work on mobile communication matters has been published in the Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Communication Research, New Media and Society, Mobile Media and Communication and other scholarly publications. He has co-edited two books (with Rich Ling) for the Mobile Communication Research Series and collaborated with the Pew Internet and American Life Project on a national study of teens and mobile communication. Campbell also currently has a book under contract with Oxford University Press that centrally engages with the issues in these talks.
Before joining Michigan, Campbell spent three years on faculty at Hawaiʻi Pacific University. Prior to his academic life, he worked for Sprint PCS, where he helped launch the first national digital mobile network in the United States.
Lecture information
Both public lectures are free and open to the public. The series is sponsored by the by the School of Communications in the UH Mānoa College of Social Sciences and HPU’s Department of Communication and HPU Student Activities Fees Committee.
Read the College of Social Sciences news release for more information.
—By Lisa Shirota
