S. Shyam Sundar

CV, as PDF

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S. Shyam Sundar is the founder of the Media Effects Research Laboratory (http://www.psu.edu/dept/medialab), a leading facility of its kind in the country. He teaches courses in the psychology of communication technology, mass-communication theory, and research methodology.

He earned his doctoral and master’s degrees in communication. He also holds bachelor's degrees in communication and engineering. His industry experience includes more than eight years as a print journalist.

Just as his background is eclectic, his current work is quite interdisciplinary—he holds joint faculty appointments in the departments of film-video and media studies, advertising, architecture, and communication arts and sciences at Penn State.

Prof. Sundar’s research investigates social and psychological effects of technological elements unique to Web-based mass-communication. In particular, his studies experimentally investigate the effects of interactivity, navigability, multi-modality, and agency (source attribution) in Web interfaces upon online users’ thoughts, emotions, and actions.

Sundar was among the first to publish refereed research on the effects of new media in Journal of Communication, the flagship publication of the International Communication Association (ICA). His work has also appeared in such leading journals as Communication Research, Media Psychology, Behaviour & Information Technology, The Information Society, Journal of Advertising, and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

In a content analysis of journal articles published during the first decade of the Internet, Sundar was identified as the most published author of Internet-related research in the field of communications, and across 11 leading journals of communications, marketing and advertising (Cho & Khang, 2006;Journal of Advertising, 35: 3, 143-163).

A frequently cited source on technology, Sundar has testified before the U.S. Congress as an expert witness and delivered talks at several universities in the United States, Germany, Netherlands, Hong Kong, and India. He frequently reviews manuscripts for journals inside and outside the field of communication, and serves on the editorial boards of Communication Research, Human Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Media Psychology, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Communication Methods & Measures, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator and other publications.

He is currently chair of ICA's Communication & Technology Division, following his two-year tenure as vice chair. His contribution to the field also includes serving as the head of the Communication Technology Division of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication in 2000-2001. More recently, he was member and chair of the association's Publications Committee and presently serves on its Strategic Plan Committee.