The Internet introduced the concept of personalized news, allowing individuals to take control of their media consumption and focus on topics that interest them or sources that fit their worldview. Not everyone thrilled to this new consumer power, which M.I.T.'s Nicholas Negroponte called "The Daily Me," and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof worried this would "insulate us further in our hermetically sealed political chambers." Now that people share news and opinions on Facebook and social networking platforms, communications researchers could study whether social network users can still filter out news and opinions that annoy or offend them when friends and family members may not share their views.
Researchers could also examine the relative effectiveness of advertising in different physical, electronic or broadcast media. A 2008 study by Graham et al. offers an intriguing taste of what investigators might find. Their study showed that online ads worked far better than print, radio or television ads at convincing smokers to register for a smoking cessation program, and the online campaign reached several demographic groups who rarely responded to advertising in traditional media. Further studies could establish whether these patterns extend to other consumer products and how a particular product nature might influence advertising strategies.
New modes of communication can have unexpected effects on spoken and written language. The Internet, for example, has introduced many new words and meanings into the English language, and other languages have also adapted to the online world. In 2010, the BBC's Zoe Kleinman reported on an phonetic version of Ukrainian, "where a written variation of the national tongue has sprung up on Internet blogs and message boards called 'padronkavskly zhargon.'" Back in the US, linguists and cultural observers now pay close attention to cell-phone texting, which relies heavily on abbreviations and acronyms. Communications researchers could follow the evolution of texting syntax and language, track its adoption into everyday speech and writing and even identify regional variations.
Internet memes, such as LOLcats and the endless subtitled variations on the 2004 Hitler movie "Downfall" offer a way to follow the spread of information in real time. By monitoring select blogs, bulletin boards and news sites, researchers could map online zones of cultural influence, identify informal communications networks and gain insight into consumer tastes and preferences by linking memes to demographic groups that show the most interest in particular videos, song parodies or funny animal pictures.