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The nature of the academic lecture has changed with the introduction of wi-fi and cellular technologies. Interacting with personal screens during a lecture or other live event has become commonplace and, as a result, the economy of attention that defines these situations has changed. Is it possible to pay attention when sending a text message or surfing the web? For that matter, does distraction always detract from the learning that takes place in these environments? In this article, we ask questions concerning the texture and shape of this emerging economy of attention. We do not take a position on the efficiency of new technologies for delivering educational content or their efficacy of competing for users' time and attention. Instead, we argue that the emerging social media provide new methods for choreographing attention in line with the performative conventions of any given situation. Rather than banning laptops and phones from the lecture hall and the classroom, we aim to ask what precisely they have on offer for these settings understood as performative sites, as well as for a culture that equates individual attentional behavior with intellectual and moral aptitude.

Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. This special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together scholarship on these emergent phenomena. In this introductory article, we describe features of SNSs and propose a comprehensive definition. We then present one perspective on the history of such sites, discussing key changes and developments. After briefly summarizing existing scholarship concerning SNSs, we discuss the articles in this special section and conclude with considerations for future research.

This study discusses several central roles that the Internet and mobile phones play in college students' daily lives. Focus group interviews at a U.S. and a Norwegian university generated a wide variety of concerns and experiences. Three themes stand out - social connectivity, multitasking, and social control. The informants were seemingly involved in constant conversations with their friends and families. Also, there was a high degree of multi-tasking, involving several activities or media at the same time. E-mail and instant messaging supported near-continuous contact. Their constant multi-tasking could reflect a feeling that they need to be busy, but also an acquired proficiency to handle multiple simultaneous media tasks. For many of our interviewees the mobile phone was used for daily conversations and text messages as much as could be afforded. New media seem to be an integrated part of these people's lives. The thought of being without their mobile phones created feelings of anxiety for some, and their use of these media for maintaining connectivity constituted some new forms of control, even of themselves.

Hands-free legislation leads people to believe that it's safe (or at least safer) to drive while talking on a cell phone with the aid of a hands-free device, reports Governing. Well, it's not. Governing points to a 2006 study that found no difference between drivers talking on hand-held phones and those talking on hands-free devices-as soon as people started talking, they became more likely to rear end another car than a legally drunk driver. More recently, researchers found that simply talking on a phone cuts the brain activity devoted to driving nearly 40 percent.

As Web-enabled smartphones have become standard on the belts and in the totes of executives, people in meetings are increasingly caving in to temptation to check e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, even (shhh!) ESPN.com. But a spirited debate about etiquette has broken out. Traditionalists say the use of BlackBerrys and iPhones in meetings is as gauche as ordering out for pizza. Techno-evangelists insist that to ignore real-time text messages in a need-it-yesterday world is to invite peril.

Overload! Journalism's battle for relevance in an (age of too much information

Video about digital learners.