In May, the Steven Chaffee memorial lecture was presented by Byron Reeves and explored the fabulous new world of multi player games and the implications ranging from media studies to the transformation of organizational work forms.
The Steven H. Chaffee Memorial Lecture was established at the University of California, Santa Barbara to honor the scholarship and personal qualities of Steven Chaffee, one of the most influential communication scholars of the 20th century.
Steve Chaffee came to UCSB from Stanford University in 1999, when he was appointed to the Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication. His research focused on a wide range of issues dealing with the effects of media, with particular emphasis on political communication and the impact of the news. He wrote extensively on the role of mass media in political campaigns, voter behavior and child development.
Byron Reeves is Paul C. Edwards Professor, Department of Communication and Director, Center for the Study of Language and Information, an interdisciplinary group of faculty working at the intersection of computing and social sciences. He is also co-founder of the Media X Program that brings together industry partners with university researchers across the campus working on innovations in interactive technology.
Professor Reeves has published widely on such topics as children and television, physiological responses to media, attention, memory, and emotion, the history of media effects research, political advertising, television news, and multi-player interactive games. He is co-author of The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and the New Media Like Real People and Places (Cambridge University Press).
Professor Reeves is a Fellow of the International Communication Association and was Steve Chaffee’s colleague at both the University of Wisconsin and Stanford.