Emerging media affect how we get information, how we socialize, how we shop, and where we might get our next job.
Ball State faculty members have been participating in cutting edge research for several years, focusing on various facets of emerging media and playing a key role in delivering information, developing Indiana's digital economy, and assisting the state's growing media companies. A sample of their work is described below.
Insight and Research at the Center for Media Design has
pioneered research on how consumers use media. Not only have researchers recorded what their subjects are watching (or reading or listening to) but also how much attention they’re paying to it and whether they’re using more than one medium at a time. Other Insight and Research projects have yielded remarkable findings on
how we really watch video and how people communicate in the digital age.
The center's
Institute for Mobile Media Research is exploring the creation, testing, and practical application of mobile media for academia, consumers, business, and the community.
Faculty members making up the
Digital Policy Institute (DPI) were instrumental in 2006 in persuading the Indiana legislature to pass the state's most comprehensive telecom industry reform bill in two decades. A DPI study released in 2008 found that the telecom reform bill resulted in $516 million in capital investments and the creation of more than 2,200 jobs.
Ball State's
Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER), led by director
Mike Hicks, has been at the forefront of analyzing economic trends impacting Hoosier residents and businesses. A CBER study recently found that investing in emerging media would be critical to
job creation in the coming years.
Researchers from Ball State's
Department of Computer Science have been at the forefront of computer-related research projects. Members of the
Software Engineering Research Center (SERC), established by the National Science Foundation, combine real-world data and university research to develop and improve software. Among the projects at SERC is an initiative, funded by a $1 million grant, to develop improvements to software used by the U.S. military.
New
faculty-led research efforts in emerging media are overseen and supported by the Emerging Media Initiative.