Dr. George A. Barnett

Professor
Office: 361 Baldy Hall
Email: gbarnett
Phone: (716) 645-2141 ext 1179
Web page: informatics.buffalo.edu/faculty/barnett/

Degrees:

B.A., University of Illinois
M.A., University of Illinois
Ph.D., Michigan State University

Teaches in these programs:

Bachelor of Arts Communication Department
Master of Arts Communication Department
Master of Arts Informatics Program
Ph.D. Communication Department

Research Interests:

"As information processing (gathering, storage and dissemination) replaces manufacturing as the dominant economic activity of contemporary society, an accurate description of how the nations of the world exchange information is necessary to understand the global village of the twenty-first century and its economics, politics and culture. The goal of my research is to describe the patterns of use or structure of international communication, in general, and telecommunications (telephone & computer based communication-the world wide web), in specific. This research will facilitate our ability to predict future developments in various social and economic sectors related to globalization. In addition to the description of global telecommunication, my research examines the impact of various antecedent variables including a country's physical location, language, infrastructure (both public and private) and economic development, patterns of migration between countries and the political relations among nations. The research is also interested in the relationship between the telecommunication and other global communication systems, such as, news, mail, transportation, telex, video, film, tourism, academic exchanges, citations trade and monetary flows. How have the structures of these networks changed over time as a function of the increased activity in the telecommunication network? Also, how might they change in the future with global reliance upon telecommunications? For example, the mail and telex networks might atrophy, becoming less connected and integrated, as the telecommunication network becomes more widely disseminated. How it will impact the structure of trade is uncertain. Will the trade network mirror telecommunications? Or, will telecommunications replace trade as we move into the information age? I also have an interest is in the sociology of knowledge, especially as it applies to the field of communication. Currently, I'm involved in a study that examines the absolute and distributed information in the field along with its applications to other social organizations. Also, I am interested in the role of communication in the scientific process. How do scientists communicate with one another. Historically, this has been through the citation of published articles by other scientists working on related research. Currently, this is being supplanted by the use of hyperlinks among the webpages. To date no one has systematically examined the process of hyperlink citation and compared it to the citation of published articles. I am working on this topic with Dr. Halavais."