New media challenges to the theory and practice of communication engagement

The rapid evolution of digital media spaces raises significant questions about the theorization and practice of communication engagement, and dialogue as a normative ideal. We explore these debates using contemporary research on new media environments and the analysis of a range of contemporary examples. We suggest three axes around which communication and technologies are coevolving most intensely, and which pose particular challenges to the practice and theorization of engagement: new social architectures; algorithmic processes; and the changing phenomenology of authentic communicative experiences. The implications for practices of communication engagement are also outlined. We conclude that the evolution of real‐time, networked, and algorithmic forms of mediation entail fundamental changes to the social structures of stakeholder engagement and their effective management; this may include the experience of meaningful connection and intersubjectivity untethered to traditional dialogic processes of communication