Introduction
The past two decades or so have witnessed a considerable increase in our interest in the nature and role of electronic media in professional communication. Since the first attempts to examine electronically-mediated communication (EMC) back in the late 1980s to recent developments in the field, we have moved from investigating electronic media in themselves to examining how media, context and communicators interact together. This shift in interest has created exciting research and pedagogic opportunities.
This paper starts by revisiting the main contributions that developments in the field of EMC since the late 1980s have made to our understanding of the nature and purposes of communication in professional contexts. It looks at the intersection between media and context, media and identity and media and professional language and discourses. The paper then examines the latest advances in EMC. In this respect, it focuses on two recent developments: multicommunication and E...