Media Psychology Matters » Media Psychology

Prosocial Augmented Reality: Celebrating Youth Achievement

Pamela Rutledge — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:20:33 +0000

Where you look matters. Media producers count eyeballs and show you what you will watch. Let’s celebrate achievement, such as the fifth grade chorus from Staten Island, instead of spending our time and money consuming media about outliers, like LeBron James’ basketball contract, or irresponsibility and bad behavior, like Lindsay Lohan’s substance problems and [...]

Psychology of Website Design

Pamela Rutledge — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:48:45 +0000

This slide show was originally created for a presentation in 2006 but was updated for a group of student web site developers at NYU a few months ago. Web technologies continue to rocket along and the tools have become more flexible, innovative and sophisticated. The fundamental psychological issues of effective design, however, haven’t changed, [...]

Carried Away with Balloon Boy

Pamela Rutledge — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:42:59 +0000

This article was published on PsychologyToday.com in my blog “Positively Media.”

The big story today was the six-year old boy who was carried away in the family weather balloon. It was the ONLY story on the news radio channel during my drive home from the post office and I arrived back at [...]

Trends and Getting the ‘Truth’ from Social Media

Pamela Rutledge — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:40:53 +0000

Trends matter in audience profiling. Even a social or politically-based trend impacts messaging on a micro-level. Some trends are more directly applicable to audience profiling than others depending upon what audience you are trying to reach. Social trending is particularly important because it sets the tone and context of how direct and specific messages [...]

Social Media: The Native Tongue of Teens

Pamela Rutledge — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:43:03 +0000

(This was posted June 5, 2009 on my blog “Positively Media” at PsychologyToday.com)

Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

“No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby – so helpless and so ridiculous.”

Think of the tech-saavy younger generation as [...]

What Does a Media Psychologist Do?

Pamela Rutledge — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:08:06 +0000

I get a lot of questions about career paths in media psychology, particularly among those thinking of pursuing a degree in the field. I certainly empathize with that confusion–and the desire to make sure someone will give you a job if you do all that work. Media psychology, as a new field, doesn’t offer [...]

Reporting Our Way to a Happier World: The Pollyanna Effect

Pamela Rutledge — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:36:46 +0000

“Transforming the News Media into Honest and Balanced News” is the tagline of the online Swedish newspaper www.Tillit.info that exists for the purpose of disseminating positive news. (I posted a an update about this on my Facebook page and someone asked “How do you know” since the site in in Swedish. I wish I [...]