Why Media Psychology?

The field of media psychology is a burgeoning field in the academic world.  It is emerging from obscurity because the topics we address in media psychology are central to what we do everyday in all aspects of  our lives. Different fields, such as media studies, communications, or sociology, have looked at the impact of different types of communication and the emergence of technology in different ways. Media psychology, and the value of psychology in general, shifts the focus of inquiry from media-centric to human-centric. Marketing and public relations have also had their fingers in the ‘media psychology’ pot, but consumer research and media psychology have often had inherently different goals. While psychology’s heritage comes from a medical “what’s wrong” model, the goal of what’s wrong was alleviation and betterment, however well hidden in the rhetoric, not ways to influence more for the betterment of the advertiser. For me, positive psychology is foundational to media psychology, as the most useful theoretical metric and ethical ‘north star’ for media and technology use, development and analysis.

As media technologies have become intertwined in daily life, they have elicited structural and psychological changes across society.  The ability to communicate peer-to-peer, as so eloquently described by scholars like Clay Shirky, has shifted power away from what was once a narrow information flow controlled by a few sources to one of infinite information and connectivity.  The result was the ‘prosumer,’ the transformation of media consumers into a hybrid creature that also passes judgment, and produces and distributes content. This new identity has radically expanded both the range of influence and the EXPECTED range of influence.  Technology-enabled global connection, without traditional gatekeepers and hierarchies, combined with this new attitude of influence create an incredibly powerful social force. The impact is far-reaching, local and global: from individual growth and behavior change, organizational effectiveness, brand image and consumer relationships to electoral outcomes and profound social change.

How individuals and society use these capabilities will be in large part determined by whether we become preoccupied with the challenges or seek out the opportunities. Seeing potential demands a forward-looking science that can move beyond traditional models to embrace the complex social system of technology and human behavior. This is the role of media psychology–using the study of this intersection of human behavior and technology to liberate positive capabilities, to empower users, producers and distributors of technology in ways that satisfy the basic drivers of human behavior and improve society at large. Or perhaps, more simply said, make the world a better place.

My blog explores the realized and potential impact of a changing media landscape.