Photo by Katie Jones/Variety/Shutterstock 
Bettina Sherick and Dr. Pamela Rutledge
Variety Innovate Summit, Inside, Los Angeles, USA – 05 Dec 2018

How Do I Get a Career in Media Psychology?

Media psychology starts with the study of psychology.  Psychological theory provides the lens for the array of activities that are enabled by media technologies. Early media effects theories viewed people as passive ‘victims’ of media.  In fact, people still talk about what ‘the media’ does as if it were a one-directional process with an agenda of its own.  We now recognize that life with technology is not nearly as simple as those early models.  Our relationship with media technologies and their structure, content, and context is mutually influential.  Media psychology addresses this complex interrelationship as the media environment and people evolve.

The foundation for media psychology ideally should give you a ‘mental map’ of psychology—the range of subfields and some familiarity with major theories and theorists within each.  This will allow you to do several things:

1) Have a sense of the tools available, so you have the ability to shift perspectives, apply the most relevant psychological theories, and know where to find something when you need it.

2) Develop some depth of expertise without losing sight of its context in the field as a whole.  This is especially important, as time (and research) tend to break down barriers among subfields.

3) Opens the door to multiple career paths as you focus your interests.

4) Gives you the ability to make theoretical sense of observed human behavior and develop hypotheses about what people will do in response to other media and technological experiences and changes.

There are several areas of study relevant to media and technology, depending upon the context and goal.  Major subfields include cognitive psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, personality and individual differences, narrative psychology, neuropsychology, positive psychology, and research methodology and design.

As of 2022, there were few schools with dedicated media psychology degree programs in psychology departments.  There are, however, an increasing number of media psychology courses available in different departments. If you are interested in pursuing a career in media psychology and are looking beyond the dedicated programs available, you can build your own.  The key is starting with psychology

• Find faculty in a psychology department who are interested in applying psychological theory to media and technologies. You can find them by Googling some media psychology topics and research papers and seeing where the authors teach.
• Find faculty in one of the many related programs, from communications to political science, who are open to the inclusion of psychology as the grounding perspective. This path can be slightly more difficult because psychology is not the preferred theoretical lens in other disciplines; however, people studying media and technology tend to be fairly open-minded.

At the risk of being repetitive, the heart of media psychology is psychology—the study of human behavior.  With new media and technology appearing every day, it is easy to be distracted by the bells and whistles.  The tools, platforms, apps, and programming will continue to change.  Something new and potentially disruptive—whether it’s the next Facebook, self-driving cars, or something we can’t even imagine yet, is around every corner.   As we know from neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, human behaviors and emotions are largely the same as they were thousands of years ago. Technologies come and go.  Psychological theory is transferable to the ‘next new thing.’

Finding Your Path

While many students come into a media psychology programs with clear ideas of their interests and what they want to do in a career, an equal number do not. Students come to a graduate program in media psychology with a variety of backgrounds. Some have lots of psychology but no media experience; others come from film, marketing, or education and have no psychology.  My experience teaching media psychology suggests that students benefit from the cross-collaboration of varied background and experiences and from being open-minded.  Many of my students and colleagues have found their career paths taking unexpected and exciting turns enabled by the pursuit of media psychology.  One woman came in a documentary filmmaker and left with a passion for teaching media literacy.  Another came in working in a digital agency and left to make interactive children’s media.  Others decide to apply their degree training to raising awareness and supporting causes they care passionately about, such as domestic violence or anti-bullying.

One conundrum you face today is that many of the careers options you will have in four or five years– the amount of time it takes to earn a doctoral degree–don’t exist yet.  The crux of media psychology—the ability to apply a the breadth of psychological theory in the context of the evolution of technology–teaches critical thinking, the ability to ask good questions, and opens new visions of potential for creating the adaptive and innovative solutions we need to solve 21^st century problems.

What Can You Do with a Degree in Media Psychology?

The question of “what does a media psychologist do?” is not an easy one to answer.  It’s more instructive to describe the advantages and disadvantages of the field.  Media psychology does not have a prescribed path.  Like many careers in the social sciences, it is about translating and applying scholarship in the real world.  Media psychology combines two areas of mastery–psychological science and media technologies–and employs that integrated body of knowledge to address specific problems and questions in research and practice.

The Advantages

The advantage of a career in media psychology is that range of applications is literally limitless.  Media psychology is applicable to any place human behavior intersects with media technologies.   This flexibility allows media psychologists to pursue careers in almost every field imaginable, from healthcare and education to marketing and entertainment. This is very exciting.  As technology continues to evolve, there are increasingly more ways for media psychologists to make a difference.

Disadvantages

The disadvantage of media psychology is that there is no specific job for a ‘media psychologist.’  Do not expect recruiters searching for a media psychologist on LinkedIn or job postings on Monster.com.  In spite of the wide applicability, the burden is often on the job seeker to show how their training can be valuable to an employer or to a field.

What Training Is Needed To Work As A Media Psychologist?

Given the breadth of media psychology, it won’t be surprising to learn that every specialized career focus within the field will require a different emphasis in training and preparation, just like any other career in psychology.

As you gravitate to certain areas within media psychology, you will begin to focus on specific subfields and theories that are particularly relevant.  Some examples follow below.  Initial doctoral studies are an excellent time to explore and begin to identify some more specific interests.  Later coursework, as well as the dissertation and research phase of a doctoral degree, will allow you to target the area where you want to develop the theoretical and applied depth that will help you establish a career path.  Students with specialized interests and goals will often supplement their training with particular proficiencies and experiences, such as learning specific software platforms or analytical tools, attending relevant conferences to meet current practitioners and looking for internships and research opportunities that expose them to particular practices and industries, such as media production, marketing or social advocacy.

According to feedback from colleagues and former students, pursuing a degree in media psychology was a life-changing experience.  A common response is that it developed their ability to assess the continually changing media environment and provided them with a solid foundation for evaluating the emerging research.  Most importantly, the uniqueness of the field opened doors to new career opportunities.

See Examples of Careers in Media Psychology in different domains.