Explaining Media Psychology in 2017
via psychologytoday.com
Fifteen years ago I wrote an article titled, “Media Psychology, A Field Whose Time is Here.” Variations were featured in the National Psychologist and the California Psychologist. My purpose now is to update and advance that description and definition of media psychology as it is today in 2017. Technology has evolved dramatically through the years, psychology has advanced and media psychology has moved into prominence as an area for research and practice.
Media now saturate our lives, in the same way that, “a fish only notices the water when it is gone.” If media communications were suddenly eliminated from our lives, we would experience a major social and emotional sense of loss.
Media psychology is both an art and a science. It explores how media affect our sensory and cognitive processes including how media evokes specific behaviors in individuals, larger groups or global societies. The large and exciting realm of effects research (how various news and entertainment media influence audience perceptions and behaviors, audience demographics and audience numbers) is central to media psychology. Examples of such influences are:
The formation, maintenance or change of individual and group stereotypes On-camera and off-camera, diverse perceptions in diversity and its effects on audiences in storytelling and influencing media perspectives in advertising, in propaganda messages, in learning and education, including utilizing new information to build new skills.
