You are here: Home / Archives for June 2008

High-Def Dreaming

June 30, 2008 By Leigh Hallisey Leave a Comment
No Gravatar

It’s fitting that my very first blog post, as in, any blog, ever, was spurred by yesterday’s purchase of a Big TVto celebrate our 12-year wedding anniversary. Sure, jewelery and perfume and flowers are romantic, but for a true television lover like myself, nothing beats watching a show about a horrific medical anomaly in brilliant high def. When my husband yelled up the stairs last night “The show about the baby with eight limbs is on a high definition channel,” I practically fainted. It actually felt like I was in the operating room with the surgeons, and I wanted to reach out and mop the sweat off of their perspiring brows.

Yes, I love television, and I’m not afraid to shout it from the rooftop for all the world to hear. Trust me, I know TV has a bad rep, and I have heard and read all the arguments about how insidious, awful, and mind-dulling it is. As one of the few proud recipients of a Master’s Degree in popular culture (with a specialization in television studies-my parents could not be more proud) it has been my job to seek out and read these kinds of condemnations. I am the first person to point out the rampant racism, classism, misogyny, violence and homophobia in American media (or as my college students would say, “ruining TV for them”), and have brought many a good time to a grinding halt with my rantings about everything from the evils of Elmo to the atrocities of Ally McBeal.

The great thing about academic media studies, besides being able to write cable off on your taxes, is that you get to discover all the good things that media can do. There is no denying that it is perhaps the most powerful force in shaping cultural beliefs that we have, but what if we could use that power as a force for good? What if our collective knowledge and expertise about Britney’s custody battle and Suri’s haircut could be transferred into political awareness and action, or empathy for others? What if the analytical thinking and creative problem solving inherent in our much-maligned young folks’ video game competence could be used to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, like clean water, food shortages, and AIDS? That’s the kind of thinking that drives us folks at the Media Psychology Research Center and FableVision to do what we do, and what eases my conscience a smidge when I am in my 4th hour of the ubiquitous America’s Next Top Model marathon. Tyra Banks is a worthy opponent, and I figure we have to know what we are up against if we are going to change the world.

Filed Under: Culture & Society, Emerging Technologies Tagged With: ,

The iPhone One Year Later – Captive Audience or Willing Prisoners?

June 26, 2008 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
No Gravatar

It’s one year since the iPhone reports Tom Krazit at CNET. He believes there are two types of people who anted up the bucks to be an early adopter – die hard techno geeks who love new cool gadgets and smart phone newbies who suckered in at the first “hello” (Media tribute to Jerry Maguire) and discovered all they’d been missing in their pre-smartphone lives. Krazit talks about the cost and the repricing strategies that have boosted iPhone sales and their new launch at $199/$399.

Okay, if cost is an issue, how come no one ever talks about the carrier? Personally, I am entangled in a Verizon family plan that renews everytime any one of us buys a new phone. The emotional costs of moving (not to mention penalty fees) are staggering. Either we have to all get new numbers (no way that’s going to happen) or we have to simultaneously port four numbers to a new system and hope we don’t miss a call since all of us now connect to the world via cellphones in lieu of landlines. And what happens when we sign up? More years of servitude to a new master?

Personally, I think the iPhone is very cool and I would love to have one. (Although it does lack two features that I consider essential: voice dialing and functioning as a tethered modem, both of which my Blackberry 8830 does.) With the iPhone. I love the fact that I can actually SEE the calendar and internet sites and read the email without cheaters. And who doesn’t get a kick out of flipping through and resizing photos with their fingers? I even fantasize that I could make such life-altering changes as combining my cellphone, iPod and paper calendar and traveling and have not only reduced reduced poundage but a reduction of what I call my “radio shack bag” — all the electronic equipment, chargers and the like that I relentlessly schlep around.

Mobile carriers are still working on the old Ma Bell model and they need to recognize that cell phones are cell phones any more. They are life devices. I don’t like being forced into a consumer decision. The inability to change carriers with ease irritates me and destroys any customer loyalty I might have. It also dims my enthusiasm that iPhone works only on AT&T. But until I am released from what my friends Russell Redenbaugh and Natalia Davis call “resentful bondage” of my mobile carrier, I will resist the sex appeal of the iPhone.

Filed Under: Emerging Technologies, Psychology Tagged With: , , ,

Dynamic Linking of Political Discourse: The New Party Line

June 25, 2008 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 1 Comment
No Gravatar

Map of Political BlogosphereI mean party line like the ‘old days’ on a telephone–no political pun intended. A colleague sent around this Presidential Watch 08 Map of the Political Blogosphere. I like it because it shows the interrelatedness and dynamic linking of professional and nonprofessional discourse on the Internet. It is a wonderful–and aesthetically beautiful–example of the integration of information technology with information distribution. We are no longer having conversations in isolation, we are on the ultimate party line, albeit with radical improvements from when my Grandmother used to holler at eavesdroppers to get off the line. We can all hear what each other has to say, professionals and nonprofessionals alike, without risking the wrath of my grandmother. And as this mapping shows, everyone does listen to everyone. The flows do not go only one way.

When we are using the internet to watch internet information flows, it is no longer about the technology, it’s about people and what they have to say. When it’s about people, it’s about psychology. As information technologies become increasingly ubiquitous in all parts of our lives, the technology will recede from the process. Digital connectivity will become another utility, like electricity, that enables people to live, learn, earn, and connect in new and exciting ways. And that’s what media psychology is all about.

Filed Under: Culture & Society, Psychology Tagged With: , ,

The transformation of journalism

June 15, 2008 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
No Gravatar

A friend in the news industry sent me this blog posting by Robert Niles (USC Journalism School) that I just got around to reading, “When journalists hate journalism”

Niles’ reports that unlike other industries, such as music, where professionals in the industry are the biggest fans of the industry, that:

Many journalists despise TV news. They hate watching it, they hate producing it, and, given the opportunity, they turn it off and ignore it.

My journalism students this semester went off on this topic in class one day, raging about the rigid format, the simplistic reporting and cynicism that they found in TV news reports.

I had assigned my students to produce a multisource, multimedia feature story on a topic of their choice. Several incorporated video segments, and the influence on these students’ video storytelling was clear…

It turned out to be the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and The Onion..

When asked why not local or cable news, the students complained about industry wide phenomenon of “titilation, fear mongering, salacious coverage, and anchors and reporters glammed up to look like models.” But Niles notes that in response to the assignment, most students transferred from one existing convention to another in producing their spots. He says:

But, even as they reject those conventions, they still need some formula within which to express themselves. They either unable or unwilling yet to devote the effort to create a new convention for news communication. So they’re willing to follow others that get them closer to what they want to say.

It’s interesting to think about the extraordinary success of Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report (although both very funny and talented guys) is being as much about what it isn’t as what it is. Political humor isn’t new, although perhaps enjoying unprecedented popularity. (Do you subscribe to The Borowitz Report)? Humor provides an effective way of challenging the status quo without the negative fallout (for the most part) of direct confrontation. Humor, because it engages both our affect and cognition, is a powerful way to spread messages; particularly in a world where horizontal communication is so readily available. While powerful, it is also not dogmatic; it still allows for individual interpretation. Unlike engaging affect through fear-mongering, with humor the results are pleasurable and at the same time reinforce a sense of self-efficacy. We know that affect enhances learning; humorous affect enhances retention. Fearful affect tends to enhance retention, however it also distorts the retained content. Kandel showed that frequent exposure to fear and pain rewires the brain in ways the don’t completely go away even when the stimulus stops.

All this leaves me wondering: How much rejecting of the old conventions happens before the new emerges, not on the periphery but as the dominant formula? Is it gradual or sort of a tipping point explosion?

Keep me posted if you get an inkling of the transformation–it’s only a matter of time!

——

Kandel, E. (2007) In Search of Memory. New York: WW.Norton.

Kaplan, R. M., Pascoe, G. C. (1977) Humorous lectures and humorous examples: Some effects upon comprehension and retention. Journal of Educational Psychology. Feb Vol 69(1) 61-65

Lim, S-L., Pessoa, L. (2008) Affective learning increases sensitivity to graded emotional faces. Emotion. Feb Vol 8(1) 96-103.

Mobbs , D., Greicius M. , Abdel-Azim, E. , Menon, V., Reiss, A. (2003) Humor Modulates the Mesolimbic Reward Center. Neuron, Volume 40 , Issue 5 , Pages 1041 – 1048.

Zillman, D.. et al (1980) Acquisition of information from educational television programs as a function of differently paced humorous inserts. Journal of Educational Psychology. Apr Vol 72(2) 170-180.

Filed Under: Psychology Tagged With: , , ,

Google is making me smarter. How about you?

June 11, 2008 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
No Gravatar

Nicholas Carr has an  interesting article on The Atlantic.com site called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr laments that he is no longer able to read a lengthy book without getting a serious case of the fidgets.  Aside from other mediating factors, like age, how busy life is, and if the book is any good, a neglected question might address the quality of life (intellectual and otherwise) that comes of having a broader reach.

Carr recalls the historical worriers and worries (writing, printing press, etc.) and notes McLuhan remarks on media shaping the process of thought. Nostalgia aside, however, we don’t exist independently of media; our interaction with all these information flows impacts the technology and the content as well.   Carr quotes Taylor’s 1911 treatise “The Principles of Scientific Management.”  Taylor’s quest was to create perfect efficiency and is quoted as declaring, “In the past the man has been first, in the future the system must be first.”  Well, Taylor is absolutely right but WE are part of the system.  None of us exist in isolation from each other or anything in our world and we are all mutually evolving together.

Rather than complain about not being able to read – and we all know that if Carr and all others of this affliction were willing to make the “hard choices” and devote more time to reading long books (and less time Googling) that this would not be a problem—except for what he’d be missing.  And I can tell he likes all the access too much to give it up.  (I know I would.)

Ah, the catch.  How we use information in our lives is a choice we all make.  Now as someone with ADD, I don’t have as much sympathy for the short-attention symptoms he decries as the next guy might.  You could say that this way of information flows suits the way I’ve always gathered information, kind of darting about like a deranged hummingbird.  Nevertheless, there are ways of digging deep even in that style.  But frankly, I wouldn’t give up the chance to read the abstracts on 30 or 60 or 100 articles before I make my choice, instead of digging deep into the first one and languishing in the prose.  And I don’t find that Google lacks ambiguity; like the old dictionary game, where you string along through the dictionary connected by words you can’t define.  I have taken some fascinating and unintended intellectual adventures (and yes, learned stuff, too) by random-walk (okay, algorithmically-generated) Googling.  And I’m pretty sure Leonardo da  Vinci would have been all for it.

Filed Under: Emerging Technologies, Psychology Tagged With: , , ,

Copyright © · Media Psychology Research Center · on WordPress ·