What makes positive media? There is a huge pile of research looking at the negative aspects of media, particularly related to advertising. There are studies addressing social concerns about the impact of media on how people define themselves, success, society and, well, pretty much everything. The quality of the research varies, of course, but there are many legitimate issues to be addressed. There is a pretty unified chorus against negative media, however you define it. But what is positive media? There isn't much literature on what exactly constitutes positive media. (In fact, I don't know of any. So if you do, please let me know.) Does the fact that advertising, for example, is produced by a company with a profit motive mean by default that no media they produce is positive? Does media have to address social issues head on to be considered positive? What about fun, creativity or interaction? A post by Amy Corr in Media Creativity (Talking Puddles) got me thinking … [Read more...]
Defining Positive Media
New Communication Rules Bring New Communication Careers
Newsweek's Technology Section has an article called “Twitter, Unmasked: Who is really writing all those Tweets? Professional microbloggers.” This article underscores the importance of looking at new media with an open-mind. Too many people I know, when faced with media that is not indigenous to their technological coming of age, spend way too long explaining why something isn’t important (or worse, is dangerous) without trying to their outside their initial reaction and looking to see how the technology is being used and experienced. As a media psychologist, I’m kind of fixated on that experience thing. Piles of psychological research shows that humans are social animals that need to be connected to others, and, among other things, that interpersonal connections are essential for mental and physical health, and that different people have different connection styles. A lot of people fretted and tried to prove that Web 2.0 technology was going to isolate people and … [Read more...]
Overview of Online Media
I was doing some research on social media and Web 2.0 and came across this nice little overview video of online media. The Online Media from RealWire on Vimeo. … [Read more...]
