Whether or not Egyptian President Mubarak steps down as protestors demand, it's clear that Egyptian society has undergone a cataclysmic shift. Much of this shift is due to the connectivity from new media technologies, such as Twitter and Facebook. Malcolm Gladwell has gotten a lot of flack for writing that social media isn't really powerful enough to create real social change. As I (and many others) argued, that is patently wrong (See PT blog post "Four Ways Social Media Is Redefining Activism"). Egypt and Tunisia are excellent examples of why. Social change isn't about the tools and it isn't about how the relative "strength" of weak ties compared to other social movements. (Note: It's important to point out here that, contrary to popular interpretation, "strength" related to weak ties is not a descriptor of emotional engagement or attachment between ties like it sounds. In the context of weak ties, strength means the powerful impact on the … [Read more...]
How Media Psychology Contributes to Ergonomics
I received the following thoughtful question: Human factors are investigated under the scientific discipline called Ergonomics for comprehending human cognition, or the brain system, in order to design information systems within human factor limitations. How are ergonomics and media psychology related? Human physiology and cognition are obviously central issues to ergonomics and they take into account human development across the lifespan from that perspective. Media psychology also looks at the experiential aspects of human interaction with objects and environments across the lifespan. It extends the usability to the perceptions of self and self-reflection, such as, identity, self-efficacy (competence), engagement and flow (in contrast to attention), persuasion, qualitative perceptions of aesthetics, and attribution or the meaning we give to our interactions. For example: Did this experience make me feel competent or incompetent? Did I feel able to make a good … [Read more...]
