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...]
July 4th in Second Life
I hadn’t been in Second Life for several months. But I was invited by a friend to visit his class on Social Media Marketing and talk about the psychology of website design (I’ll post the talk when I get it cleaned up--we had some technical issues), so I was forced to go out and go shopping because my avatar had absolutely nothing to wear. Gosh, I was still in my "newbie skin." (The uncustomized, out-of-the-box avatar look is a marker of a newbie.) It’s amazing how brave I am when I’m shopping. So with this new found bravery, I thought it would be fun to go exploring and see if there were any fireworks displays. The thing that always impresses me in Second Life is the amount of creativity and skill displayed by the range of resident-generated content. Heady psychological issues like social connection in new media and identity aside, I was struck by the idea of Second Life as a continual participatory art piece. People are spending huge amounts of energy creating … [Read more...]
