History OF Media Psychology PDF

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a brief history of media psychology....

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HISTORY OF MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY Media psychology found its inspirational roots more than 90 years ago within the discipline of social psychology and in the early work of social psychologist Hugo Munsterberg concerning the psychology and the psychological impact of film. Published in 1916 under the title, The Photo play: A Psychological Study, it was the first empirical study of an audience reacting to a film. Munsterberg also provided such a keen analysis of a screenplay's (then called a photo play) grammar of visual construction and nascent cinematic conventions and their psychological impact on the audience, that his incisive words still echo today in numerous film school lecture halls and classroom seminars. And there was psychologist L.L. Thurstone, arguably the Father of Attitude Scale Construction and Measurement (a signature area of theory and research in social psychology), who developed scales for the measurement of attitudes toward movies for the famous and notoriously politicized Payne Fund Research in 1928. This study’s practically avowed purpose was to indict (not investigate) the medium of film as a source of inspiration of bad behavior in a youthful audience. In the 1920s, marketing, advertising and public relations professionals began conducting research on consumer behavior and motivation for commercial applications. The use of mass media during World War II, created a surge of academic interest in mass media messaging and resulted in the creation of a new field, communication science (Lazarsfeld & Merton, 2000). The field of media psychology gained prominence. Few psychologists, however, followed Munsterberg and Thurstone into the thicket of entertainment media influences and effects. It was not until the advent and market penetration of television in the 1950s coupled with concerns about unconscious influences of advertising, in all its forms and venues that the attention and media interest of psychologists truly crystallized. In the 1950s when television was becoming popular in American households. Psychologists responded to widespread social concerns about the children and their television viewing. For example, researchers began to study the impact of television viewing on children’s reading skills. Later, they began to study the impact of violent television viewing on children behavior, for example, if they were likely to exhibit antisocial behavior or to copy the violent behaviours that they we’re seeing.

Even then, academic psychology’s interests largely cantered around television’s use by children and how it influenced their acquisition of reading skills and imitation of anti-social behavior. These events led up to the creation of a new division of the American Psychological Association in 1987. Division 46, the Media Psychology Division (now the APA Society for Media Psychology and Technology), is one of the fastest growing in the American Psychological Association. The official emergence of media psychology as a field is attributed to the formation of the Media Psychology Div. 46 in the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1986 (Fischoff, 2005). The establishment of an official division in the APA was an important milestone in legitimizing media psychology as a field and in clarifying and unifying its goals and purpose. Many early Div. 46 members were clinicians (Giles, 2003) and initial priorities focused on using media to distribute psychological information, such as hosting programs and providing expert opinions, and the accurate representation of mental illness and psychological treatment in entertainment media. A seminal report by Luskin and Friedland (1998) established new thresholds for identifying the expanding occupations and roles in media psychology to meet the needs of an increasingly digital world. Since then, not only has the division's stated definition broadened but the members' interests and research have expanded along with the evolving media landscape and technological developments, such as social and mobile technologies (Rutledge, 2012). As early as 1993, an article in the Div. 46 newsletter, The Amplifier, discussed interactive media technologies. The Amplifier continues to showcase the range and depth of member activities and special topics in the field of Media Psychology and Technology. In 1996, the division established a committee called "Media and New Technologies." This longstanding committee was renamed "Telehealth and New Technologies" to reflect the role of technology in all aspects of healthcare and quality of life. In 1999, the division's membership brochure highlighted “Psychologists at the Forefront in Media and New Technologies,” and in 2001 the division's APA Convention program featured presentations entitled, “Computer Distorting Technology; Interactive Media-Based Tools for the Chronically Ill,” “Clinical Outcome Data on Virtual Reality Therapy in Psychology,” and “E-Therapy: Emergence of a New Field and Industry.”

In 2010, Div. 46 programming including a panel segment for global women's issues called “The Impact of Social Media on Self-Representation and Self-Image.” In 2011 our Convention program featured symposia on such technology topics as “Innovative Technologies for Psychological Intervention, Consultation and Training,” “Media and Social Change,” and “Psychological Services via Technology in Australia and the United States.” This trend to embrace emerging technologies along with legacy media continues. In 2012, members presented on the positive impact of video games, the emergence of transmedia storytelling in marketing and education, and a professional's guide to using traditional and social media. The 2013 Convention program theme was “Media Psychology and Technology: Avatars, Telehealth, Twitter, oh My!” and introduced some innovative use of media alongside programming, such as the use of Augmented Reality video synopses. Panels included experts in the field of media literacy, emerging technologies and augmented reality and the use of mobile apps, telehealth and virtual reality to help military personnel and veterans. For a full listing of our most recent convention programming, see the News and Events page. In 2012, almost forty years after its inception, the division board voted to officially change the name from the Media Psychology Division to the Society for Media Psychology and Technology in order to celebrate the diversity of member interests and to honour the wide range of contributions to the field of media psychology.

Today’s media psychologists study both legacy and new media forms that have risen in recent years such as cellular phone technology, the internet, and new genres of television. Recent work in neurobiology and evolutionary psychology has begun to shed light on the impact of social interaction on the formation of internal structures. We are beginning to identify variations in human brain plasticity in response to the environment and variations in cognitive processing over the lifespan to achieve psychological consonance. Media psychologists are also involved in how people are impacted and can benefit from the design of technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) and mobile technologies, such as using VR to help trauma victims. Major contributors

Major contributors to media psychology include Marshall McLuhan, Dolt Zillmann, Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch, Bernard Luskin and David Giles. Marshall McLuhan is a Canadian communication philosopher who was active from the 1930s to the 1970s in the realm of Media Analysis and Technology. He was appointed by the President of the University of Toronto in 1963 to create a new Centre for Culture and Technology to study the psychological and social consequences of technologies and media. McLuhan’s famous statement pertaining to media psychology was, "The medium is the message". McLuhan’s famous statement was suggestive towards the notion that media is inherently dangerous. McLuhan’s theory on media called “technological determinism” would pave the way for other people to study media. Dolf Zillmann advanced the two-factor model of emotion. The two-factor of emotion proposed that emotion involves both psychological and cognitive components. Zillmann advanced the theory of “Excitation transfer “by establishing the explanation for the effects of violent media. Zillmann’s theory proposed the notion that viewers are physiologically aroused when they watch aggressive scenes. After watching an aggressive scene, an individual will become aggressive due to the arousal from the scene. In 1974 Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch used the uses and gratifications theory to explain media psychology. Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch discovered five components of the theory; the media competes with sources of satisfaction, goals of mass media can be discovered through data and research, media lies within the audience, an audience is conceived as active, and judgment of mass media should not be expressed until the audience has time to process the media and its content on their own. David Giles has been publishing in the area of media psychology since 2000. He wrote the first book about media psychology in 2003. His book Media Psychology gives an overview of media psychology as a field, its subcategories, theories, and developmental issues within media psychology. Bernard Luskin launched the first MA PhD program and EdD program in Media Psychology in any university at Fielding Graduate University in 2002. Writing extensively and producing media, he also launched the MA program in Media Psychology and Social Change with UCLA Extension and the MA program in Media and Communications Psychology at Touro University Worldwide. Luskin is a pioneer in media literature, program development and he

conducted the APA Task Force Study that redefined Media Psychology in 1998. He is past Chair of the Society for Media Psychology and Technology. Pamela Rutledge is the Director of the Media Psychology Research Centre in Newport Beach, California, and a faculty member in the Media Psychology Program at Fielding Graduate University. She is well known for the application of media psychology as to marketing and brand strategy, Tran’s media storytelling and audience engagement. According to Rutledge, while there is no specific consensus or career path for media psychology, there are many opportunities. Rutledge argues that media psychology will be increasingly important because of the ubiquity of technology and the rapid adoption, particularly by the young. This, combined with the global political and economic impact of mobile technologies, suggest that technology will continue to disrupt systems and has the potential to generate solutions to problems and challenge our imagination. Rutledge believes that media psychologists are uniquely positioned to examine the questions that arise, establish best practices and standards for positive and ethical media and technology use, and inform the development of media and technology that can benefit individuals and society. Emerging areas include media literacy, digital citizenship, trans media storytelling, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and making sense out of the vast quantities of data analysis increasingly available through the emerging field of data science and data visualization...