Psychology of the media:Scopes and methods

Ridwan Prasetyo

A bit of me…

My very complete name: Ridwan Aji Budi Prasetyo

Born in Jakarta, grew up in planet Bekasi

Educational background:

S1 : Psychology, majoring in I/O, UGM

S2 : Human Factors and Ergonomics, The Univ. of Nottingham, UK

S3 : Soon, insya Allah (just send me your best wishes!)

Before joining UB:

Assistant, Lab. RSKE ITB

Management Trainee Staff, Human Capital Division, PT. Wijaya Karya(Persero) Tbk.

Serabutan

Discussing? Asking something? Just contact me:

+447473319385 (Whatsapp)

ridwan.prasetyo@ub.ac.id

9/16/2016 Intro to Ergo - Ridwan Prasetyo 2

Today’s agenda

• Redefining the definition

• Establishing the territory

• Methods in media psychology

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General definition?

Psychology of the media:

“Applying psychological knowledge and skills to the context of the media”

Do you guys agree?

We must firstly define each term: the psychology and the media

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The definition: Psychology

• A science of human behaviour and mental processes(Santrock, 2007) my favourite definition ever!

• Science related to the use of methodology

• Behaviour anything that can be observed directly (overt)

• Mental processes anything that cannot be observed directly (covert)

Easy, isn’t it? No debate!

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The definition: Media

Key question: What is “media” in the psychology of media?

Last week: “Anything that stores and communicatesinformation” (Ilhamuddin, 2016).

Are you okay with the definition?

Remember the bolded words and let’s squeeze our brain a bit!

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Is this what-so-called “media”…?

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This one…?

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This…?

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How about this one…?

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Information Stored and (to be) communicated

Another one…?

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These one…?

Television, telephone, radio, amateur-radio, mail, books, email, film, CD/DVD, magazine, newspaper, billboard, internet, World Wide Web/WWW, chatroom, Line, Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook, Path, Linkedin, Instagram, Google, Yahoo, public announcement, YouTube, video games, traffic lights, traffic signs, advertisements, etc.

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Getting confused?

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Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Me too!

Calm down and take a deep breath first…

Let’s classify the so-called “MEDIA”:

1. MASS MEDIA

2. NON MASS MEDIA

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MASS MEDIA

Old/traditional, pre-internet characteristics (Dutton, et al., 1998):

1. Distance communication between those who send and receive messages is impersonal, lack of immediacy, and one way (one-to-many)

2. Technology to sent and receive messages

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3. Scale Involving a large number of people simultaneously

How large should it be?

• Typically 10% to 20% of given population (Morris and Ogan, 1996)

• Left-undefined – we know when we see it (Chris & Livesey, 2011)

Simultaneous?

• Accessed by many people at the same time

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4. Commodity It comes with a price.

• You should pay or “invest” for that.

• It is clear who the consumers and producers are

Example:

TV, Books, Radio, Newspapers, Film (with traditional means), what else?

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NON MASS MEDIA

• Characteristics Simply the contrary of the mass media

Keywords: One-to-one communication

Example: Mail, telephone, what else?

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Traditionally, before the internet…

• Two simple classifications of “MEDIA”:

1. Mass media one-to-many communication

2. Non mass media one-to-one communication

THAT’S ALL…!

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Half-conclusion:

• The so-called “MEDIA” in the psychology of the media is: MASS MEDIA and NON MASS MEDIA?

Agree…?

Hold your answer!

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Remember this…?

Anything that stores and communicates information

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Medium of communication(Technology)

What? What?How? How? To whom?

Cultural material(Culture)

The way they are stored and communicated(Technology; Culture)

Anything that stores and communicates information

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Based on Giles (2003)

Involvement of TECHNOLOGY and CULTURE

Impact on and work in society

Mass communication Mass media

However, when the internet invades our world…• The classification of “MEDIA” becomes unclear and

overlapping!

• Because mass media can do all of these communication:

+ One-to-many

+ One-to-one non mass media characteristic?

+ Many-to-one

+ Many-to-many

• Some traditional characteristics of mass media seems irrelevant anymore e.g. we can act as producers and consumers at the same time!

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Mass media in the era of internet

• New mass media:

New forms of mass media that can involve two-way communication within a mass audience who are both producers and consumers.

• Characteristics (Crosbie, 2002):

Technology, personalisation, collective control

• Example: Social network media (FB, Instagram, etc.)

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Almost-final-conclusion:

• The so-called “MEDIA” in the psychology of the media is: NEW MASS MEDIA?

Agree? Finish? Done?

Hold your answer (again)!

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Compromising the confusion…

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Giles (2003):

The concept of media will not have a universal definition because of its rapid development and unique effects to society

Therefore…

It’s a field where you must continually define your terms (Rutledge, 2010) I love this!

Our final conclusion

Media (in the psychology of the media):

It seems to be targeting NEW MASS MEDIA as a basis of the study, but it also may include TRADITIONAL MASS MEDIA and NON MASS MEDIA, depending on the interest of the researcher.

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Now our territory is clear enough!

Psychology of the media is…

• Applying psychological knowledge and skills to the context of media.

• Aiming to scientifically understand how media can affect human behaviour, attitudes, and feelings.

Now make your own definition!

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Applications…

Media

Producers

Consumers

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Engineering

Filtering

Research methods in Media Psychology (Giles, 2003)

• Experiments

• Survey

• Interviewing and qualitative analysis

• Ethnography and observation

• Analysis of media texts

• Discourse analysis

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Experiments

• To see the effect of the media

• Control and experimental group

• Causative, in the end you may say:

“This phenomena was caused by this…”

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Survey

• To see association/relationship between observed phenomena

• Non-causative or correlational, you can’t say:

“This was caused by this…”

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Interviewing and qualitative analysis

• To understand phenomena in a deep fashion

• Individual or collective (focus group)

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Ethnography and observation

• To understand phenomena in way deeper fashion

• Set up camps in people’s houses

• Observation, remember these?

Controlled vs uncontrolled

Participant vs non-participant

Obtrusive vs unobtrusive

Formal vs informal/naturalistic

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Analysis of media texts vs discourse analysis• Content analysis vs interpretation

• Quantitative vs qualitative

• (tend to be more) Objective vs subjective

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