Missed Programs (You Can’t TiVo This One): Why Psychologists Should Study Media

Abstract

Media psychology involves the scientific examination of the cognitive processes and behavior involved in the selection, use, interpretation, and effects of communication across a variety of media (e.g., via the Internet, television, telephone, film). Media are central to people's lives, with projections indicating that an average person spent over 3,515 hours using media in 2012. New technologies are increasing the importance of media. Data from two content analyses demonstrate the underrepresentation of media psychology in mainstream psychological literature and in undergraduate and graduate psychology course offerings. We argue for the importance of a psychological approach to the study of media because of its presence in people's lives and because psychologists use it in their research and their choices may affect the external validity of their findings. We provide a useful framework from which psychologists can approach the study of media, and we conclude with recommendations for further areas of scientific inquiry relevant to psychological science.

Testing the feasibility of a briefer school-based preventive intervention with aggressive children: A hybrid intervention with face-to-face and internet components

“…Thus, the children and parents seem to acquire knowledge of the new skills through the internet component, and the face-to-face sessions may permit the children and parents to perform and practice skills they have learned, and to apply them to their particular circumstances. This integration of the two formats in the intervention is consistent with the cross-channel additivity hypothesis (Okdie et al, 2014) which presumes that the overall intervention could be strengthened by taking advantage of the unique properties of each media channel (in the current case, internet and face-to-face interaction). The use of multiple channels in intervention delivery uses the internet and the narrative stories in the cartoon series on the webpages to increase children’s and parents’ participation in the program and their retention of material (Kennedy, 2004), while retaining the face-to-face time with the clinician.…”

“…Parent attendance in parent groups has been found to be related to the strength of children’s outcomes in dosage analyses (Lochman et al, 2006) in some studies, but not related to outcomes in other studies (Nix, Bierman, McMahon, & Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2009). A set of recent studies have begun to examine predictors of parent attendance in parent behavioral training groups, and, for example, have found poorer attendance by parents who had experienced more stressful life events and who had more limited adult social supports (Minney, Lochman, & Guadagno, 2014). Thus some parents, including those most in need, may be at particular risk for low attendance in parent groups.…”

A call for research exploring social media influences on mothers' child feeding practices and childhood obesity risk

“…90 Mothers are highly engaged with the Internet and social media and use the these tools to seek information about parenting and child health. [91][92][93][94] Mothers have also expressed interest in joining online communities focused on child health. 95 In 2014, women were more likely than men to use Facebook (77% vs. 66%), Pinterest (42% vs. 13%), and Instagram (29% vs. 22%).…”

The power and the pain of adolescents’ digital communication: Cyber victimization and the perils of lurking.

“…As of this writing, Developmental Psychology has published one article on text messaging and two on social media, in addition to a 2006 special section (Greenfield & Yan, 2006) and a 2012 special section focused broadly on Interactive Media (including video games, interactions with robots, and many studies relying only on self-report questionnaires, Greenfield, Subrahmanyam, & Eccles, 2012). A content analysis of coverage of all media (including television and the telephone) found that only 2.88% of articles in Developmental Psychology covered any form of media from 2003 – 2012 (Okdie et al, 2014). Although a literature on digital communication is flourishing in journals on media and communication, our understanding of what digital communication means for adolescents’ lives could be further enhanced by theories and methods from the field of psychology.…”