Have you ever questioned why you want to check your social media pages so frequently or why it is so difficult for you to stop using them? Is it because you want to get all the updates from the friends or followers you have made? Not completely. The main objective is not to maintain contact with familiar faces, which has developed into much more. In a similar vein, how frequently do you switch between media? Your daily exposure to information can get overwhelming, from watching TV to using your phone or laptop to browse the internet.
Media psychology, which is evolving as a discipline and looking at social behaviors and information technologies from various angles, is a new area of psychology as well as a new branch of the concept of journalism and mass communication. It is the interface between media and technology, as well as human responses and behavior. The two are related to one another reciprocally. Media psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on how people are affected by the media. It utilizes psychological theories, conceptual frameworks, and research techniques.
Psychology plays many roles in media development. Some of them are as follows −
Psychology examines the context, nature, effects, and outcomes of media environments and texts on society, audience responses, perceptions, behavioral strategies, psycho-social adaptability, and psychological well-being. Media psychology is increasingly being studied to determine how changes in audience characteristics and psychic states are transformed due to media influence. Additionally, experts examine how social aggressiveness escalates, including national conflicts, fanaticism, terror, and other extreme ideologies.
The primary research interests of media psychologists are the characteristics of communicators, as well as the mechanisms and techniques that impact audience preferences and expectations. Media psychology findings are employed in structuring technologies of operational communications with the audience, technologies of game realization in journalism, and the construction of social and psychological media audience models that manifest themselves within a dialogue.
Media analytics' objectives are to examine media material from the perspective of informational and psychological security and to expose the psychological underpinnings of information campaigns and their effects. Media education aims to improve a person's informational and psychological security by informing the audience about the media's influence tactics. Both military and non-military regions now place a premium on informational and psychological security.
Psychology considers the most significant discovery of the mechanisms associated with a person's creative behaviors when researching creativity. A subfield of media psychology is dedicated to the study of creativity as a process of creating something new and original in many sectors and activities of a media worker, as well as the formation and development of his creative potential. In addition to motivational and individual elements in the generation of an information product, scientists emphasize comprehension of the function and place of scientific procedures in creative thinking. A creator's consciousness, including personal constructs, perception, logical and conceptual, emotional and sensual, evaluating and motivating elements (values, value systems, peculiarities of reflection), and the outcomes of their activities, as expressed in a text, is studied by media psychology.
G. N. Malyuchenko singled out several phenomena that go hand in hand with contemporary processes in media psychology, including the waning of state influence over the media through economic and legal means, the mass acceptance of cultivated media images as standards of success in the face of an excessive flow of information, the emergence of irrational elements in daily communication, and the structure of how mass consumers and producers of media products perceive the world. The following trends in the development of the modern media environment, in Malyuchenko's opinion, have emerged: the media serve as the most effective tool for a legitimate impact on the mass consciousness; the effectiveness of the media is determined by the independent nature of the establishment of key themes and format of cooperation, as well as the ongoing confidence of the state and society; the media seek the multidimensional influence of a media consumer.
Because of their stature in the media system, their place in political interactions between the government and the populace, and their stance on various issues, the mass media play a significant role in political management and the provision of mass loyalty to the current government. The media may be both helpful and harmful in the political process. The media contributes to the technological advancement of "information wars," "velvet revolutions," racial mobilization, and efficient techniques of psychological influence on the audience that alters the behavioral strategy, inevitably raising the issue of data security and access to information resources.
The audience's communicative behavior is drastically altering due to the new reality. Here begins a drama about media manipulation, which calls for deploying psychological defensive mechanisms against information stimulation that can cause hysteria, insanity, and isolation. It also calls for defense mechanisms to protect freedom from mind control, moral pressure, and prejudice. Hysteria, psychosis, isolation, and rejection are frequently brought on by the negative effects of journalism, including violence on television, frustration with the media, mind control, psychological pressure, and discrimination. In recent years, media psychologists have developed an interest in the study of the effects of violent demonstrations. The study of how interconnected global computer networks affect human behavior is related to the emerging discipline of media psychology research. The "virtual world" of the Internet as a communication tool enhances cognitive, gaming, and conversational activities, the results of which can be both advantageous and detrimental.
Examining the context nature of media environment
Examining the characteristics of communicators
Examining media material
Examining the behavior of communicators
Even at first glance, it is evident that local and global media and developing technologies, including social media, can impact media consumers, human behavior, voters, political landscapes, and cultural landscapes. Media psychologists can help change media standards, accelerate media change, and influence attitudes and values. Media can tell us what to think about and how to develop frames in our minds. This specifically applies to nations with new or young democracies, as media consumers from post-soviet societies may be more susceptible to propaganda, negative media phenomena, and the consequences of fake news.
Physics
Biology
Chemistry
Mathematics
Economics
Psychology
Environmental Science
Social Studies
Fashion Studies
English