return to thinking critically

Being able to critically think means all aspects of information are questioned and are not immediately accepted as true or logical. Thinking critically entails being mindful of information one experiences. The most difficult aspect of this is knowing what “being mindful” means. In terms of research and information originating from the internet, there are tools available to check and double check facts and sources such as factcheck.org and easywhois.com. These are only two of the possible resources available to someone thinking critically about the origin and validity of information from the internet, i.e. being mindful of the information obtained via the internet.

Thinking is a skill most humans possess as it is important to survive on a basic level. There are essentially three main aspects of thinking that most people use on a daily basis: problem solving, judging what is true, and weighing the pros and cons of decision making (Gleitman, Fridlund, & Reisberg, 2004). For example, on a basic level, if there is no food in the house, it requires thinking to resolve this issue or else one would die after a few days. Similarly, if you walk into the basement at night, there is a truth that you need to flip the light switch on to see clearly to not hurt or break anything. These are of course very basic examples that do require thinking on a somewhat primal level.

On the other hand, thinking critically is not necessarily inherent in human behavior. (In terms of “inherent behavior,” human characteristics such as hunger leading to seeking food, cold prompting putting on a jacket, etc. are behaviors and patterns of thought that do not necessarily need to be taught; they are part of survival). One could argue critical thinking is not part of survival. Instead critical thinking is a product and characteristic of advanced cognitive functioning in humans. With less of a concern for survival, humans are able to focus on other aspects of themselves and their environment. With the explosion of media and the ubiquity and ease of access to media, critical thinking and evaluation of these media can be focused on more closely.

Prior to this critical thinking course, I was not consciously aware of the use of media in the workplace. Instead, using tools like a team wiki for gathering and consolidating information was second nature to the work environment. One of the primary purposes of (social) media in the workplace is to communicate. We no longer rely on physical methods of communication but rather place a heavy emphasis on digital communication such as mobile phones, instant messaging, and all things related to computers. Other aspects of the world have undergone this digital transformation, as life becomes more digital and less physical. An example of this would be the rise of the digital book, famously through the Kindle. As these changes happen, psychologists are there to poke and prod around the digital revolution. Are these changes for the best? Is less physical contact with co-workers an acceptable substitute to the digital replacement? Questions like these are products of thinking critically about the situation in order to understand how these changes will affect people.

My use of media, nor my critical thinking skills have not changed since the beginning and continuation of this critical thinking class. What has changed is the way in which I view media. Most of my exposure to media prior to this class was almost strictly passive. (Being “passive” means I am consuming media without thinking beyond the media. I am using Facebook, or watching television, or reading the news online, or tweeting, or emailing but I am not engaged beyond the purpose of the media. I am a passive user and not thinking critically about what I am doing or how my actions will impact and influence myself and others as entities in this media-centric world). Engaging media now entails adding a layer of critical thinking to understand how the media are affecting me and how these effects are translated into my psyche, hence media psychology. For example, humans are social creatures. With a digitized world located at every corner from mobile phones, to televisions, to computers, humans still need social interaction. Facebook thrives and profits off of this idea by creating a digital social hang out spot. Critically thinking about Facebook and media psychology, is the lack of physical interaction detrimental to the social aspect of human interaction or has Facebook successfully marketed an avenue to substitute physical interaction with digital interaction?

This question about the interactivity of Facebook raises the topic of joining two professional interests into one; psychology and visual media. There is no longer a need to keep these two fields separate but rather to find the points of intersection. When someone watches a film or sees a photograph, there are many processes occurring in the individual’s mind. Trying to tap into this individual’s experience (researching an introspective process that may not be behaviorally observable) will be the ultimate goal of finding the intersection between psychology and media. In order to accomplish this, thinking critically will be somewhat expected as finding testable methods to research effects of media will be a challenge.

References

Gleitman, H., Fridlund, A.J., & Reisberg, D. (Eds.). (2004). Psychology (6th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

social media

There were two impacts of social media that stood out: first, Will Richardson's discussion on how social media has and will impact education and second Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody" presentation about organizations. Richardson raises two important points, the first being about the read-write web becoming a collaborative effort. Media will no longer be created by any one individual but will instead be the creative effort of many. This idea stems from the concept of a wiki as an editable website. His second point about functioning in a world without paper, and even without hard drives (meaning all information will be saved online), raises another interesting point about the future of education. Parents doing back to school shopping are no longer looking for paper notebooks but rather electronic netbooks.

As a media psychologist enrolled in a distance learning program, the default response would be to agree with Richardson about this possible future of education and social media. However, how is the current world of technology and creation not a collaborative effort? Companies and ideas may be the brain child of one person but it takes an entourage of many to get these ideas off the ground. Richardson should instead state that ideas are more easily facilitated with the addition of an online community. With immediate news and blogs and RSS feeds, information travels fast making it easier to tinker and perfect ideas. Education is starting to move away from traditional paper/pen/classroom to a more digitized environment. As a media psychologist, is electronic transmission of information for education more beneficial than the traditional learning environment?

Shirky's presentation on organization brings up an interesting theory about what is public and private information. His theory that organizing occurs without an organization is an interesting one, especially when viewed through flickr. The HDR photography community is an interesting example to the point of sharing ideas and being able to compare notes with viewable results. However, returning back to Richardson's idea about collaboration, is there any sense of what is public versus private information? Social media such as online discussion groups are fabulous for spreading a wealth of information but where is the sense of ownership? When news is no longer solely gathered from news reporters but also from individuals out in world via their blogs, information is up for grabs but there seems to be very little compartmentalizing of ownership. From a media psychology perspective, this is good and bad news. The good news is that information is readily available to anyone with access to a computer and an internet connection. The bad news, the lines are now blurred as information is coming from all directions which can leave the reader confused, lost, and infowhelmed.

consumer psychology

Based on the two films, The Persuaders and Merchants of Cool, Jack Trout's theory about the consumer mind might need reevaluation. Admittedly, some of Trout's theories about the consumer mind are fairly accurate: the consumer mind is limited and hates confusion. The consumer mind is limited to the point that certain people will be more receptive to certain methods of advertising and the product/service. A black, white-collared worker with a daughter in college is more likely to watch basketball on television (i.e., be exposed to appropriate advertisements during the basketball game) than a white, twenty-something college graduate female with a degree in English. Certain products/services are designed for certain audiences, hence the consumer mind is limited to what is individually necessary. Second, the consumer mind hates confusion. In the film The Persuaders there is a scene in which the newly developed Song airline has a launch store in the mall. An older man walks into the Song store and is confused as to what product/service is being presented. He is confused to the point of asking the woman behind the counter if they are a travel agency. He is corrected; Song is in fact an airline. Close enough, but not close enough to convince advertisers that the consumer mind hates confusion.

To combat the changing media arena of stream television on the internet and TiVo, commercials are becoming rare it seems. However, as The Persuaders states, advertising agencies are continuing to focus their efforts on product placement. This is an incredibly useful tool because not only is the product/service incorporated into the program (hopefully intelligently and not terribly obvious) but it is also being utilized by a famous person. This aspect of using famous people to market products/services was touched upon briefly in both Persuaders and Merchants, specifically with Jerry Seinfeld for American Express and Limp Bizkit for a "cool" MTV.

Marketing and advertising are dangerous businesses to get involved with. There are so many factors that can influence how consumers respond and digest the information being presented by advertisements. The factors are endless: age, socio-economic status, race, gender, the economy, cultural trends, fads, intelligence, and "coolness" to name some of the most prevalent factors I consider marketers and advertisers to take into account when producing a campaign for a product/service. There is so much information to keep track of and multiple factors to consider when making a decision about how and why a product/service should be marketed one way and not the other.

Even though marketing and advertising has an arguably negative connotation, at least the consumer world is more three dimensional, instead of everything looking plain.

web bias

Based on all the resources available to check facts on the internet and validate the authenticity of authorship on the internet, it is interesting to wonder what spawned this digital detective work. It is quite clear that humans are a very cognitively advanced species, a species that contains an interesting trait to seek the truth. Perhaps with the seemingly open authorship of the internet, these resources have been created to keep this free arena of information in check. In fact, this detective work of validity and truth is now so advanced that we are able to mock and satirize it. The image below demonstrates this. From The Huffington Post article about the "Funniest Protect Signs of '09," we can poke fun of a major news contender, Fox News, on the internet to send a message.

On the flip side of this entire discussion on web biases exists an amazingly humour-filled website that takes all arguments set forth by Alan November and Johns Hopkins University and throws them out the window. That site is of course The Onion. To apply some of November's analysis of the website, the first observation is The Onion's subheading "American's Finest News Source." A website that makes fun of news and creates false headlines as the "finest news source?" It takes a smart society to begin to make fun of itself. In this instance, I believe The Onion is the best example and most important take away message from this section on web biases. Here is a website that can be accessed by any computer with an internet connection that has the potential of propagating (mostly) false information to an uninformed reader. Below is an image taken from the home page of The Onion on September 22, 2009 with two main headlines. The first reading: "Nadir of Western Civilization to be Reached this Friday at 3:32pm." Next to it, the (mostly) false headline that Bush laughs at his near decade presidency.

Clearly The Onion is a site created for humour purposes but to an audience not expecting a humour site, the results of taking this information to heart could cause massive misinformation problems. With all of these resources available to check and recheck facts and the source of the information, it is obviously the reader's responsibility to be the gatekeeper of the information, yet mistakes continue to happen and misinformation still exists. How is this problem to be resolved? Infinite fact and source checks? Or merely continue to poke fun at those who are still prey to web biases?

take away from NSO

gate keeping and concepts of self in media

To apply the theory of gate keeping to all forms of media would be a mistake.  Gate keeping, according to the definition provided during Dill's presentation, proposes information is mediated so the experience can be controlled.  While this approach is certainly true for advertisements, it may not be true for other forms of media such as film.  Advertisements for a certain product are tailored to a specific message.  For example, buy brand x because it is does this, which brands y and z do not, or look at this famous actor who also uses brand x.  Advertisements are designed to be short and digestable (30 second commercials or single page advertisements), thus the message needs to be as controlled as possible to get the appropriate message across to the consumer of the media.  

On the other hand, films (and television for the sake of argument) occasionally like to leave the media up for interpretation.  In other words, the organization (i.e., editing, music, character development, cinematography, etc.) is structured in such a way to keep several avenues of interpretation open to the audience.  In addition, many filmmakers depend on making films in this way to strengthen the word of mouth method of propagating their film to the public.  One fine example of this is the concluding episode of The Sopranos.  The final scene is constructed in such a particular way that the experience is left up to interpretation.  There are several theories of what happens during and after the final scene of The Sopranos because the creators have tailored it this way.  It is in this way that the experience is not limited.   To combine these two approaches, the first stating that advertisements follow this theory of gate keeping and the second that films do not, how would an advertisement for the final episode of The Sopranos play out?  Since the purpose of an advertisement would be to get consumers to subscribe to the product being sold, any advertisement for that final episode will be organized in such a way to not give away too much information, but to be tantalizing enough to get consumers excited to watch the episode.  

the persuasive role of music

Having a very strong interest in cognitive psychology, the idea of cognitive dissonance between the visual and auditory aspects of film struck a chord.  Isbouts' presentation mentioned the three dimensionality of visual information with auditory information (both sound effects and music) as one of the most important aspects of film.  Without auditory information, film (i.e., movies) would just be moving images.  The addition of sound, both sound effects and music, breathes a new wave of life to the image and adds emotion and other inexplicable feelings.  

If auditory information does bring forward another dimension of film that would otherwise be lacking, how are we to compare the film experiences of deaf people to hearing people?  (Perhaps this may be an interesting way to study the effect of music in film with an auditorily isolated population instead of merely pressing mute during playback of the film for those able to hear).  Films for the hearing impaired do have captions that explain the sound effects and music being presented in the film.  For example, the caption might read: "light breeze through rustling trees," or "music swells."  If deaf individuals do indeed have a different experience in regards to the audio in a film, is it possible to bridge the gap between the audio experience of a film for those who are unable to hear versus those who can?

The short answer to this dilemma is yes, there is a difference in auditory experience for those who can hear a film's soundtrack than those who cannot.  The more important question: would a deaf individual who has never experienced audio like a hearing individual care if anything could be done to enhance the film-watching experience?  Obviously, this issue could go back and forth, but theoretically it is an interesting question to ask and an important issue to raise.  Based on individual differences, people have vastly different experiences from the same kind of media. 

how plugged in are you? 

Many people are unable to imagine their lives without a mobile phone.  And this is no surprise, as mobile phones have revolutionized the manner and speed with which we are able to stay in touch with people and the world.  Wonder how the stock market is doing?  Use your phone.  Wonder who won the World Cup?  Use your phone.  Wonder if your husband went to the store and picked up dinner?  Use your phone.  Consumers can only hope that this technology was created to improve life and not take from it.

It is perhaps more interesting to not ask the question of why we cannot unplug but rather why we choose not to unplug.  Arguably, no one is forcing you to purchase a mobile phone or to use a microwave instead of cooking dinner over a fire pit.  On the other hand, these technologies have become the norm in our society and it seems foolish to think we would have life any other way.  One could also argue that there are aspects of life that now require these technologies (e.e., a stock broker needs a computer to keep up to date information of the stock market for clients).  If it is assumed we cannot unplug because we choose not to unplug, then life should not be interrupted if technologies were unplugged.  Admittedly, life would look very different if families were preparing dinner over fire pits instead of ovens, stoves, and microwaves, but if the technology is there, why not use it?

Mobile phones make is easier to stay in touch with people but they also disrupt sacred moments, such as quiet movie theatres, family dinners, peaceful religious ceremonies, and driving safely.  One specific aspect of mobile phones as a connecting and disconnecting technology is the phone book.  Mobile phones are able to hold hundreds and thousands of contacts, information that we do not need to remember.  How many phone numbers are people able to recall without the assistance of their mobile phone?  Mobile phone books make it possible to connect all of this contact information but disconnect from the amazing cognitive power which is memory.  

3, 2, 1

i didn't know...

-I did not really understand what defined media psychology.  The pieces are coming together and the definition of media psychology is becoming more cohesive.  Hearing what media psychology was from the perspective of three professors with different interests in psychology only further solidified the definition of media psychology.  Just as there are many different "disciplines" within psychology (e.g., cognitive, social, development, etc.), there are many disciplines within media psychology (e.g., advertisements, music, film, etc.).  Further, there are many different ways to approach, study, and research the same kind of media from different perspectives of psychology.  From a cognitive perspective, how does one remember an advertisement?  From a social perspective, how does an advertisement influence self identity?  Initially the battle seems overwhelming, but with a better understanding of media psychology, research interests can be tailored to answer important and valuable questions about this young field.

-I did not realize the kind of music attached to visual information can dramatically alter how a piece of media is perceived.  This clip of how The Shinning was recut to different music supports this point.  

-The idea that all technologies connect and disconnect has much truth attached to it.  It seems making an inclusive statement such as this can lead to exceptions to the rule, but this is one statement I believe holds true.  The two examples presents during the discussion, eye glasses and the microwave, are fine examples.  It is also my belief that most any other technology I can think of follows this same pattern.  For example, mobile phone phonebooks take away from people's memory to remember seven digits of a phone number.  

i'll tell you what...

-Statistics can make or break research.  It is certainly one thing to make a claim about some aspect of life but without any kind of statistical research to either support or negate, it is difficult to look at this claim with any level of seriousness.  

-The same piece of media can be perceived in several different ways.  This may seem like an obvious statement but it is not until one presents their own media with a specific message in mind to hear other interpretations.

change...

-I want to change how I approach academia.  Getting back into the swing of research critiques and scholarly reading and analysis is not an easy task.  Instead, it is something I need to change to succeed and work my way towards becoming a master of my field.  Based on the lunar patterns of television watching, research is important in this field.  More importantly, good research that is conducted meaningfully and answers important questions is pertinent for the success of media psychology as a derivative of psychology.

urban legends

I found the Baloney Detection kit to be the most important piece of information I took away from this exercise.  Oddly enough, there were no facts to either believe or not believe from this "kit" but rather a guide for how to detect garbage.  Many of the questions from the Baloney Detection kit (which the name itself gives this entire situation that much more humor) are somewhat self explanatory.  For example, the reliability of the source is hopefully a feature that most people subscribe to.  Would you trust an airline pilot to build your house?

Another interesting point that was raised several times during these readings was the importance and impact of good luck charms.  I must admit to performing certain tasks out of habit or some kind of reassurance.  For example, every single time I get on to an airplane, I must touch the outside of the plane before I board.  This is not a crazy superstition I hold but rather a habit I have picked up that brings me back to the present.  I do not believe that if I were to fail to touch the plane something bad will happen.  However, if my example were a more widespread habit among people, I would not be surprised if it found its way on the Snopes site.  

As Michael Shermer said in the Baloney Detection video, you question everyone and everything; be a skeptic.  But there comes a point when questioning everyone and everything gets exhausting and frustrating.  We do not always have the time to go out and research and compare notes from 20 different sources about a piece of information.  It is just not practical.  For the sack of argument, I would say that most information that is digested from the internet should always be taken a grain of salt.  But as the internet continues to take of the world and how we receive information, that grain of salt might be reducing in size.  When Michael Jackson died, several websites said he was merely hospitalized and had not died.  Other sites were saying he had died.  Should I believe the New York Times or Johnny's Breaking News Site?  

Another important take away message was the difference between case studies versus more empirical research.  My experiences in psychology have been firmly rooted in statistical evidence; the larger the sample size, the more valid the data.  Hence, I view case studies like I view stories; there is usually an important theme or message to take away but I'm not ready to write an empirical dissertation based on the data.  Sorry Freud.