Psychology and Advertising

30 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Advertising, Media Psychology, Psychology, Public Relations

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

“Psychology has been at the heart of advertising since its invention, although, academically, advertising and psychology have long since gone their separate ways. For advertisers, the ability to manipulate consumer impressions and decision making has been the key to success. If product sales increase following a carefully orchestrated campaign, the persuasive tactics have evidently worked, although as with any natural experiment it is hard to establish cause and effect due to the lack of control over confounding variables” (Giles, p. 106).

 References

Giles, D., 2003. Media Psychology. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Media Psychology and Transmedia Storytelling Case Study: The Power Inside

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

‘The Power Inside’ is the third social film in a series created by Pereria & O’Dell for Toshiba and Intel. The series, which launched in 2011 with the film ‘Inside’, has been proclaimed as ‘groundbreaking’ by Fast Company and won multiple awards.

This third installment launched August 15, 2013 with a six episode web series featuring a strong ensemble cast including Harvey Keitel. The campaign was aimed at tech-savvy MillenTrnials and was hoping to promote Toshiba laptops that housed the Intel Core 15 Processor. Campaign assets included six ten minute webisodes featured on a sleek website, an active Facebook page, a Twitter feed and a YouTube channel.
Continue reading →

Repurposing Classic Soviet Propaganda Imagery for the Moscow Olympics

17 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in Media Psychology, Propaganda, Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

The Moscow Olympics, like so many before it, provides the opportunity for political statements to be made, this time one focusing on Russia’s stance against members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities (Reuters, 2013). One voice against this discrimination is an artist who uses classic Soviet propaganda images and gives them new life and meaning. Posting the work on Tumbler.com, a microblogging and social networking site owned by Yahoo, #PridePropaganda has redefined an array of images using the colors of the rainbow which can often be seen in other LGBT support events. A comparison can be seen below.
Continue reading →

Zuckerberg’s Dream of Connecting the World: What Can We Expect? (Part 5 – Implications)

09 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by in Media Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Recapping the previous four posts on this topic, Mark Zuckerberg’s new non-profit consortium of information and communication technology (ICT) corporations would like to connect the remaining 5 billion inhabitants of the planet to the Internet who are not now connected (Internet.org, 2013). This post examines the implications of what the  studies conducted on a reduced scale involving the distribution of laptops in Ethiopia found.

What has been established is that when Western ICT is available on a daily, long term basis to an individual who lives in a third-world, collectivistic environment, the ICT does cause change in individual self-construal, fosters the growth of individualistic, modern and agentic values, and increases levels of abstract reasoning among children. Although, these changes are individually significant, it does not immediately alter the individual’s culture and they are, from what appears to date, subsumed into the culture’s uniqueness (Hansen & Postmes, 2013; Hansen & Postmes, 2013; Hansen, Postmes, van der Vinne, & van Thiel, 2012; Kocsev, Hansen, Hollow, & Pischetola, 2009).
Continue reading →

Zuckerberg’s Dream of Connecting the World: What Can We Expect? (Part 4 – The Findings)

20 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Media Effects, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Recapping the previous posts on this topic, Mark Zuckerberg’s new non-profit consortium of information and communication technology (ICT) corporations would like to connect the remaining 5 billion inhabitants of the planet to the Internet who are not now connected (Internet.org, 2013). Many of the five billion people in question will most likely come from collectivistic non-western cultures. This post examines the results of studies conducted on a reduced scale involving the distribution of laptops in Ethiopia during which the researchers claim to have found the “first systematic evidence that usage of Western ICT can instigate cultural change in a traditional developing country” (Hansen N. , Postmes, van der Vinne, & van Thiel, 2012, p. 230).
Continue reading →

Advertising as Economic Propaganda

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Advertising, Propaganda, Psychology, Public Relations

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

“Public relations is … a communicative process designed to enhance the relationship between the organization and the public and, as such, is a branch of propaganda…. Propaganda is here defined as a deliberate attempt to persuade people, by any available media, to think and then behave in a manner desired by the source, it is really a means to an end” (Taylor, 2003, pp. 6-7).

References

Taylor, P. M. (2003). Munitions of the Mind. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Zuckerberg’s Dream of Connecting the World: What Can We Expect? (Part 3)

30 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in Media Effects, Psychology

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Recapping the earlier posts on this topic, Mark Zuckerberg’s new non-profit consortium of information and communication technology (ICT) corporations would like to connect the remaining 5 billion inhabitants of the planet to the Internet who are not now connected (Internet.org, 2013). Many of the five billion people in question will most likely come from collectivistic non-western cultures. What effects can we expect?

As connecting the world’s populations has never been attempted before, literature focusing on the potential effects is non-existent. As a result, a reduced scale of the effort can be examined in regard to the insertion of Western ICT into countries that have not been previously exposed to it en masse or subject to its effects.

Continue reading →

Quote

Ian Bogost – The Georgia Institute of Technology

25 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Media Effects, Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

“…the result of any media experience throughout history has been a change in the reader, viewer, or interactor’s ideas and actions in the world, even if in subtle ways” (Bogost, 2008, p. 16).

References

Bogost, I. (2008). Fine Processing. Persuasive Technology (pp. 13-22). Oulu: Springer.

Marshall McLuhan & the Print-to-Digital Shift Which Undermines Nationalism

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by in Media Effects, Politics, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Here’s an interesting snippet discussing Marshall McLuhan’s theories and how media may lead to the end of nationalism due to a change in the linearity of human relationships and experience. It’s part of a larger post authored by Mark Bou Mansour at Catch21. Food for thought.

Alexander Kuskis's avatarMcLuhan Galaxy

Published on November 25th, 2013

– by Mark Bou Mansour

Do new media technologies just carry on the developments of print media? Or are new currents underway today? Marshal McLuhan argues the latter. McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher, media guru and intellectual celebrity ….  McLuhan is known for coining the phrase “the medium is the message”, popularizing the notion of “the global village”, and for pretty much revolutionizing the way we look at media’s role in shaping human societies. McLuhan, who is credited with quotes such as “diaper spelled backwards is repaid. Think about it” and “I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say”, is also credited with predicting the internet thirty years before its commercialization.

In his game-changing book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, which we don’t have space be give justice here, McLuhan studies the way technology for documenting and communicating has influenced human cognition and…

View original post 703 more words

The Concept of “Digital Natives” Under Fire

12 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , ,

In 2001, Mark Prensky authored Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants in which he stated a discontinuity had taken place and that today’s students “think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors” (Prensky, 2001, p. 1). As a result, fundamental changes to education should be sought to accommodate this evolution. Prensky asserts that teachers must find a way to instruct what he calls both legacy (reading, writing, arithmetic, logical thinking, etc.) and future content (software, hardware, robotics, nanotechnology, etc.) in a style more conducive to their students apparent learning style which includes moving through material faster and less step-by-step instruction (Prensky, 2001).

Continue reading →