All Courses
-
Psychological Processing of Media (S 25)
This course is about how people process information from mass and personal media, including both traditional media (radio, TV, film, newspapers, books, etc.) and more recent and emerging media (e.g., the internet, social media, smartphones, virtual and augmented reality, generative AI, robots, etc.). We're interested in what happens in people's minds and bodies before, after, and especially during, media use, so we can better understand and influence how and why people use media, the effects of media use on consumers, and the likely future characteristics of mediated experiences. After an introduction to some key ideas and phenomena in the area of psychological processing of media we'll focus on a particular subset of those phenomena labelled telepresence (presence for short), how and why they occur and their many implications. Class meetings will consist of only a small amount of lecture material, brief video presentations, and mostly focused but informal discussion. We'll also try, together or separately, to take at least one "field trip" during the semester and we'll bring media experiences into the classroom. Grading will be based on the total points earned on a series of required and optional assignments and participation; there are no exams and all readings are provided.