Web Bias: Biased By What We Don't See

In my past couple of blog posts, I discussed, in considerable depth, the nature of user behavior on the internet that may contribute to inaccurate information and a general lack of authenticity. I also discussed how most official sources, even ones that are considered authoritative experts in a particular domain, can still have inherent biases and ulterior motives when presenting information. There is, however, another type of bias that exists that people don’t often think about when doing research on the web. This bias comes not from the web content itself nor is it even about what is in the content. Rather, it is about content access and awareness of what content is available.

A Clear and Present Danger
About 9 years ago, John Hopkins University conducted an asthma study. During this study, a healthy, young volunteer named Ellen Roche died as a result of inhaling a chemical called hexamethonium. According to the Baltimore Sun, this story became more controversial when researchers discovered that there were several articles readily available online that described extremely serious side effects associated with this chemical, including death. Dr. Alkis Togias, the supervising physician, believed he did his due diligence by searching through medical textbooks as well as a commonly used and well-respected medical research database called PubMed. Tragically, however, these resources did not reveal results for the most critical and relevant studies about hexamethonium.

This deadly informational blind spot that was exposed by Roche’s death can ironically be associated with one of the criteria that John Hopkin’s own library website provides for evaluating online information. This relevant criterion is called “currency” or “the timeliness of information” and actually in this case, we are essentially talking about the opposite of currency. PubMed, at least at that time, only tracked articles back to 1960. Unfortunately, the research articles that could have provided Dr. Togias the crucial warnings about hexamethonium were all published during the 1950s.

To Google or Not to Google. That is the Question!
The sad story of Ellen Roche is an important case study that reveals a growing problem with the internet in general. As exciting, useful, and broad-reaching as Google’s search technologies appear to be, there is also a considerable risk and downside to their success. Google has generated a pervasive and problematic expectation or illusion among users that they truly do “provide access to the world’s information in one click.” Casual internet users, including many students and professionals, have gradually been seduced into believing that Google offers simple and immediate access to ALL the world’s information. “Mommy” blogger, “Christy” exclaims:

“Oh, dear. The day has come where people honestly believe that if you can’t find it on Wikipedia or Google, it doesn’t exist.”

It is quite possible that "Christie" may be right!

Searching With My Good Eye Closed
As amateur users increasingly adopt such attitudes about Google and overestimate their own searching abilities, they may fail to recognize the importance of using multiple database sources. Such users might also lose appreciation for information science professionals, such as librarians. In an Information Today article discussing the Roche case at John Hopkins, Eva Perkins states:

“Professional searchers — in this case, medical librarians — apparently have not made the potential and actual value of their contribution to the quality of searches visible enough to their clients for the clients to recognize the risks of working without them. Physician researchers overestimated their effectiveness as literature searchers and didn't compensate for any defects in their searching abilities by using professional networking to double- and triple-check their research. Database producers failed to build files and interfaces that would have found the needed information.”

Perkins proceeds by putting pressure on both specialized and common search engine companies to do their best to actually meet the expectations of amateur users by building more usable graphical interfaces and better databases that communicate with other search engines in order to link (patch) the critical information gaps that currently exist between them.

I recently helped conduct a usability field study for a company called Stat!Ref that provides healthcare-related electronic resources as well as a robust search engine which indexes all of their materials. In this study, we interviewed 15 users who worked and/or studied at various hospitals and universities in Boston, MA and Portland, OR. Our user group represented a broad range of searching skills and included medical students, researchers, and librarians. In this study, we discovered that even the most advanced, highly-trained searchers were frustrated by information being too siloed as well as the lack of quality tools for sharing and collaborating during cooperative digital search activities. They also reiterated the challenge illustrated in the Roche case of gathering the most relevant and accurate information on topics that have been around for many decades.

Dig Deeper
The lack of access and awareness bias will continue to be a major challenge for information professionals and computer scientists. As more and more of our information is exclusively accessed via digital mediums and the technological expectations of users continues to rise, new tools will need to be developed in order to combat this hidden bias. According to Read Write Web,

“Less than 0.2% of the web is indexed and some of the most valuable information lies beyond search results returned from traditional search engines.”

Fortunately, progress is being made as we speak. For example, an exciting new service called DeepDyve (formerly Infovell) was recently launched, promising search technology that “enables an untrained searcher to express complex concepts in a simple and intuitive way and provides easy-to-use tools for filtering and sorting through relevant and related documents.”

A Compact Digital World
User perceptions of traditional media are rapidly changing and evolving. For instance, in our Stat!Ref study, we learned that many students today have a hard time even describing the difference between a book and a scientific journal. Young students now rely heavily on digital versions of publications, and thus they have trouble conceptually understanding delineations that made perfect sense to those of us who are accustomed to physical, print versions of these publications. In the physical world, books have a considerably different look and feel than journal articles, but online, such tangible properties sort of fade into the background and readers are simply left with words on a screen.

As scientific communications continue to migrate to the internet and become intricately mixed together with other forms of communications (blogs, forums, e-books, video, etc.), researchers must also adopt new media strategies for effectively and credibly disseminating their important findings and analysis. Kenneth Goldsmith, a well-respected American poet and conceptual artist, is a big advocate of “academic blogging”. He believes that blogging generates “peer-based consensus” which in turn “garners credibility”. Goldsmith recognizes that blogging not only exposes research to the general public much earlier, but it also allows one to lay claim to research ideas before formally publishing them. Furthermore, it gives the academic researcher the opportunity to immediately engage in debate with others in their field, in real-time, about the validity of their methodology, results and interpretations.

These types of emerging social media interactions could definitely be interesting topics for us as media psychologists. Overall, I have learned that the most dangerous online biases may not necessarily be those that are found inside relevant online information but rather those that emerge from never finding the most relevant information at all.

Web Bias: Hacks, Hammers, and Hate

Discovering Bias Through Reverse Engineering and Hacking
I find it interesting that determining bias in the materials we read on the web really requires a combination of basic technical computer science skills along with the more universal, content-based critical thinking skills. Alan November discusses in considerable detail some of the more technical, computer-centric techniques people should learn in order to help them detect bias and deceptive information. These include analyzing URLs and looking up domains on “WhoIs" services. The main point seems to be in order to track where information is truly being sourced, we need to understand enough about web technologies in order to reverse engineer the internet’s underlying structure.

The technical discussion above logically leads me to assume that web programmers (and others who are more knowledgeable about how computers work) are naturally better at detecting bias in web materials than users who aren’t regularly involved in computer engineering activities. Is this really true though? It might be an interesting hypothesis to test. In the same vein, Catherine Seo often talks about "digital immigrants", or those who belong to age groups that did not grow up using the internet. Is there a wide gap between age groups in terms of technical knowledge about how the World Wide Web works and does this correlate with each age group’s ability to detect bias?

Back to Critical Thinking Basics
As I mentioned at the beginning, determining authenticity and objectivity on the web requires traditional critical thinking skills as well. John Hopkins University’s Library website contains a tutorial, called “Evaluating Information Found on the Internet”. This tutorial lists a number of factors that users should consider such as the authority of the author (credibility in eyes of others within the field), the publishing body of the web material, and demonstrated knowledge of the literature within the domain in which the author is writing. I personally find “point of view” to be a particularly poignant factor, however.

Hammering Away at the Government
For instance, the following article about the Pentagon's “$600 hammer” appears, at first glance, to be an objective piece written to disprove the urban legend that the military actually spent $600 on a hammer. However, after reading the article and researching the source, I had a very different take on what the motivations behind this piece actually were. This article comes from the National Journal. This is a publication that claims to be non-partisan, yet a good argument could be made that they are a considerably conservative magazine; one that generally advocates privatization and less government. In each of the last two presidential cycles they ranked Obama and John Kerry, respectively, as the #1 most liberal senators. Also, the National Journal owns the domain, govexec.com, which, according to their website, is “a business magazine serving executives and managers in the federal government.” Many of their articles seem to push for more privatization of government agencies and the military. The “$600 hammer” article, on closer examination, implicitly appears to be doing just that. See this passage as a case-in-point:

“Such accounting arcana are bread-and-butter issues for Douglass now that he heads the Aerospace Industries Association of America Inc., whose members want more military service contracts - which they can win only by showing they can perform a given service at lower cost than the military could do it in-house. But when the public and private sectors compete, said Bert M. Concklin, president of the Professional Services Council, differing accounting standards mean that "the government's costs are elusive, at best."

So, deceptively, the article starts off, appearing to defend the government, saying that the $600 hammer story is not a legitimate example of the Pentagon’s financial incompetence. However, as the article goes on, the author does an about-face and starts emphasizing that the government’s accounting practices are indeed highly flawed, ineffective, and wasteful, and that this “elusive” accounting system makes it harder for the private sector (i.e. private military contractors) to compete with the public sector.

Don't Be a Hater
I found a similar case of “point of view” bias in a NY Times article that, the John Hopkins Library site linked to. This article, on the surface, simply warns against racist websites that deceptively pose as being objective and educational. If more closely examined, however, this story is rather one-sided and appears to be advocating an ulterior agenda.

The article primarily features the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper. This center holds a very broad definition of  “hate” content and it strongly advocates censorship of any content it deems hateful. Many disparate groups fall within this wide-cast net that the Wiesenthal Center casts, including “hate music, religious extremism, Holocaust denial, militia groups, and conspiracy and new world order ideology.” It is dubious at best to put all of these groups into one pot and label it “hate”. For example, under their broad definition, the Center could easily put gangster rap under the category of hate music. So does this mean that they advocate censoring popular rap songs? In the same vein, there are many people out there who are truly worried about globalism and the potential of elites to gain too much power over all of the world’s populations through the institution of a single, centralized government. Is it fair or responsible to classify such concerned citizens under the category of “hate”? These are dangerous precedents to set and it is a manipulative way to play on people’s fears in order to push an agenda that severely limits freedom of speech on the internet.

In short, when vetting information we read on the web and attempting to determine bias, there is no doubt that we should always be wearing our critical thinking hats. However, there are also some helpful technological strategies and techniques available to internet users that can potentially provide some important clues about whether bias exists in media and where exactly that bias is coming from.

Urban Legends: The Biases Inherent in "Authoritative" Sources

One of the first things that Michael Shermer says in his "Baloney Detection Kit" video is not to blindly trust any information or source, even when it comes from a widely accepted, authoritative expert. Ironically, this caused me to immediately clue into the potential biases that Dr. Shermer himself possesses as I carefully evaluated the agenda he was pushing and the organizations he represents. Michael is the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, and a columnist for Scientific American. In other words, he is a spokesperson for the scientific community at large and his agenda is to push forward the philosophies of science and critical skepticism. 


Now, scientific methodologies have certainly proven themselves to be quite useful and invaluable throughout the course of mankind. The evolution in technology, medicine, etc. that has occurred over time as a result of science is virtually impossible to deny. At the same time, scientific practices are often idealized in the mainstream media as generally being infallible and impervious to biases of any kind. Those who have studied the sociology and politics of science, however, do not find this to be true in the real world at all. Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher, historian, and physicist once said:

"Typical scientists are not objective and independent thinkers. Rather, they are conservative individuals who accept what they have been taught and apply their knowledge to solving the problems that their theories dictate."

Donald Campbell, a social scientist engaged in the study of false knowledge, also was critical of academic disciplines and often pointed out biases or prejudices that could lead to faulty research results and/or theories. His model of "ethnocentricism" suggests that the scientist’s nature is greatly influenced by extensive social factors. For example, political and business pressures may lead researchers to gravitate toward specialties that are already central to a department. The members of these central specialties receive the most support, financially and politically, for their concerns, theories, framework, goals, and methods. Therefore, these members naturally define the current paradigm as they suck in new students from peripheral areas that have lessor support and indoctrinate these students into their already narrowed models of thinking and research. Campbell believed that this organizational phenomenon has created large interdisciplinary gaps and also greatly debilitated cross-departmental communications in many institutions.

My point is that although Shermer's "Baloney Detection Kit" was an interesting and valuable lesson in critical thinking and I certainly agreed with much of what he said, I still must call him out for failing the critical thinking tests of humility and empathy. His attitude seemed to be rather dismissive and condescending towards those who choose to be skeptical about certain scientific results as well as those who tend to rely more on their intuition and gut in order to make sense of the world. Michael clearly showed his cards early on about where he stood on issues such as global warming, and yet he made little effort to fully engage or debunk these skeptics. I am not attempting to defend deniers of science but I must say that by the end of this video, Dr. Shermer left me feeling a bit unconvinced of his assertions, especially after he cavalierly exclaimed:

"Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works, and everybody knows that..."

I started watching with quite a cooperative and agreeable attitude but after hearing this overly bold and absolute language in his closing remarks, I actually walked away questioning his objectivity and feeling like somewhat of a skeptic myself. 

Snopes.com is considered to be another "authoritative" source for determining truth. It helps visitors rapidly determine whether various urban legends and internet rumors are true or false. Once again, though, Snopes objective and infallible reputation has been called into question several times. For example, a blogger named John Andrews, who appears to be a webmaster and SEO consultant, discovered a deceptively disguised promotional article for Jingle Networks "free411" service buried in between their authentic articles. The promotional article was designed to look just like an actual Snopes article, complete with meta keywords and everything. There were not even any obvious labels that identified it as sponsored content. Additionally, Snopes recently angered some of its visitors by eliminating article author bylines and implementing a strange Javascript hack to prevent casual users from cutting and pasting content from their articles. Snopes never explained why they took these measures, and it ultimately caused some to wonder if their mission was more profit-driven than truth-driven.


The real takeaway here, in terms of uncovering truth via the internet, is that there simply is no convenient "truth tool" that can fully replace the rigorous act of critical thinking when one is seeking authentic information. There are no shortcuts. Even when reading scholarly articles from generally respected scientific or academic institutions, one must continue to exude the values, techniques, and virtues of critical thinking.

Urban Legends: The Nature of Authenticity on the Web

By now, it is cliche to say that the internet has fundamentally changed how we consume, process, and publish content, yet, at the same time, it cannot be overstated enough. There are countless business and technology leaders, such as Apple founder, Steve Jobs, and Twitter founder, Biz Stone, who constantly preach and muse about all of the information that is now ubiquitously at our fingertips. They love to gloat about how their own products and services will give go even more opportunities to access an even greater amount of this vast universe of information. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, most succinctly summed up this prevalent, virtuous attitude with their now famous quote:

“Google provides access to the world’s information in one click.”

With all of this mutual, congratulatory grandstanding, people rarely stop to consider how such easy access to information channels (both from a consumption and production standpoint) would affect basic uses of information such as the understanding or interpretation of truth and authenticity on the web.

Warning: Information Overload! Identity Shield Engaging

Clay Shirky, in his book, Here Comes Everybody, discusses the limitations of the human brain, using email as one example, where he explains that people have already hit practical ceilings in their ability to effectively filter, process and respond to incoming information. At this critical point of “information overload,” a person is faced with a dilemma. How do I prioritize this information and choose what to read first, what to save for later, and what to discard without reading at all? Unarmed and unprepared, many people do not know how to respond to such an avalanche of information, so it is possible that they fall back on primal thinking patterns that do not necessarily include techniques such as critical thinking. I hypothesize that this in turn leads to an exaggerated attraction toward identity-based processing where people tend to only internalize information that fits harmoniously with their values, beliefs, and social memberships. All information that doesn't fit into this privileged bucket bounces off their "identity shield" and never gets analyzed.

George Lakoff speaks extensively about this phenomenon in terms of American voters and political strategy in his articles and books such as The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 20th Century Politics With an 18th Century Brain. In fact, sophisticated political and marketing strategies are frequently based on a psychological understanding that powerful symbolism is much more important in influencing the masses than actual facts. As Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic Magazine, puts it:

"People believe weird things because our brains are wired up to find meaningful patterns."

Therefore, the goal is to simply evoke an emotional response and generate trust through identity associations. Once that bond is created, cognitive dissonance sets in and people tend to rationalize or simply ignore the pieces of the puzzle that no longer fit, for example when "their candidate" takes a stance that contradicts their belief system.

Skim Baby Skim
Another artifact of the internet’s emergence is that it very well may be changing the way we read and think. Nicholas Carr discusses this idea in depth in an article he wrote for Atlantic Magazine, called "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". He proposes that our use of the internet is making sustained and focused reading of books or even long articles increasingly difficult. Our reading behavior has completely changed in that we now all act as amateur speed readers, skimming and bouncing from one title, headline, or abstract to the next. To emphasize his point, he cites a study of online research behavior from the University College London which found that readers often "power browse," primarily looking for "quick wins." In fact, in light of how prevalent this consumer behavior has become, entire websites and business models have emerged, such as Newser, Digg, and Twitter, that encourage and leverage these new habits by keeping users primarily focused on professionally crafted or user-based summaries of longer articles. In addition, their interfaces entice users to jump from one article or topic to the next as quickly as possible. For example, Newser, with its slogan, "Read less, know more" has an image-based grid of all the latest and/or most popular news stories. It is sort of a more extreme, interactive web caricature of CNN's Situation Room, in which multiple monitors simultaneously display entirely different stories.

Amateur Night at the Internet Cafe
So what is the big deal about all of this information overload and superficial reading behavior in terms of “truth”? To find the answer to this, we need to go back to Clay Shirky and a phenomenon he popularized called “mass amateurization”. The internet has catalyzed, or more accurately enabled, a dramatic communication shift around the globe in which the traditional one-to-many model (e.g. newspapers, television and radio networks) is rapidly being replaced by a many-to-many model. Shirky is one of the first technologists to consider the implications of this shift. He reminds us that having a greater quantity and diversity of information available to us is not inherently better or worse. Rather, he quotes the physicist Philip Anderson, and proclaims that often "more is different." It is fundamentally different!

When we couple mass amateurization of content with cursory, superficial reading (breadth rather than depth) and identity-based filtering, what we ultimately end up with is a lot of published content on the web that is either full of half-truths or misinterpreted facts that have been propagated and sloppily reproduced through many iterations. Consider this to be the modern version of the "telephone game." One Snopes article illustrated how this works in a response to an email going around listing supposed comments by sports announcers that involved double entendres. Suspiciously, these statements were all attributed to anonymous sources. In the analysis, they pointed out one of the double entendres in a commentator quote about Andy Roddick, a pro tennis player, being superstitious and having his wife "kiss his balls" before a match. They showed how this double entendre may have been creatively borrowed by the email author from a joke that Johnny Carson had once told when speaking to Arnold Palmer, a pro golfer. This same pattern shows up again and again. Another article on Snopes discusses an alleged nude photo of Sarah Palin that was being spread around which was actually the same picture that someone claimed years before was a nude snapshot of Julia Louise Dryfus. Both stories have since been deemed false as the photo ultimately was proved to be a photoshopped fake.

Very Funny But Seriously!
Comedy and satire surprisingly even becomes a confounding issue within this new ecosystem. As SNL, Daily Show, Colbert Report, and Onion News sketches are quoted around the web, they often are intentionally or, more likely, unintentionally mixed in with quotes from the real-life counterparts who are being parodied. During a rapid skimming exercise across multiple websites, someone may quickly cut and paste a satirized quote and use it to support their claims in a serious argument. Once again, this happened with Sarah Palin, when some people mistakenly attributed several of Tina Fey's SNL quotes to the actual Sarah Palin. It may be increasingly common that the sarcasm and satire get lost in the translation (via web syndication) and Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" ends up being presented as actual "truth".

A New Word Order
It is quite possible that the new age of web-inspired “power browsing” makes people more susceptible to blatant, thinly-disguised propaganda. The attention span of many web readers may be too short and divided to pick up even the most obvious red flags, let alone the more nuanced details that hide behind the headlines (e.g. "The $600 Hammer").

Legends have been around since the dawn of mankind and have served a number of constructive social purposes. Tall tales of heroics by various public figures are also nothing new in our society, such as when George Bush was falsely credited with paying for the funeral of a boy who drowned near his Crawford Ranch home. The difference now is that these legends are mixed into the same digital pot (in the form of mass emails, forum posts, and blogs) with real news stories. This makes it ever more tedious for the casual information consumer to sort out fiction from fact, especially when such legends are deliberately incorporated for the purpose of political persuasion. The problem compounds each time these stories are edited, embellished, and re-syndicated by another "creative" user. It all gets mixed, stirred, and bundled up together before being shipped off again to the next naive and mentally overwhelmed recipient. The "telephone game" continues. When trying to phish out the truth with incredibly complex issues such as the banking crisis or health care reform, it is no wonder that all the factors discussed above leave citizens in such a state of helplessness and confusion.

This may explain why people start to gravitate toward overly-simplistic “theories of everything” (as coined in the "Baloney Detection Kit" video). If a provocative personality such as Glenn Beck or Alex Jones, can neatly package up all of our problems in this country and attribute them to absurd constructs such as "Obama's Socialist Fascist Regime" or a small global network of perfectly unified elites called the "New World Order", it makes it much easier for their listeners to symbolically accept. While some of these conspiratorial, black-and-white world visions are quite terrifying, they are oddly easier pills to swallow than the uncertain and complex, grey truths that likely exist below the surface. I believe that Michael Sherner said it best. When attempting to determine the authenticity of information:

“The point here is, you want to have a mind open enough to accept radical new ideas but not so open that your brains fall out.”

Sound Effects on Affect

United by Music
Early this morning - 2 am to be exact - most Americans "sprang forward" as daylight savings took effect. Unfortunately, I was caught off guard and tripped. Not realizing the time change had occurred, I almost missed my flight home to Boston. Ironically, after an intense week in Media Psychology bootcamp, otherwise known as New Student Orientation, I spent much of this weekend detached from all media. My phone sat in my bag, the TV remained off, and I hardly touched my laptop. Instead, I was enjoying some concentrated time with an old friend who lives in Los Angeles. We were so busy interacting with each other and roaming around the city that I wasn’t paying attention to any sort of live news sources. Thus, I missed the fact that the clocks were changing.

In a surprising stroke of luck, however, my flight ended up being delayed. I happily discovered this as I raced from the security gates over to Gate 77 at LAX and heard over the loudspeaker that my plane was still being “pre-boarded”. Hearing this word always makes me chuckle a little as I nostalgically remember George Carlin's old stand-up acts in which he hilariously disparages this and similar nonsensical, euphemistic terms. It makes me wonder: when the CIA decides to waterboard a suspected terrorist, do they pre-waterboard him first? 


Sorry for the terrible and tasteless joke. (For the record, I strongly condone any and all torture.) Just consider it a tribute to Carlin as I am quite certain he would have happily incorporated such a joke into his routine! Come to think of it, George once had something to say about critical thinking and the media: 

"They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests."

~ George Carlin

Anyway, as I sat down at the gate to gather myself for a few minutes, I heard some invigorating yet pleasant piano music playing in the background. It was soothing and calming, considering that I had just been running through the concourse and panicking that I was going to miss my flight. The music allowed me to finally relax amidst all the chaos of the airport environment. My bliss was short-lived however. As I begin to pay closer attention to the song playing, it sounded oddly familiar; and suddenly, I knew why. I quickly became disturbed as I realized my relaxing music was nothing but a looping jingle from a series of frequently aired United Airline television commercials. I felt annoyed and manipulated. I realized immediately that the music was sophisticatedly being used by United to embed their brand into my brain. This subtle advertising technique was leading me to unconsciously associate their jingle and branding with my pleasant, “meditative” experience.





This sort of marketing phenomenon is not unique but rather quite prevalent in modern society. I bet most of you can think back to when you were children and vividly remember certain television commercials simply because of their catchy jingles. You may possibly even remember all the words. This is the incredible, persistent effect that music appears to have on our brains, in terms of association, affect, and long-term memory!





Getting In Tune with Background Music
Music is a powerful media tool. I found Dr. Isbouts' lecture on the subject, during NSO, to be quite interesting. He demonstrated to us how one could show the exact same video but simply replace the soundtrack and elicit an entirely different emotional response from the viewers. We all watched a video clip in which a first-person camera is panning over ocean waves. The first time we watched it, a Beach Boys song was playing in the background. The second time we watched it, the "Jaws" theme was playing. As one might expect, our interpretation of the clip was dramatically different in each version. When Dr. Isbouts performed this experiment, I was immediately reminded of the re-cut movie trailers that various people have posted to YouTube in which the authors show movie excerpts and provide a soundtrack that make a horror flick appear to be a romantic comedy or vice versa. It's pretty incredible to see first-hand how music can so easily pull our emotional strings and guide our interpretation of the visual images on screen.








Feel the Music
I was surprised to learn from Dr. Isbouts that very few media psychology students, if any, have focused their dissertation work or other research on the use of music in media and its powerful abilities to manipulate emotions.

• Jennifer Copley (2008) wrote a short article called “The Psychology of Music” in which she surveys a number of studies that illustrate the significant effect, both positive and negative, on humans, animals, and plants. She suggests that inadequate sample sizes and a failure to control for confounding variables put some of these results into question but believes that these studies certainly justify further research. 

• LeDoux (2000) suggests that emotions may often be “unconscious processes that can, but do not necessarily, lead to conscious experiences.” 

• Panksepp & Bernatzky (2002) discuss how emotional circuits are “widely distributed in the brain.” They also describe how auditory processing of music is widely distributed across many of the same areas of the brain and thus may be able to biologically influence emotions in a very direct manner. 

Just putting this small sampling of research findings together, we can construct an intriguing theoretical framework of how music unconsciously and directly affects our emotions and behavior. Such a framework could be a fruitful source of future media psychology research.


References

1. Copley, J. (2008, Februrary 25). The Psychology of Music. Retrieved from http://psychology.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_psychology_of_music
2. LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual review of neuroscience, 23(1), 155–184.
3. Panksepp, J., & Bernatzky, G. (2002). Emotional sounds and the brain: the neuro-affective foundations of musical appreciation. Behavioural Processes, 60(2), 133–155.

A Personal Definition of Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking as a Holistic Practice
For almost three weeks now, my new classmates and I have been immersed in a rigorous introduction to the art of Critical Thinking (CT). I must admit that when I first began to read the Wikipedia entry for CT, I worried that this topic would turn out to be rather dry and boring. Fortunately, as I started to delve deeper, I discovered an unexpected intrigue and respect for this method of processing information.

CT began to really pique my interest as I realized that it involves something much more holistic and ubiquitous than simply analyzing a particular argument or paper. I think my fellow classmate, Larry Drake, described it best when he said that CT is more of a change in “lifestyle" than a temporary "diet". It is a philosophy that challenges each of us to view everything and everyone around us through a different lens. More importantly, it teaches us to view ourselves differently.


The Rules of Engagement
CT requires a number of stringent standards. First and foremost, arguments and claims must be clear, precise, and logically validated by supporting evidence. However, that is just one part of the equation. CT is even more challenging because it demands a fair and open mind but also skepticism at the same time. Critical thinkers must not take others’ beliefs, or even their own, at face value, yet they also must not automatically dismiss another’s opposing argument without fair consideration. This is where empathy and humility come into play. CT asks us to put ourselves in one another's shoes while also becoming strongly aware of our own limitations in knowledge, experience, and perception. Finally CT requires courage and creativity. We must think outside the box and novelly approach problems while still maintaining an overarching sense of rationality.


Emotionally Disturbed
My biggest issue with this week’s readings has to do with the role that emotion and intuition play in critical thinking.

• Schafersman defines emotional thinking as involving a “pervasive distrust of reason.” 

• Professor Dowden champions an attitude that “rejects ‘intuiting’ the truth in favor of demanding reasons”.  

I can’t help but see these as overly simplistic views of the relationship between emotion and reason. While blind emotion could indeed be reckless and distort CT, emotion or intuition followed by rational reflection may be very valuable for initially guiding us in the right direction when critically analyzing a situation or issue. To simply suppress these feelings may be a great mistake as it would throw away an opportunity to more deeply explore and understand ourselves in a manner that can ultimately make us better critical thinkers.


Critical Thinking and American News Media
This week, as I read about CT and began to learn what it truly means, I kept thinking about the state of television news media here in America. The bottom line is that our news media does not encourage or foster critical thinking. Rather, the pundits on television often advocate reactionary thinking that is both polarizing and absolutist. Is there a way to reform journalistic media so that it can inspire critical thinking amongst its viewers and readers? That is a question I hope to answer as a media psychologist.

   The State of Mainstream Television News Media:

        Critical Thinking or Critical Condition?!

My Introduction...

How Did I End Up Here??

I first discovered the field of Media Psychology and this particular Fielding program back in November of 2008, during the final week of the historic presidential election. I was visiting my grandparents in Detroit, MI that week and my father had also flown over from Portland, OR so that we could all be together to share this exciting American political event. Perhaps I should mention that my father is, in fact, a clinical psychologist who has run his own successful practice for close to 30 years now.

While we were in Detroit, he was invited to a party hosted by one of his old colleagues, whom he met during his residency. My dad asked me if I would like to go to the party with him and meet his long-time friend. I obliged. It was at this get-together that I met a woman named Michelle Horowitz (pictured at the right). During the first few minutes of our conversation, we happened to discuss the graduate program that she was currently enrolled in. As it turned out, she is a current Media Psychology student here at Fielding. As soon as she mentioned the words "media psychology", I must admit that I was instantly intrigued. The more she told me about the field and the program, the more curious and excited I became. It appeared that I had randomly stumbled upon the perfect next step in my academic and professional career...

I got back home and immediately begin to research the Fielding program. I even scheduled an informational interview with one of the faculty members. The interview quickly confirmed for me that this was indeed the perfect program for my interests, background, and future aspirations.

My Academic & Professional Background

Fascinated by my father's work while growing up, I begin my academic career in psychology at the University of Washington, where I received my Bachelor's degree. While I was there, I was lucky enough to work in Elizabeth Loftus' memory lab. Loftus is a famous forensic psychologist who has been involved in a number of high profile court cases, educating the courtroom about the fallibility of eyewitness testimony.

After finishing up in Seattle, I eventually moved down to Southern California where I  happened to discover the field of User-Centered Design. This specialized area of work appeared to be the perfect way for me to continue my career in psychology but within the realms of internet and computer technology, something I had always been fascinated with and wanted to become more involved in, at least from a behavioral and interactive design standpoint. I eventually was accepted into several graduate programs across the country but ended up choosing University of California, Irvine. While there, I studied many topics involving usability, business consulting, computer-supported communications, virtual worlds, ethnography, and the philosophy of science. As I finished up my Master's, I worked for Qualcomm and a Portland-based usability consulting firm. Eventually, however, I landed a job at IBM where I actually still work as a Senior User Experience Consultant within their interactive design consulting agency known as IBM Interactive. I really enjoy this work and I have certainly had some fantastic opportunities and interesting experiences over the years. If you are interested in learning more about my background and what I do, please visit my resume/portfolio website. 

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Media Psychologist
In order to fully communicate my objectives as a media psychology professional, I believe it is important that I first define the field of Media Psychology in my own words:


Media Psychology is the study of how media affects people's political and consumer-based decisions, as well as their perspectives and world view. It is the study of how media can be used to affect social change, while connecting or organizing people in new ways. It is also a discipline that looks at how media can be used to effectively inform and educate the masses. In addition, it might include, to a certain extent, the study of government/political/corporate public relations and propaganda (i.e. psy-ops), although, personally, I am more interested in how individuals or smaller citizen groups may use media to counteract or challenge such propaganda and accurately inform each other so that they can make the best decisions for themselves, their families, and their communities.

There are a few major areas that I have long wished I could become more involved with in my career:

1. Politics
2. Journalism and Media
3. Fitness and Holistic Nutrition

I see this Media Psychology program as an ideal vehicle to expand my career into the realm of politics, public policy, journalism, entertainment media, and/or personal health. I also view Media Psychology as a logical and fantastic extension of my current profession - User-Centered Design. In fact, inside IBM Interactive, we talk all the time about how to integrate social media effectively in order to help our clients improve their businesses and online presence.

As a future Media Psychologist, I hope to deeply explore the application of social media within government, political movements, news organizations, and preventative health. I want to discover ways to help citizens (the public at large) better and more accurately inform themselves of both local and global issues that may effect them at an individual, community, and/or societal level.

In the realm of fitness and holistic nutrition, I am interested in partnering with preventative health professionals to discover new ways to use social media in order to help people educate themselves and each other. I am motivated by a desire to provide people with better (and more trusted) resources to help them make healthier decisions surrounding food, exercise, medical care, and other lifestyle or "quality of life" decisions, so that they can live longer, happier and more fulfilling lives. I strongly believe that social media is a powerful tool that can effectively be used for this purpose, connecting individuals to each other as well as to experts who can provide them with rich perspectives, accurate information, motivation, and ongoing support.

Now you know a little bit more about myself and my goals in this program. I look forward to beginning this journey with all of you at Fielding!