MSC-547 The Psychology of Mediated Meaning: Symbols, Images, and Text4 semester credits
This course will answer the question: How do people create and derive meaning through the myriad of mediated communications that makeup our cultural landscape? Semiotics is the study of the, often taken for granted, meaning infused in signs, symbols, codes, and text. This course is grounded in applying a Semiotic analysis of meaning-making-along with its cognitive, behavioral, evolutionary, social, and personality psychology underpinnings-to the study of contemporary mediated communications. Embedded in each emoji, meme, gif and hashtag, in every photo that’s filtered, edited, stickered, Facetuned, or Storied and in every click-bait headline, tweetstorm, troll post, chat bot and live-streamed video is mediated meaning. It is derived from a collective consciousness that combines what is universally human with what is culturally constructed. Today, the prolific media footprint of social media provides a rich arena for our study. This course will be foundational for students of media psychology with their various areas of individual research and career focus within the field. It will provide students with a qualitative tool of analysis to help guide their understanding of media phenomena and the creation of media with impact.
In this mediascape-where news is entertainment and entertainment is news-people often default to what behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman refers to in his seminal Thinking Fast and Slow (2011) as “fast thinking” to navigate the 24/7 media onslaught. People are unconsciously scanning for familiar patterns and framings to interpret meaning, but what are those familiar patterns? And how are the evoked? Now on social media, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Reddit, algorithms take advantage of that fast-brain processing to play upon people’s hard-wired motivations and culturally infused values to accelerate consumer engagement, from empathy to outrage, and to stimulate behaviors, from purchase to protest. These phenomena should be at the forefront of media psychology investigation.
Delivery Method: Online
Grading Default: Letter
Learning Outcome(s):
- A familiarity with psychological and semiotic theories that can be applied to today’s mediated meaning-making
- An understanding of the psychology of mediated identity construction
- The ability to recognize, deconstruct, and analyze the psychological underpinnings of how meaning-making is created in mediated communications
- Develop skills to apply psychological and semiotic theory to creating media that conveys the intended meaning, facilitates understanding, and motivates positive behavioral or attitudinal change
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