20th Century Media and the American Psyche [1 ed.] 2020019530, 2020019531, 9781138572096, 9781138572102, 9780203702352

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Why Media?
Section 1: Intimate Media—Sharing Experiences
1 Theatrical Film
2 Recorded Music
3 Consumer Market Cameras
Section 2: Regular Media—Synchronizing Experiences
4 Radio
5 Network Television
6 Cable Television
Section 3: Reciprocal Media—Affecting Experiences
7 Magnetic Tape
8 Video Gaming
9 Dial-up ISPs
Conclusion: Why Not?
Glossary
Index

Citation preview

“20th Century Media and the American Psyche is an ideal textbook for educators who want to help their students engage with the impact of more than a century of changing media on the ways we think, remember the past, interact with others, and construct our identities. The perspectives here are both productive and generative, pushing aside old assumptions and pushing us to ask new questions. And the writing is engaging, personal, and witty, all of the things most textbooks are not. The interdisciplinary fusion of media psychology and media history is especially welcomed as a way to get students thinking critically about what has changed and what has remained as a consequence of earlier media ‘revolutions.’” —Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education at the University of Southern California and Author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide “A refreshingly warm, intimate exploration of what in less loving hands could be a chilly subject. L’Pree’s core commitment to our essential human ability to embrace media as a partner in our reach for identity and community is a psychology full of heart. Virtuosic in its research, and as gleeful as a selfie, this book is indispensable cheat code for anyone endeavoring to understand how we use technology to both celebrate and share our personhood.” —Donny Jackson, Clinical Psychologist and Emmy Award Winning Executive Producer of CNN’s United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell “Dr. L’Pree’s incisive observations about media and culture never fail to make me rethink concepts I thought I understood. 20th Century Media and the American Psyche shows us how deeply our experience of narrative is inf luenced and informed by the forms of media in which that content is delivered. The ideal marriage of theory and experience, this book connects and makes explicit the sometimes invisible impact of media—from physical experience to psychological impact—on our understanding of ourselves through the stories we consume. Her rare intellect, combined with her ability to cut to the heart of any topic with compassion and deep analysis, makes her an author whose books will always have a reserved space on my shelf.” —Lani Diane Rich, narrative expert and New York Times bestselling author “Move over McLuhan, there’s a new media maven in our midst. In a book rich in sophisticated scholarship, exhilarating analyses, and some enlightened autobiographical fun, Dr. L’Pree invents and then develops a new interdisciplinary approach to ‘media psychography.’ This is a media studies book that’s truly about the media—medium by medium. It retrieves the idea that ‘the media’ are not just content and companies, but storage and transmission, examining the liberating properties of magnetic tape, for example, and the demographically diverse buffet that came courtesy of the coaxial cable. L’Pree proposes a new

history of our complex psychological relationship to the ever-evolving technologies by which we communicate, play, and think about ourselves and each other.” —Robert Thompson, Director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture and Trustee Professor at Syracuse University “I spend a lot my time finding signals inside the noise, as a thinker and a builder. With the pace of change inside of media accelerating, 20th Century Media and the American Psyche: A Strange Love provides a sharp perspective about our not so distant past and building the future, and Professor L’Pree’s painstaking look at 20th century media and its lasting impacts on how we think, see, share, and do couldn’t be more relevant. This is a useful resource for anyone leading an organization who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the forces that continue to impact how we think, feel, and see the world around us, and what that might mean for the new realities we are trying to build. If you’re leading teams, building products, or looking to engage with audiences thoughtfully and consistently, pick this up, and don’t put it down.” —Jonathan Jackson, Co-Founder of BLAVITY and Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University “In her timely but also visionary 20th Century Media and the American Psyche: A Strange Love, Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay looks at media across three features, ‘intimacy, regularity, and reciprocity.’ Each figure illuminates a historical dimension of media while anticipating a future media that is to come and that has already begun to arrive. L’Pree weaves close readings of individual works, platforms, and technologies, infusing these analyses with doses of autobiography and first-person ref lection. She forges in the process a brilliant analysis of the media and the ‘strange loves’ they engender, broadcast, and transmit.” —Akira Mizuta Lippit, Professor and Vice Dean of Faculty at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Author of Ex-Cinema: From a Theory of Experimental Film and Video “L’Pree connects the dots between media usage and self-understanding in a way that allows me to appreciate why, as a kid, I stayed so close to the radio speaker with boombox in hand in order to record my next favorite song to share with others in my life; why mix tapes served as a form self-expression through music; and why I have spent a 30+ year career in radio. 20th Century Media and the American Psyche helps me understand that my past and present relationship with media is intertwined with my personal relationships and far more complex than I imagined. It’s a reminder of why legacy media like radio continues to defy disruption and there is nothing at all passive about its consumption.” —Joe Lee, Director & General Manager of WAER FM, Syracuse, New York

20TH CENTURY MEDIA AND THE AMERICAN PSYCHE

This innovative text bridges media theory, psychology, and interpersonal communication by describing how our relationships with media emulate the relationships we develop with friends and romantic partners through their ability to replicate intimacy, regularity, and reciprocity. In research-rich, conversational chapters, the author applies psychological principles to understand how nine inf luential media technologies—theatrical film, recorded music, consumer market cameras, radio, network and cable television, tape cassettes, video gaming, and dial-up internet service providers— irreversibly changed the communication environment, culture, and psychological expectations that we then apply to future media technologies. With special attention to mediums absent from the traditional literature, including recorded music, cable television, and magnetic tape, this book encourages readers to critically ref lect on their own past relationships with media and consider the present environment and the future of media given their own personal habits. 20th Century Media and the American Psyche is ideal for media studies, communication, and psychology students, scholars, and industry professionals, as well as anyone interested in a greater understanding of the psychological significance of media technology, usage, and adoption across the past 150 years. Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay is Associate Professor of Communications at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Charisse has dedicated nearly two decades to helping students think differently about media. In 2017, Charisse received the Award for Teaching Excellence from the Newhouse Graduating Senior Class. The current volume is inspired by a class entitled “Psychology of Interactive Media,” taught at the University of Southern California and Syracuse University.

20TH CENTURY MEDIA AND THE AMERICAN PSYCHE A Strange Love

Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Corsbie-Massay, Charisse L’Pree, 1981– author. Title: 20th century media and the American psyche : a strange love / Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay. Other titles: Twentieth century media and the American psyche Description: London ; New York : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020019530 (print) | LCCN 2020019531 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138572096 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138572102 (paperback) | ISBN 9780203702352 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Mass media—United States—Psychological aspects. | Mass media—Social aspects—United States. Classification: LCC HN90.M3 C67 2020 (print) | LCC HN90.M3 (ebook) | DDC 302.23—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019530 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019531 ISBN: 978-1-138-57209-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-57210-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-70235-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To Dianne and Constantine, who help me see the past and the future.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Introduction: Why Media?

xi 1

SECTION 1:

Intimate Media—Sharing Experiences

15

1

Theatrical Film

21

2

Recorded Music

35

3

Consumer Market Cameras

50

SECTION 2:

Regular Media—Synchronizing Experiences

63

4

Radio

69

5

Network Television

86

6

Cable Television

104

x

Contents

SECTION 3:

Reciprocal Media—Affecting Experiences

123

7

Magnetic Tape

129

8

Video Gaming

145

9

Dial-up ISPs

162

Conclusion: Why Not?

179

Glossary Index

184 192

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would first like to thank my husband, Jeremiah, who did not know he was also marrying this book. Thanks to his ongoing and unwavering support, I did not have to choose between writing, feeding myself, and caring for our child. I thank my parents, Dianne and Felix, who, through their innovation, allowed me to immerse myself in media content without interruption, while also ensuring that I could engage clearly and critically about and with the world around me. I would also like to thank my family, my grandfather Percy, my grandmother Elaine, my brothers Marc and Mike, and my cousins Damien, Pat, and Tai, who forever demanded more while loving me where I stood. Thank you to each of my advisors and mentors, whose scholarly direction and encouragement resonate on every page of this book, including Henry and Cynthia Jenkins, Jeffery Ravel, Whitman Richards, Pawan Sinha, Tara McPherson, Tiffany Grunwald, Stephen Read, Lynn Miller, Richard Andalon, Cheryl Grills, and Bob Thompson, as well as Brad Gorham, Hub Brown, Amy Falkner, and Lorraine Branham. Thank you to everyone who read drafts of this manuscript, typos and all, including Andrew Schrock, Lynne Vincent-Schmohe, Michaela Greer, Emilie Croisier, Lani Diane Rich, Dustin Sweet, and Mike Davis. Your continued critiques fueled my writing. Finally, thank you to all of my students, including those at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, University of Southern California, Loyola Marymount University, and Syracuse University, as well as the handful of middle school students who enrolled in my very first class on MTV in 2001 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My conversations with you help me understand more of myself.

INTRODUCTION Why Media?

In 2000, I had an epiphany while watching late-night infomercials: With enough money, anyone can reach into your home at any hour and convince you to buy or believe something that you had never considered before. In that moment, through this revelation, my life was forever changed. Our new relationships with media are often told through generational stories because generational markers capture the experiences of cohorts who live through shared social, political, economic, and technological eras. I was born in 1981, right in the heart of a micro-generation referred to “X-ennials.” X-ennials are situated between Generation X (born 1965–1980) and Millennials (born 1981–1996). Growing up as the digital media environment of the 21st century emerged, we are defined by an analog childhood and a digital adulthood (Wertz, 2018). Although the uniformity of generations can be overstated, growing up with one foot in the 20th century and the other in the 21st gave me a vantage point to understand the relationship between media and psychology, especially in a rapidly evolving environment. I draw on these experiences to understand the intense relationships we form with media in this book. Media have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory is of playing plastic records on a toy record player for my mother’s friends in our apartment in Queens. I wrote, printed, and bound my own autobiography using Printshop in fourth grade (see Figure 0.1). In sixth grade, I was frustrated that boys always won in the television commercials for board games and I convinced my teachers to write an angry letter to Milton Bradley. In high school, I obsessively made and traded mixtapes with my friends. As a freshman at MIT at the end of the millennium, I coded my own website using Netscape, which was full of spelling errors because spell check was not yet the default (Figure 0.2). I didn’t just grow up around media. During my early

2

Introduction

My Autobiography (1990): The Print Shop (1984) was a desktop publishing program that featured user templates including newsletters, signs, cards, and banners, as well as a library of clip art. In fourth grade, we each wrote our own autobiographies, formatted them using an Apple II, and printed them on the classroom’s dot matrix printer. However, in order to use the manual comb binding machine, the printouts had to be glued to construction paper. This was my first self-published book.

FIGURE 0.1

Introduction

3

My First Website (1999): Although consumer market internet access was dominated by dial-up internet service providers (ISPs) in the late 1990s, MIT offered all students their own web locker, which allowed us to build and host our own websites. I coded this website in HTML using Netscape Navigator’s (1994) editor feature.

FIGURE 0.2

life, I came to understand myself, my relationships, and my perspective on life through media. While watching infomercials on this night, I was already aware of the power of media technologies, but its sheer invasiveness surprised me. I was in my home in my pajamas, completely relaxed and vulnerable, and I had effectively invited a stranger into my house to promote messages for unwanted products. This wasn’t an isolated incident. As an adult, I regularly curled up in bed with television, showered with my stereo, and showed my camera things I would never show another person. These personal habits are not uncommon. Today, 29% of teenagers sleep with their cell phone ( Johnson, 2019). My relationship with media technologies had become so normalized that I couldn’t tell where they ended and I began. Since my epiphany in 2000, my life’s work has been to uncover how my media impacted psychology. I wanted to understand how media affected my thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs. This interest took me on a long journey that helped me formulate this book’s argument about the cyclical relationship

4

Introduction

between psychology, media, and culture. At MIT, I earned S.B. degrees in brain and cognitive science and comparative media studies, taught a class on MTV history to middle school students, and led a summer program at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston teaching members to edit video using donated Hi-8 cameras. I continued my education with an M.A. from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology, also at USC. I am currently Professor of Communications at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. After 20 years of academic investigation, it has become clear that media technologies gratify my emotional and physiological needs much like a friend or an intimate partner. In turn, these technologies have mediated and shaped my relationships with future technologies. To describe the relationships that people develop with media, this book builds on an established research tradition in communication. Tens of thousands of studies have investigated media effects—the idea that media impacts the way its users think and act. Although popular, there are two key issues in this research that limit generalizability and application. By focusing on specific industries (such as journalism, advertising, and entertainment), content genres, and audiences, media effects research tends to neglect distinctions between media formats and collapses meaningful categories of media technologies such as theatrical film, television, or magnetic tape (Corsbie-Massay, 2016). For example, whereas the effects of violent content on violent attitudes or behaviors are well researched, there is a dearth of work comparing differences in psychological impact of violent content between movies, music, television, and video games. In addition, media effects research is attracted to new and popular media technologies—and even future technologies—at the expense of older technologies. Together, these shortcomings inhibit our ability to recognize usage patterns across technologies and time. Media effects alone would be unable to explain my own feelings of excitement, ambivalence, and hesitancy about media as I grew up. Instead, I merge the media studies and psychological traditions in communication to understand the relatively stable psychological relationships humans have formed with different media technologies. Although each media technology is “new”—in that novel engineering enables new opportunities compared to previous technologies—past media trends and communication strategies establish behavioral patterns that impact our relationships with emerging media technology. Reeves and Nass describe in The Media Equation that new media engage “old brains” (Reeves & Nass, 1996). That is, we treat new media technologies similar to how we treat (and expect to be treated by) other people because it is cognitively efficient to map established strategies for interpersonal communication onto media technologies, meaning “new media” is never completely “new.” Several other areas of scholarship reinforce the argument that new media is not new. Media archaeology investigates the interplay between media artifacts

Introduction

5

across time, and scholars that embrace this methodological approach investigate new media cultures using insights from earlier media that itself was once “new” (Parikka, 2013; Gitelman, 2006). In doing so, they consider how media extends the physical self and affects how users view the world, each other, and themselves. Similarly, other scholars have explored how the grammar or language of new media—that is, the stylistic patterns present in the early usage of a given medium—are rooted in earlier mediums (Manovich, 1999). Bolter and Grusin label this phenomenon “remediation” and argue that technology becomes a medium once it is contextualized within earlier media practices; “a medium is that which remediates” (Bolter & Grusin, 2000, p. 98). In these formulations, mediums are defined by the opportunities that they offer to the user as well as the political, economic, and social structures in which they exist and are used, and in some cases, the cultural shifts that they trigger. For example, the term technoculture has emerged to describe how the opportunities of digital technologies result in a society that is more interconnected and actively shares content in real time (Penley & Ross, 1991; Brock, 2012). However, these historical approaches to media have been isolated from the area of psychology. New media dramatically alter the communication environment, thus impacting social and psychological expectations. Considering media history through a psychological lens situates users as constants in a communication environment that evolves at an ever-increasing pace. Therefore, we must be equally attentive to how past technologies and technocultures established psychosocial norms that continue to affect us today. We must be informed by history while still attending to the psychological conditions in which history occurs. For lack of a better term, I will refer to this as a media psychography, or an examination of how the collective psyche impacts and has been impacted by media technologies. By looking to our own histories with media, rather than succumbing to the allure of newness, we can further unpack the complex relationships that users develop with media and provide insight into how people might build future mediated relationships, beyond anticipating future stylistic patterns.

What Are Media? Before beginning this exploration, it is essential to define terms that many feel that they understand, specifically the difference between communication and media. Communication refers to any conveyance of verbal and nonverbal messages within an individual (i.e., intrapersonal communication), between individuals (i.e., interpersonal communication), and to many individuals (i.e., mass communication). By contrast, media are the channels and tools used to store and transmit information or data. They include media technologies—the objects and devices that are used to store and transmit information; media content—the messages that are stored and transmitted;

6

Introduction

and the media industry—individuals and organizations responsible for producing and distributing content. In short, media are the tools that aid in or mediate communication, including but not limited to technologies, content, and industry. All media communicates, but not all communication is mediated. This multifaceted definition of media is rarely embraced outside academia. When people complain that “television is ruining culture” or “video games make children violent,” they are blaming the invention for the conventions. Are they referencing Masterpiece Theater or Dating Naked? Does Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego or Halo—both video games—make youth violent? This adherence to an overly simplistic definition of media as one homogenous entity eliminates nuance and inhibits a robust conversation about the role of media in society and user psychology. In turn, this silencing impedes media literacy—the skills that help users analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and formats. For us to understand the context within which a message was produced (e.g., time period, technological capabilities, and gender relations) and its deeper meaning, we must be able to read patterns in media technology that constitute the current media environment. Grammatically, medium is the singular form of media. Combined with the scientific definition of medium as an intervening substance, “medium” refers to any singular object or device that conveys stimuli to the senses, including stone tablets, paper, radio transmission, and even song. Compared to the multifaceted definitions embraced in media archaeology, this definition isolates the objective changes to the communication environment that are enabled by new mediums, a classic psychological method, and allows us to assess the impact of new communication opportunities. Cave paintings, which are generally agreed to be one of the earliest mediums, dating back more than 40,000 years in Europe and Asia, enabled users to document their observations and experiences for posterity. These artifacts feature animals, humans, and narratives such as hunts—many simply include outlines of hands, a prehistoric way of saying “I was here” (see Figure 0.3). Other storage mediums, or devices that retain messages, include pots, jewelry, headdresses, and engravings on tools, each of which provides users the opportunity to convey messages across time and space. Alternatively, transmission mediums convey messages without storage and allow users to cast messages across great distances and to a broad audience—drum and smoke signals, which emerged around 500 BCE and 150 BCE respectively, may be considered some of the earliest broadcasts. Finally, memorable mediums assist in conveying consistent messages by presenting information in structured formats to improve memory and recollection. Often cited examples include oral epic poetry and the songs of medieval troubadours, which relayed stories, history, and culture in preliterate societies and were easily recalled and repeated to ensure message consistency across users and across time. Each of these categories represents a

Introduction

7

Cave Paintings: Mediums contain messages created by a source and encoded with meaning that can be decoded by a receiver who encounters the medium and its messages at a later time or place. Cave paintings continue to resonate with us today because we recognize that someone is trying to communicate and we are eager to decipher their meaning.

FIGURE 0.3

revolution in the social and psychological environment by enabling new ways of communicating. Like language—possibly the earliest memorable medium— our means of communication impact how we think about the world, each other, and ourselves.

Our Relationships With Media Over the last few decades, scholars have proposed metaphors to describe the phenomenon of mass media. These phrases and metaphors provide a lens through which to consider social interactions with technology. Marshall McLuhan famously said the “medium is the message” (McLuhan, 1994), implying that media technologies themselves convey relevant messages apart from their content. Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass (Reeves & Nass, 1996) found that users engage with media technology as they would other individuals. They claimed that “media = real life,” helpfully bringing media together with everyday life. Ken Burke argued that media functions as a window, frame, and mirror: revealing the distant world to the user, delineating what is important and valuable, and demonstrating what the user should expect of oneself (Burke, 1997). Extending to the processes of media and culture, Nick Couldry and

8

Introduction

Andreas Hepp explore mediatization, or how changes in media and communication are related to changes in society and culture (Couldry & Hepp, 2013). Each of these concepts and metaphors has advanced the discussion of media in the 20th century. However, each alone neglects the combined cultural and psychological changes brought on by new opportunities for communication. To understand individuals’ responses to changing media environments, we must turn to psychology, specifically our cognitive and emotional reactions to the world in which we live. The 20th century was particularly tumultuous, given the rapid emergence of media technologies and the field of psychology. Mass media was largely stagnant for centuries after the invention of the printing press in the mid-11th and mid-15th centuries in East Asia and Western Europe (respectively). In the mid-19th century, electricity sparked a massive evolution in communication technologies, allowing for the consistent replication of visual movement and audio through film and recorded music, as well as rapid dissemination of messages via wireless and broadcast technologies. At the same time, researchers began to systematically investigate cognitive processes in humans. In the public discourse, psychology is often associated with individual therapy (i.e., clinical psychology) or unusual patterns of behavior, emotion, and thought (i.e., “abnormal psychology”), but other subfields explore trends in the overall life experience, including cognitive psychology, which investigates mental processes like perception and memory; developmental psychology, an area concerned with how and why humans change over time; and social psychology, which studies social interactions and constructions of identity. In recent decades, media psychology has brought together media studies with psychology, a subfield that focuses on the relationship between cognitive processes and media. Together, these more quotidian perspectives on human behavior are the foundation of my arguments about the evolving relationship between media and individual users. I argue that media technologies should be considered through a relational lens. We develop relationships with media technologies that mirror those we develop with friends and romantic partners because they satisfy a wide variety of needs, thus encouraging users to depend on and engage with them. Many scholars have investigated how we foster relationships through media technology, but neglect the relationships that we foster with technology. Media has become a central vehicle for intimacy, regularity, and reciprocity—expectations we typically ascribe to interpersonal relationships. Although the definition of media is broad, each new media technology changes our communication environment because it offers novel means of interacting with information and each other. Over time, these communication strategies become integrated and normalized, in turn affecting psychological expectations, culture, and strategies with future technologies. As with human partners, past relationships with media technologies inf luence future relationships by affecting our desires and expectations (see Figure 0.4)—we become accustomed to the tendencies of our partners (e.g.,

Introduction

9

FIGURE 0.4 Psychology and the Communication Environment: How we communicate affects our psychology, and our psychology affects how we communicate. Communication technologies, including everything from language and music to smoke signals and radio, enable novel strategies for communication. As these technologies become normal, so do their associated strategies, thus impacting culture, society, and individual expectations for communicating. These expectations then impact the development and adoption of new technologies.

cooking, love notes) such that we expect and select for them in future partners whether or not we are aware of it. Therefore, understanding our relationships with media technologies requires a long-term perspective. It took centuries for the printed word to be widely adopted as a normal part of culture after the invention of the printing press. By comparison, we have experienced an unprecedented advancement in the media environment the past 150 years—a blink in the longer history of human evolution. Consider electricity. First introduced to the consumer marketplace in the early 1900s, American homes have been electrified for just over 100 years. In 1915, only 20% of American households were wired with electricity, jumping to just over two-thirds by 1930 and 99% by 1955 (Desjardins, 2018). Since then, users have become habituated to electricity and electronic technologies. Users can produce power by simply f lipping a switch, and this expectation of control and convenience was normalized within a few decades. Now, any disruption of this relatively recent opportunity can be frustrating. Dead batteries in one’s favorite device or a blackout reveal our dependence on electricity. Similar to our dependence on loved ones—we cannot imagine life without them. Describing past media behaviors and their societal impact through an interpersonal psychological lens disrupts a key f law in popular media effects rhetoric: that audiences are passive, or that we allow ourselves to be rapidly inf luenced. Responding to propaganda in the 1930s and 1940s, communication scholars proposed the theory that media have immediate, consistent, and direct effects on audiences. Although communication and psychology researchers no longer consider the individual as a passive consumer, this sentiment still pervades the

10

Introduction

public sphere. The assumption of passive audiences is evident in arguments that frame media content or technology as an agent that controls the individual, instead of the other way around. For example, news stories repeat the idea that social media makes people depressed without considering that depressed people may use social media more frequently or that other factors may simultaneously increase depression and social media use (Coyne, Rogers, Zurcher, Stockdale, & Booth, 2020). This common refrain is also referred to as technological determinism—the belief that technology drives society and culture. Technologically deterministic arguments imply that the individual user is not in control and that technology alone guides the future. By comparison, considering the interdependent relationship between users and media technology acknowledges that the user’s fundamental psychosocial needs are more inf luential than the opportunities afforded by the technology. A media psychology approach also disrupts the common saying that that the current media environment is nothing like we have ever seen before. Today, we turn to media for information and entertainment, and media technologies satisfy deep intrapersonal psychosocial needs, like self-esteem, belongingness, control, and meaningful existence. But this, I argue, is nothing new. The psychological trends that moderate 21st century conventions are evident throughout the 20th century, including the consistent replication of messages, synchronous experiences, and information on demand. Therefore, it is essential to describe and understand the relationships users developed with 20th century communication technologies. This book eschews the glib assumption that “new” technologies are synonymous with “new phenomena.” I rely instead on the psychological insight that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Just as every past relationship informs and affects future relationships, a close investigation of our cyclical relationships with past technology will provide insight into how we use future technology. This book addresses two key questions. How do the novel communication potentials of mass media technologies impact our environment, culture, and subsequently psychological processes? And how do these patterns affect the adoption of new communication technologies? By closely investigating the relationships that American users developed with 20th century media technologies, we can better understand our psychological responses to the 21st century media environment and anticipate the relationships that Americans will have with future media.

Book Outline This book is divided into three sections—intimacy, regularity, and reciprocity— each of which addresses how a cluster of contemporaneous 20th century media technologies provided novel opportunities for emotional connections associated with satisfying relationships. Each section begins with a summary of the

Introduction

11

theme as it relates to the associated relationship construct and describes important psychological concepts relevant to the three featured technologies. Each chapter then focuses on a specific medium by defining it and its potential (i.e., what the medium can do) in the context of earlier technologies, its promise (i.e., what stakeholders pledged the medium would do), and practice (i.e., how the medium was actually used). I then analyze the medium through relevant psychological constructs to demonstrate how the technology simultaneously takes advantage of and affects the user’s psychology. Finally, each chapter closes with psychosocial trends that emerged in the wake of each technology and connects these expectations to usage patterns and conventions in 21st century digital and social technologies. This format foregrounds users’ interdependent relationship with each featured medium, and its impact on users’ expectations and future media practices. Stylistic decisions throughout the book also encourage accuracy in how we talk about media. Although some scholars have claimed that the phrase “mediums” (as opposed to “media”) is grammatically incorrect, I use this pluralization when referring to multiple media technologies to counter the tendency to frame media as a singular homogenous entity. Although the terms “older” and “newer” denote the timeline of media technology, the terms “old media” and “new media” are not used to denote categories, because all media was new at some point (Marvin, 1988; Gitelman & Pingree, 2003). I use the term “user” (as opposed to “consumer”) to refer to any individual engaging with media in order to disrupt assumptions of passive audiences and acknowledge that the individual is always an active media participant in establishing and reinforcing their relationship with media.1 In addition, each chapter is heavily cited to ensure that the research is readily available; readers are encouraged to interact with and use this book, digging deeper into the hundreds of citations to learn more about their own relationships with media technologies. While this book takes a psychological perspective to media usage, I am sensitized to the idea that technologies are not used by all users in the same way. Disparities between groups have consistently impacted patterns of participation. Since the advent and widespread adoption of the internet, Pippa Norris’ notion of a “digital divide” has emerged to refer to the gulf between those with ready access to computers and the internet and those without (Norris, 2001). This divide is correlated with social categories, including income, education, race, ability, language, and geographic location. As a result, traditionally marginalized groups are less likely to have fast, reliable access to the internet (Anderson & Kumar, 2019). However, there have been media divides throughout history because differences in access and participation plague every media technology. For example, cameras were largely unavailable to poor Black Americans in the early 20th century, radio did not saturate rural communities until 20 years after urban communities, and digital technologies like video games and high-speed

12

Introduction

internet remain a luxury to many. Interestingly, these divides are replicated in social science research, which demonstrate a dominance of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies, such that general knowledge about human psychology is based on one of the “least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans” (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010, p. 61). These divides are addressed and incorporated to demonstrate the disconnect between the promise and the practice of technologies, as well as their overall cultural impact and future expectations. Because my research and examples come from American media experiences, this book discusses the American psychosocial relationship. Therefore, I frequently use the term “we” to acknowledge the collective behavior and social expectations of Americans. Different countries, communities, and cultures have developed different media practices resulting in different social and psychological expectations—different communities react differently to independent or experimental film, television conventions differ wildly between cultures, and different nations implement distinctive policies regarding internet access and content—therefore, it is impossible to establish an all-encompassing general psychology of media. I actively acknowledge that American or Western trends should not be generalized as the standard for psychosocial trends—as is evident in the WEIRD approach to social science (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). This book is written for users interested in the historical relationship between psychology and media technologies, and these choices are designed to disrupt how we think and talk about mass media technologies and media effects. Furthermore, I acknowledge that media history and practices revolve around individuals, and one should not detach oneself as a media user from their understanding of media. Therefore, my experiences are woven throughout the book; each chapter begins with a brief autobiographical anecdote that exemplifies the intimate, regular, or reciprocal power of the featured medium and situates the inherently personal nature of media technology. By providing a robust picture of nine inf luential mass communication technologies and their role in the evolution of culture and society via a relationship lens, I want readers to critically ref lect on their past relationships with media and consider the future of their media habits. In doing so, it is my hope that readers will come away with a greater understanding of the psychological significance of media technology, usage, and adoption across the past 150 years and connect these psychological trends to their current media environment.

Note 1. Other media specific terms, including reader, viewer, listener, or player, are used when appropriate, and the term consumer is used when referring to business or transactional interactions, but user is the default when describing general media usage.

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Bibliography Anderson, M., & Kumar, M. (2019, May 7). Digital divide persists even as lowerincome Americans make gains in tech adoption. Pew Research Center. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/07/digital-dividepersists-even-as-lower-income-americans-make-gains-in-tech-adoption/ Bolter, J. D., & Grusin, R. (2000). Remediation understanding new media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Brock, A. (2012). From the blackhand side: Twitter as a cultural conversation. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(4), 529–549. Burke, K. (1997). Refining windows and frames: Visions toward integration in the discipline (s) of communication. Part I. International Journal of Instructional Media, 24, 315–332. Corsbie-Massay, C. L. (2016). Manipulating race and gender in media effects research: A methodological review using the Media FIT Taxonomy. In R. Lind (Ed.), Race and gender in electronic media: Challenges and opportunities. New York: Routledge. Couldry, N., & Hepp, A. (2013). Conceptualizing mediatization: Contexts, traditions, arguments. Communication Theory, 23, 191–202. Coyne, S. M., Rogers, A. A., Zurcher, J. D., Stockdale, L., & Booth, M. (2020). Does time spent using social media impact mental health?: An eight year longitudinal study. Computers in Human Behavior, 104. Desjardins, J. (2018, February 14). The rising speed of technological adoption. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.visualcapitalist.com/rising-speed-technological-adoption/ Gitelman, L. (2006). Always already new: Media, history, and the data of culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gitelman, L., & Pingree, G. B. (2003). New media, 1740–1915. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). Most people are not WEIRD. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61–135. Johnson, S. (2019, May 28). Retrieved from EdSource: https://edsource.org/2019/ almost-a-third-of-teenagers-sleep-with-their-phones-survey-finds/612995 Manovich, L. (1999). Language of new media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Marvin, C. (1988). When old technologies were new: Thinking about electric communication in the late nineteenth century. New York: Oxford University Press. McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the Internet worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parikka, J. (2013). What is media archaeology? Cambridge: John Wiley & Sons. Penley, C., & Ross, A. (1991). Technoculture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertz, J. (2018, April 19). Forbes. Retrieved from www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2018/ 04/19/analog-digital-xennials-present-unique-opportunity-for-marketers/#5efc3 69b66ba

SECTION 1

Intimate Media—Sharing Experiences

Intimacy is the feeling of closeness between individuals that defines a successful relationship. Building on this established psychological principle, intimate media are communication technologies that create, replicate, and foster deeply emotional experiences for individuals. Prior to the 20th century, text and certain images—specifically those that could be replicated via block printing like hand-copied images or halftoning—were the only formats that could be replicated and shared with a mass audience such that content did not vary with each iteration. However, emotional responses to this content inevitably varied by user because of the cognitive effort required to engage with the message (McLuhan, 1994; Hall, 1980). McLuhan refers to these mediums as “cool” because they do not completely engage the senses (McLuhan, 1994). Alternatively, dynamic audiovisual content was restricted to ephemeral events in shared time and space, including live theater performances and concerts. The inability to successfully distribute these messages prior to the 20th century limited the psychological potential of mass media. Theatrical film, recorded music, and consumer market cameras captured, stored, and displayed high fidelity content, or content whose reproduction is faithful to the original experience. Each of these technologies allowed the producer to share detailed and robust representations of reality to the user and invite the user to embody the perspectives of others, thus fostering feelings of intimacy by enabling people to share in collective experiences regardless of location. Earlier media scholars have explored how media technologies allow for intimate relationships between the producer and the user: theatrical film offered large format visuals to replicate the experience of seeing actors close-up and recorded music brought the voice, lyrics, and emotion of musicians to the privacy of one’s home—encouraging virtual connections despite a lack of reciprocity and

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replicating real-world interactions. However, as users came to rely on the technology itself as a conduit to emotional messages from others, the device itself became a tangible source of intimacy. Theatrical film and recorded music filled the user’s senses with alternative realities, and consumer market cameras allowed non-professional users to capture and share their reality with others. Intimate media also allowed users to control their environments and activate emotions on demand. With theatrical film, moviegoers could watch movies repeatedly and ensure the exact same experience every time. Recorded music distributed for consumer use allowed individuals to play the same song as many times as they wanted, using specific tracks to create and recall memories. Consumer market cameras invited users to capture, revisit, and share the moments in time that they found to be important. Although these opportunities are barely a century old, they have been quickly normalized and integrated into society because they tap into preexisting psychological tendencies and enhance reality by activating feelings of presence and immersion, allowing users to engage in synchronous experiences asynchronously, and making memories increasingly accessible.

Presence and Immersion Intimate media can share experiences in ways that were impossible through print. Video, music, and photographs engage our senses directly, providing high-fidelity alternative realties that are different from our lived reality. Presence is the “illusion that a mediated experience is not mediated,” or the “subjective experience of being in one place or environment even when one is physically situated in another” (Singer & Witmer, 1998, p.  225). Similarly, immersion is the related capacity of a medium to deliver sufficient information to the user’s senses that causes the user to feel immersed in or enveloped by the experience (Slater, 2003). Research into the experience of presence and immersion accelerated as scholars were considering the psychological potential of digital technologies of the late 20th and early 21st century, particularly including video games and virtual reality. However, this theory has been retroactively applied to describe earlier technologies like film (Marsh, 2003) and recorded music (Iglesia, 2013; Dibben, 2012). Together, these two phenomena reveal the potential allure of intimate media: it allows users to experience feelings of proximity regardless of physical, social, or temporal distance of closeness even in isolation by transporting them to another place and time. Lombard and Ditton describe these experiences using three phrases: “You are there,” “it is here,” and “we are together” ( Lombard & Ditton, 1997). Intimate media places users in the perspective of the producer, thereby activating feelings of closeness. Regardless of where and when you are, engaging with movies, music, and cameras demand that users are present and immersed in the same experience. When we watch a movie in

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a crowded theater, listen to the same mass-produced album, or look at the same pictures, the medium activates emotions and we feel close to the technology that makes this possible. These feelings emerge regardless of whether other people are present, privy to the same context, or participating at the same time.

Asynchronous Synchronicity Engaging with the same content at the same time can result in synchronized emotions like joy or sadness; physiological responses like attentional focus, heart rate, and breathing (Thompson & Quinto, 2014); and behaviors like clapping, singing, or dancing. This synchronization is largely attributed to mirror neurons, brain cells in the motor cortex that respond to the movement of others (Overy & Molnar-Szakacs, 2009). Furthermore, the opportunity to sing along or engage in synchronized activities can also increase feelings of affinity (Hagen & Bryant, 2003) and cooperative behavior (Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009). These deeper connections can then non-consciously affect interpersonal interactions through assimilation, conformity, and mimicry, creating what Overy and Molnar-Szakacs describe as “a powerful sense of togetherness, and demonstrates to listeners the cooperation and strength of a social group” (Overy & MolnarSzakacs, 2009, p. 495). However, much of this research focuses on real-world social synchronization—collectively engaging with the same content at the same time and in the same space, despite the fact that many psychologists deploy movies, music, and images to activate emotions consistently (e.g., showing participants happy, sad, disgusting images). However, little research has investigated the impact of engaging with the same content at different times and in different spaces and its effects on connecting with other listeners after the original instance of engagement. When users engage with fixed content—content that is unambiguously consistent across experiences—they can experience the same emotional trajectory in different times and locations. This asynchronous entrainment is the capacity to repeat physical, physiological, and emotional sequences across time, space, and users. This is possibly the most powerful potential of intimate media. Users can engage with the same movie, song, or image repeatedly, activating a specific emotional trajectory and sharing this experience with other people from other cultures living in different locations. Accessible artifacts even become a language unto themselves as individual users communicate through movie, music, and image references, shorthand symbols for complex ideas, emotions, and messages.

Mediated Memories Memories are an essential part of human psychology—what we remember about the past helps us to make sense of the present and anticipate the future. Except in rare cases, we do not remember everything; we retain information

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that is personally or emotionally relevant. The psychology behind memory storage and retrieval will be described in detail in Chapter 1 on theatrical film, but memories are biased and largely unreliable. We remember the things we focus on, as well as the things that we review and replay. Given these cognitive tendencies, media can affect our memories by indicating value and relevance, as well as repeating content to reinforce specific memories. Furthermore, sharing memories and experiences can foster empathy, or the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Often confused with sympathy—the negative feelings elicited when we hear about the misfortune of others—empathy is closely related to connecting with others. To empathize with someone is to acknowledge that you too have had a similar experience and can intimately understand the emotions that someone else is feeling. Intimate media captures and replays events in great detail, ensuring that moments that were once f leeting for an individual become vividly remembered in the collective culture. These mediated memories—memories that we construct through media—can even seem more real than autobiographical memories—or the memories of our lived experiences. The mass distribution of fixed content ensures that users experience similar emotional responses and construct similar memories. Furthermore, these memories are clear and consistent, a marked departure from autobiographical memories, and we can revisit and relive them at will. These shared experiences and memories are essential to the connections that are fostered through shared media interests. In this way, intimate technologies merge autobiographical and mediated memories to create meta-memories: the memory constructed from the media message and the memory of engaging with the message. These meta-memories become an essential component of our own lived experiences and part of our own life narrative, such that intimate media content can be used to re-activate real-world memories and the associated emotional response.

Expectations of Intimacy in the American Psyche Intimate media helped establish an environment where individuals could share consistent high-fidelity experiences, thus revolutionizing intrapersonal and interpersonal communications. Mass engagement with these mediated messages ushered in a seismic shift in the process of cultural knowledge and shared perspective. With intimate media, disparate audiences could experience the same events from the same perspective as well as the same emotional cadences. These audiences could form a lattice of shared memories and narratives with clarity and consistency that was impossible with print. In a matter of decades, the widespread adoption of theatrical film, recorded music, and consumer market cameras drove Americans to expect and demand these opportunities moving forward. In this section, Chapter 1 discusses how theatrical film normalized users to see media content as a “virtual reality” by demanding they acquiesce their

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attention, or concede some control of their consciousness. In this chapter, I describe the psychology of replicating movement, directing attention, and making (collective) memories. Ultimately, I argue that the practices of theatrical film over the past century anticipated advances in virtual and augmented reality technologies. Chapter 2 explores how recorded music allowed users to take nuanced control of audio in their homes, cars, and public spaces. It allowed everyone to create aural atmospheres regardless of musical talent. Recorded music also allowed users to listen to identical copies of their favorite content repeatedly and share that experience with others. In this chapter, I describe the psychology of adjusting audio environments to control emotions and relationships with others to explain the widespread adoption of streaming technologies and accessible entertainment in the 21st century. Chapter 3 discusses how consumer market cameras (i.e., low-cost, easy-to-use) allowed the general population who were not professional photographers to document their own lives. I describe how the opportunity to capture moments, ref lect on moments, and share moments with others established a norm of imbuing everyday life with value independent of industry gatekeepers. This early instance of usergenerated content would foreshadow the popularity of user-generated content in the 21st century digital media environment. Together, intimate media established a communication environment wherein fixed multimodal high-fidelity messages were the norm. Although Americans had only recently achieved widespread literacy with the penny papers of the 19th century, theatrical film, recorded music, and consumer market cameras allowed users to communicate without text. We could now bypass the intermediary of written language and communicate with feelings because these mediums consistently elicited deep visceral responses, a rarity with text. Together, I argue that these mediums fostered a paradox of public intimacy. Moments and emotions that were once privately experienced become available for mass distribution and public consumption, yet still retain and activate close personal feelings. This seemingly contradictory phenomenon has become routine among Americans, such that we expect to connect emotionally across time and space. Whereas media content that affected the emotions of users were exceptional prior to the 20th century, we expect media to make us feel in the 21st century regardless of intention—shifts in news media and educational media over the past 50 years are excellent examples—and we embrace technologies that guarantee consistent emotional rewards.

Bibliography Dibben, N. (2012). The intimate singing voice: Auditory spatial perception and emotion in pop recordings. In D. Zakharine & N. Meise (Eds.), Electrified voices: Medial, socio-historical and cultural aspects of voice transfer (pp. 107–122). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

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Hagen, E. H., & Bryant, G. A. (2003). Music and dance as a coalition signaling system. Human Nature, 14(1), 21–51. Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. In Culture, media, and language: Working papers in cultural studies, 1972–79 (pp. 128–138). London: Routledge. Iglesia, M. D. (2013). I’m always touched by your presence, dear: Blondie album covers and the concept of presence. Revista Europeia de Estudos Artisticos, 4(2), 59–95. Lombard, M., & Ditton, T. (1997). At the heart of it all: The concept of presence. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(2). Marsh, T. (2003). Presence as experience: Film informing ways of staying there. PRESENCE: Virtual and Augmented Reality, 12(5), 538–549. McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Overy, K., & Molnar-Szakacs, I. (2009). Being together in time: Musical experience and the mirror neuron system. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 26(5), 489–504. Singer, M. J., & Witmer, B. G. (1998). Measuring presence in virtual environments: A presence questionnaire. Presence, 7(3), 225–240. Slater, M. (2003). A note on presence terminology. Presence Connect, 3(3), 1–5. Thompson, W. F., & Quinto, L. (2014). Music and emotion: Psychological considerations. In E. Schellekens & P. Goldie (Eds.), The aesthetic mind: Philosophy and psychology (pp. 357–375). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wiltermuth, S. S., & Heath, C. (2009). Synchrony and cooperation. Psychological Science, 20(1), 1–5.

1 THEATRICAL FILM

The most powerful experience I have had in a theater was watching the opening scenes of Michael Moore’s 2004 movie Fahrenheit 9/11. The film begins with a montage featuring unaired footage of George W. Bush and his cabinet members getting camera-ready for news interviews. They appear relaxed while having their hair and makeup done. After three minutes, the screen fades to black. Against a darkened background, Moore plays audio of the morning of September 11, 2001. A plane engine swells and crashes into a building. We hear first responders describe the situation as people scream in the background. Another plane crashes as sirens, helicopters, and their panic intensify. After a minute, the video returns to reactions of people on the street, looking up in shock, crying, clutching each other, and praying. A soft yet poignant soundtrack by Jeff Gibbs reminds the audience of that day’s pain. After another minute, the film shows the immediate aftermath in slow motion. People run against billowing smoke, with paper and ash f loating in the air. Makeshift shrines and community bulletin boards show people still missing. At six minutes, Moore begins to narrate, bringing the user back to the present. In the opening scene of Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore achieves a comparable moment of poetry. He could have shown documentary footage of airplanes slamming into towers; goodness knows, the terrible footage was available. Instead, he gives us a black screen, with only a muted soundtrack of panicked screams and street sounds, then counter-shots of horrified faces, and finally photographs of the dead (in fact, photos of photos of the dead). ( Higgins, 2005, p. 72)

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I was in my fourth year at MIT on September 11, 2001. My roommates and I watched the footage of the crashes and the panic on the streets of New York on repeat. We relived the confusion of that morning every day for weeks, like a morbid instant replay. These events are seared into the collective memory and the profile of the Twin Towers burning against a cloudless sky is instantly recognizable. Moore’s film was released less than three years later, and despite my eagerness to see it, I was not yet ready to repeat this mediated trauma. Through the unique immersive capacities of theatrical film, Moore surrounds each moviegoer with high-definition audio, recreating the sensation of cowering with their eyes closed at Ground Zero. The user is engulfed in a dark theater, mentally complementing the onscreen message with their own memories of that day. This merging of mediated images and memories to produce new and emotionally charged recollections is a distinctive capacity of theatrical film.

America Goes to the Movies If the Renaissance was defined by painting and music, and the Industrial Revolution by the printing press and penny papers, the start of the 20th century is defined by going to the movies. It became a common experience to sit in a darkened theater, suspend disbelief, and devote one’s attention to unfolding narratives. By the end of the 20th century, this extremely intimate experience was taken for granted. In 1939, it was estimated that 30% of Americans (40 million) were “regulars” who attended movies weekly (Butsch, 2001). In 2017, only about 12% of Americans go to the movies monthly, a significant drop-off compared to 80 years prior. Although theatrical film is no longer as popular as it was at the start of the century, largely due to the plethora of alternatives that have emerged since, more than 75% of Americans still attend at least one movie every year (Fuster, 2018). We continue to go to the movies because it continues to be one of the few opportunities we have to fill our senses with alternative realities markedly different from our own. As a medium, theatrical film transmits messages through moving pictures with synchronized sound presented on a large screen in a controlled immersive space (See Figure 1.1). The venue distinguishes theatrical film from other audiovisual media, because the audience’s attention, experiences, and subsequently emotions are controlled by the medium. Users can certainly engage with moving pictures on television, backyard projections, and cell phones, but these venues do not control the total corporeal experience, and differences in display (e.g., screen size, audio quality) results in different experiences. Theatrical venues, including ornate palace-styled theaters and multiplexes, amplify the sensory experience of film by situating the user in a darkened theater that insulates them from outside noise and other distractions, resulting in consistent experiences across users regardless of time, geographical location, or user differences. Although different societies have varying social expectations for the

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FIGURE 1.1 Empty Theater: The experience of theatrical film involves immersing oneself in a virtual reality wherein our senses are engulfed, allowing the filmmaker to trigger visceral psychological responses in the user. We willingly acquiesce our visual and auditory awareness to the medium, but our tactile, olfactory, and gustatory senses are also affected given the enclosed space. This is most evident when they are disrupted with sticky f loors, unpleasant aromas, or popcorn.

theater experience, the American expectation is to limit external distractions: unnecessary lights are dimmed, audience members are expected to remain functionally silent, and in the 21st century, cell phones are to be silenced and put away throughout the movie. These strategies ensure that the experience of a film and the subsequent memories created by these experiences are consistent across users, creating collective memories and a collective culture. Throughout the 20th century, filmmakers and movie houses promised that theatrical film would fulfill the desires and needs of the American people. Audiences were told that they could escape reality with movies; that movies would make viewers love, laugh, and cry; and that they would see the world like never before. Early films experimented to demonstrate the potential of cinema for audiences eager to engage in this novel medium. Consider dramatic (and biased) reenactments of history such as Birth of a Nation (1916); the physical comedy of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin; and the epic choreographed dances of Busby Berkeley. These promises endured and evolved with national social, economic, political, and cultural changes. During the Great Depression, theatrical film promised Americans an escape from their downtrodden state, showing fantastical stories about glamorous people living fabulous lives. Nickelodeons (5¢ cinemas) ensured that this escapism was affordable when

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most everything else was expensive. As the television era commenced, theatrical film promised niche genres and stories that appealed to small audience segments. New genres included renegade teen culture and “blaxploitation,” as well as pornographic content that was too risqué for broadcast. As filmmakers began to embrace the specificity of theatrical film, blockbusters emerged. Their big production budgets funded impressive sets, state-of-the-art special effects, and larger-than-life soundtracks, telling stories in a way that could not be replicated on television. This definition of theatrical film focuses on its capacity for immediate immersion, not its content. Although content is a component of the film-going experience, understanding the psychological relationship American audiences have with the opportunity to immerse themselves in an alternative reality requires an experiential theory that applies to all genres. This theory must include narrative and non-narrative films without an evident storyline, where individual shots or scenes may not connect with others. Such a theory would include photographic film and artificially created animation, big “Hollywood” movies and independently produced (or “indie”) films. It would even include content that may not have been originally produced for a large-format display, like music videos, but take on new meaning when projected in this format. Screen size affects feelings of presence and immersion (Baranowski & Hecht, 2014; Rigby, Gould, Brumby, & Cox, 2016), and therefore theatrical film is distinct in its ability to immerse the user, regardless of content. Theatrical film is, in this sense, dramatically different from watching a movie in one’s living room or on a computer, regardless of whether individuals are watching the same content. Furthermore, the standardized experience in the theater allows users to go to the movies to participate in current conversations, especially for popular or provocative films. Therefore, one must engage with these immersive experiences as soon as possible to have the language, or the information and shared symbols, to communicate with others. Blockbuster films are a prime example  of this multiplicative phenomenon; they take full advantage of the immersive environment to create a novel, one-of-a-kind experience, and their corporate financing ensures that they are disseminated widely to become part of the cultural conversation. Although blockbusters have been rebuked by prominent filmmakers—Martin Scorsese equated superhero movies to theme park rides in 2019 (Scorsese, 2019)—the popularity of this genre reveals an important psychological draw of the theatrical film experience: escaping to alternate worlds. Theatrical film ensured that the opportunity to escape was available to all regardless of their leisure time and disposable income, thereby encouraging Americans to expect accessible escapism and shared emotional responses to escapist content. Film can simultaneously abstract reality so that it becomes unrecognizable and transport users to the realest of the real world. These possibilities sparked

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discussions about the psychology of film in the early 20th century among scholars who initially drew ideas from Sigmund Freud. For example, Hugo Münsterberg argued that film is a mental phenomenon wherein our imagination is projected onto the screen (Münsterberg, 1916). Béla Balázs believed that film is an instrument for a new understanding of the real world (Balázs, 1970). Walter Benjamin contended that the power of film lay in its ability to reproduce shared experiences to the audience (Benjamin, 1935). Regardless of their theoretical stance, these scholars argued that film immerses the user in constructed realities that can be completely independent of the real world but feel just as real. Consider that the entryway to the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California is emblazoned with the words, “Reality Ends Here.” Similarly, the power of the theatrical film medium is derived from its ability to be simultaneously escapist and hyper-realistic. We go to the movies to be immersed in alternate worlds and to share the real memories of these alternative worlds with others. The rest of this chapter will describe the psychology of movement, attention, and memory to demonstrate the long-term effects of theatrical film on collective memories, empathy, and identity.

Replicating Movement Motion pictures incorporate visual movement into mass communications, allowing dynamic, robust representations of actual experiences to be authentically and consistently replicated. The illusion of replicated movement distinguishes theatrical film from earlier, more static mass mediums, like print, paintings, or sculpture. Film shows movement within the frame, including shots, edits, and framing, commonly referred to as mise-en-scene, as well as the movement of the frame itself. The opportunity to capture and share movement drove users’ fascination with this new medium. A common anecdote regarding early film audiences involves the audience reactions to the Lumiere Brothers’ short, L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat (translation: Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, 1898), which shows an approaching train coming at the audience (see Figure 1.2). It was rumored that audiences ran screaming from the theater. Even though this story is exaggerated (or even entirely false), the legend demonstrates the psychological novelty of replicated movement—audiences had never before seen movement captured and displayed on the screen and had to learn how to engage with this experience. This is evident every time someone experiences motion sickness from a film, or prepares a small child for their first movie experience. Film creates motion. Evolutionarily speaking, movement is one of seven indicators of life along with breathing, reaction to stimuli, growth, reproduction, excretion, and consumption. Mirror neurons activate when we see moving objects helping us learn behaviors, as well as social conventions and empathy. The user follows onscreen movement, revealing cognitive tendencies—including

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FIGURE 1.2 L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat (Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, 1898): A 50-second short film produced by the Lumiere Brothers depicts a train arriving at a station. The camera is positioned such that it appears as if the train is coming directly at the user. It was rumored that audiences ran screaming from the theater; although the rumor has been largely disrupted, its endurance demonstrates that we learned to watch large format moving images.

non-conscious preferences and needs—in users that would otherwise go unnoticed in a phenomenon called unconscious optics ( Benjamin, 1935). Furthermore, although objects on the screen can move without any narrative or purpose, we anthropomorphize objects that move, imbuing them with human-like emotions and characteristics. For example, we might think a triangle moving across a screen appears to have a purpose in its movements (Heider & Simmel, 1944; Oatley & Yuill, 1985; Berry & Springer, 1993). If it stops moving as it approaches a square, we interpret that as an “interaction” and use human emotions and social standards to explain it. Transposing these effects to theatrical film, the illusion of movement encourages the brain to believe that it is engaging with reality (Reeves & Nass, 1996). These tendencies to interpret movement are particularly evident when considering the experience of experimental or non-narrative films. Films that divert from the expectations of its predecessor—live theater—bring motion to objects that were once immobile and allow the user to be free of space and time (Stam, 2000), an opportunity that is impossible with earlier mediums. For example, the 1921 film Rhythmus 21 by Hans Richter features black, white, and grey rectangles moving through the frame (see Figure 1.3), occasionally appearing to interact with each other. Rhythmus 21 is like a symphony for the eyes. By placing one frame after another, Richter uses the potentials of film to create motion and depth from a 2D image.

FIGURE 1.3 Rhythmus 21 (1921): A 3-minute short animated film produced by Hans Richter depicting a series of black, white, and grey rectangles moving through the frame, occasionally appearing to interact with each other. The series of stills featured in this image reveal how the boxes grow, shrink, and move across the frame, demonstrating the potential of film as uniquely different from earlier mediums. This piece is impossible in any other medium, theater, painting, sculpture, poetry, or prose.

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Film also offered fixed movement—moving objects onscreen that move in the same way every time they were displayed. Although rarely discussed, this essential potential was not available in live performances, where each performance was slightly different. Users attending a film multiple times could guarantee that the movement on screen, including the images, the perspective, and the edits between shots, would be exactly the same with every viewing. A film is the same every time we watch it. Researchers in developmental psychology have explored this phenomenon and its relevance; children like repetition and ascertain more about a story with every viewing, which helps stimulate learning in a comfortable, consistent environment (Horst, Parsons, & Bryan, 2011). This consistency is psychologically satisfying because we can anticipate what is coming and have that anticipation gratified, allowing us to focus on new aspects of the same content and glean new insights from each viewing. This opportunity to replay motion revolutionized human communications and connected users, allowing them to participate in the same events and experiences across time and space.

Directing Attention Our attention—the extent to which we allocate and direct “perceptual and mental resources to some aspects of a complex environment” (Thompson & Madigan, 2005, p.  37)—is at the root of cognitive processes. Our brains only permit a few items to be processed at any given time; therefore, attentional control is an important resource that allows the individual to focus processing on a specific task instead of becoming distracted in a world laden with stimuli. Many scholars have investigated the processes of attention, demonstrating the characteristics that direct our attention. Selective attention means we attend to specific components in the environment ( Johnston & Dark, 1986). Examples include the “cocktail party effect,” or the ability to discern important information like one’s name even in a crowded audio environment (Cherry, 1953), and “inattentional blindness,” or the tendency to neglect stimuli when paying attention to something unrelated (Simons & Chabris, 1999). When applied to theatrical film, these psychological effects reveal that attention can be distributed and diverted differently through media. Information that users direct their awareness to is commonly referred to as focal attention. Directing users’ attention to certain content and away from others has been a longstanding goal of media sources, including the strategies of tabloid journalism and the advertising of P.T. Barnum. However, theatrical film is novel in that it immerses the user in a world of the filmmakers’ choosing by controlling and manipulating sensory input and thus directing the user’s complete attention. Filmmakers immerse audiences. The audience sees what the filmmaker wants them to see, and hears what the filmmaker wants them to hear.1 Conversely, the user relinquishes their own conscious awareness and

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agency to experience the vision, perspective, and emotions dictated by the filmmaker. In a theater, where experiences are closely controlled, the user’s visual field is dominated by the screen, and their hearing is monopolized by surround sound. The immersive experience inhibits all external stimuli and constructs a virtual reality. The onscreen content is attractive and engaging ( Doane, 1989) and we derive pleasure from looking (Hansen, 1986). The effect is much like Plato’s Cave, an allegory that describes prisoners forced to gaze upon shadows projected onto a blank wall; as this is their only illusion of reality, the screen becomes reality for the theatergoer (Sontag, 1977). Attention is drawn to moving objects (Abrams & Christ, 2003; Howard & Holcombe, 2010), so filmmakers can control the attention of the user by controlling movement in theatrical film. Sudden onscreen movement can cause users to quickly shift their focal attention to novel information (Wise & Reeves, 2007), which can even result in physical responses (e.g., shifting in one’s seat) via unconscious optics. In addition to movement, other cinematic strategies also allow the filmmaker to direct attention to different parts of the screen. The size of objects and their time on screen indicate their value and encourage users to follow certain objects and characters. For example, close-ups and screen time establish a figure as a key character. This is true regardless of whether the object is human or non-human, causing users to anthropomorphize and empathize with that object. Placing stimuli in different parts of the screen reveals and conceals certain information, thus causing the user to scan the screen in a directed and purposeful manner, despite the feeling that the user is in control. Having our attentional processes under the control of a foreign entity is oddly satisfying. Consider the popularity of less-than-narrative films such as Disney’s Fantasia (1940) or parts of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). They summoned and instilled responses by showing the user something that they had never seen. The highest-grossing movies continue to invite the audience to escape and immerse themselves in an alternate reality constructed by filmmakers. In 2019, the top-grossing films were Avengers: Endgame ($858 million) and The Lion King ($543 million), relating back to the remarkable capacity of blockbusters described earlier. In fact, all but two of the top ten grossing movies were superhero or fantasy films, revealing Americans’ ongoing willingness to acquiesce attentional processes that began with the moviegoing experience in the early 20th century.

Making Memories By controlling and directing attention, theatrical film can control and direct what we remember and recall, and by extension, what we find valuable. Theatrical film also affects our ability to connect and apply this retained information to situations. Memory begins with the storage of sensory input in working memory, a limited and temporary repository in which sensory and linguistic

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information can be accessed if immediately needed (e.g., the sound of a car as one is crossing the street). This information is discarded if it is not immediately attended to. Information that is deemed immediately relevant moves into short-term working memory, where information that is repeated is encoded into long-term memory, an enduring and expansive repository, and unrehearsed information is discarded. However, these processes are different from learning—applying previously acquired information to future situations and context—where information that is connected to one’s preexisting knowledge is more likely to be retained (Thompson & Madigan, 2005). Furthermore, the retention and application of information is impacted by emotions; excitement and elevated heart rate result in greater retention of newly obtained information (Abercrombie, Chambers, Greischar, & Monticelli, 2008). Theatrical film is uniquely situated to impact memory and learning at each of these stages. Theatrical film overwhelms the user’s senses, directs attention, and activates perspectives and emotions that feel real. Not only are we learning about the film, we are also learning about the real world, given that we believe that our senses provide a direct awareness and authentic representation of the world and the objects within it, a phenomenon known as naïve realism. However, the high-fidelity representation of film demands the question: what happens when audiences’ senses are deluded? Virtual realism—an extension of naïve realism—argues that we perceive of artificial realities that expand our ordinary world (Yoh, 2001). Although these theories have been embraced with the advent of virtual reality, the same principles are evident centuries earlier when considering theatrical film as a form of virtual reality. Users remember information even if they are aware that it is not real and “only a film” because the cognitive processes that register and retain stimuli and information are still impacted by the false information presented through theatrical film. In addition, in theatrical films we come to learn about our world through onscreen representations. According to Vertov, the eye of the camera creates a fresh perception of the world by deciphering it in a new way and is far superior to its human counterpart (Vertov, 1984). In the theater, users relinquish their own point of view for that of the filmmaker. By embodying this alternative perspective, users come to see the world in novel ways, thereby activating empathy. Film allows the audience to enter the perspective of the filmmaker and to literally see the world from outside of their own body. According to fMRI research, taking a similar perspective with others while viewing a short film can synchronize their brain activity—an essential component in shared understanding (Lahnakoski et al., 2014). Theatrical film offered an unprecedented level of embodiment that has since impacted feelings of memory and overall learning across space, time, and populations. We have come to expect

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the opportunity to see the perspectives of others and embody historically relevant events and perspectives.

Theatrical Film and Implicit Acquiescence Despite changes in the media environment since the early 20th century, audiences still rely on theatrical film for similar reasons: entertainment, escapism, and immersion. Box office revenue alone tops $10 billion per year—not including DVD sales and streaming licensing—because watching a movie in the theater provides an experience that cannot be matched with other technologies. Throughout this more than century-long relationship with theatrical film, we have come to expect opportunities for immersion. We cuddle up for a few hours with media to escape the world around us. Much like a lazy Sunday morning in bed with an intimate partner, the rest of the world falls away. Furthermore, Americans have become accustomed to relinquishing consciousness, easily escaping reality, and sharing emotional experiences with others regardless of time or location. These massive shifts in communication and cultural expectations affect the relationships that we develop with technologies in the 21st century. Theatrical film habituated Americans to acquiescing our attention and eliminating the effort of deciding what to look at, for how long, or why. The sheer size of the screen combined with other immersive sensory stimuli allowed users to enter a virtual reality wherein they are transported to a world (and a perspective) of the filmmaker’s design, thus alleviating us of the most basic responsibilities: allocating attention. Much like a partner who handles all of our affairs—cooking, cleaning, paying bills—theatrical film allowed us to blissfully move through (artificially constructed) worlds unquestioningly. Over time, we became accustomed to this implicit control of our senses, and this tacit compliance has trickled into other mediums, complicating our ability to read content critically. Consider social media: although we are in control of presentation and have some say in what we choose to follow, feeds are curated by invisible algorithms that we largely don’t understand—over half of Facebook users don’t understand how the newsfeed works (Smith, 2018)—but we accept to avoid engaging with the overwhelming amount of available information. We have become habituated to cognitive escapism even with content that is largely grounded in reality. Our relationship with theatrical film also habituated users to the opportunity to escape reality, even for a few hours at a time. Although this tendency occurs independent of content, our preference for escapist content is closely related to our willingness to relinquish attention and cognitive processes. We willingly acquiesce our consciousness with escapist content. Year after year, fantastical films top box office receipts, whereas realistic documentary films are consistently at the bottom (All-Time (Domestic) Box-Office, n.d.). The most popular

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documentary (by box office receipts) is Fahrenheit 9/11, which brought in $119 million in 2004. This translated to the seventeenth highest grossing film that year. Interestingly, of the top 20 grossing documentary films of all time, eight are films about animals and nature and five are music documentaries featuring pop stars. Thus, even among documentary films, the most popular films transport the audience to a world that they cannot experience on their own. It seems that the virtual immersive experience offered by theatrical film is not as psychological satisfying when engaging with non-dramatized reality. However, this relationship may not be one of causation, but rather correlation: Americans have become accustomed to having their attention directed since the advent and widespread adoption of theatrical film, and they use theatrical film for escapism. These shared distractions, or mini-vacations, are a unique collective cultural experience because we go on exactly the same journey with other users without being in exactly the same place and time. Sharing movement and perspective as fixed content that repeats emotional and experiential events has fostered an expectation that that others will have shared these very specific experiences, from the most general components like characters and narratives to the most minute details including color schemes and momentary cutaway shots. In turn, this expectation has become integrated into our social customs and institutions. We frequently use film as a shorthand way of engaging with others under the assumption that everyone has seen and subsequently shared the experience of popular films, a tendency that has become more pronounced with the widespread adoption of GIFs. This communication strategy made available via theatrical film also helps explain the widespread embrace of certain filmic tropes; movies with rougher editing or more esoteric storylines may fail to activate consistent emotional responses among users, thereby limiting its ability to serve as a collective symbolic placeholder. Over the past century, Americans have embraced theatrical film for entertainment purposes rather than for journalistic or educational purposes, revealing a trend in escapist content and the willingness to concede attentional control. We love theatrical film because we don’t have to think about the world, even for just a few hours. As new technologies emerge that embrace immersion as a means of creating virtual realities and saturate the visual field of users, Americans will expect easy engagement and escapist content. This subsequently makes it difficult to deploy immersive interfaces for informative or prosocial means without embedding or foregrounding entertainment. We have fallen in love with a fun and entertaining mediated experience, so any other outcomes must be ancillary to the goal of entertainment.

Note 1. In theory, they can also smell, feel, and taste what the creator wants them to smell, feel, and taste, but these senses are not generally activated in the common American experience of theatrical film, save Smell-O-Vision, rumble seats, and popcorn.

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Bibliography Abercrombie, H. C., Chambers, A. S., Greischar, L., & Monticelli, R. M. (2008). Orienting, emotion, and memory: Phasic and tonic variation in heart rate predicts memory for emotional pictures in men. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 90(4), 644–650. Abrams, R. A., & Christ, S. E. (2003). Motion onset captures attention. Psychological Science, 14(5), 427–432. All-time (domestic) box-office hits and top films by decade and year. (n.d.). Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.filmsite.org/boxoffice2.html Balázs, B. (1970). Theory of the film: Character and growth of a new art. New York: Dover Press. Baranowski, A. M., & Hecht, H. (2014). The big picture: Effects of surround on immersion and size perception. Perception, 43(10), 1061–1070. Benjamin, W. (1935). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (pp. 211–244). London: Fontana Press. Berry, D. S., & Springer, K. (1993). Structure, motion, and preschoolers’ perceptions of social causality. Ecological Psychology, 5(4), 273–283. Butsch, R. (2001). Movie audiences of the 1930s. International Labor and Working-Class History, 59, 106–120. Cherry, C. (1953). Cocktail party problem. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 25, 975–979. Doane, M. A. (1989). The economy of desire: The commodity form in/of the cinema. Quarterly Review of Film & Video, 11(1), 23–33. Fuster, J. (2018, April 4). Why Hollywood studios depend on frequent moviegoers more than ever. Retrieved January 4, 2020 from www.thewrap.com/monthly-moviegoers-mpaaus-ticket-sales/ Hansen, M. (1986). Pleasure, ambivalence, identification: Valentino and female spectatorship. Cinema Journal, 25(4), 6–32. Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944). An experimental study of apparent behavior. The American Journal of Psychology, 57(2), 243–259. Higgins, L. A. (2005). Documentary in an age of terror. South Central Review, 22(2), 20–38. Horst, J. S., Parsons, K. L., & Bryan, N. M. (2011). Get the story straight: Contextual repetition promotes word learning from storybooks. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 17. Howard, C. J., & Holcombe, A. O. (2010). Unexpected changes in direction of motion attract attention. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 72(8), 2087–2095. Johnston, W. A., & Dark, V. J. (1986). Selective attention. Annual Review of Psychology, 37(1), 43–75. Lahnakoski, J. M., Glerean, E., Jääskeläinen, I. P., Hyönä, J., Hari, R., Sams, M., & Nummenmaa, L. (2014). Synchronous brain activity across individuals underlies shared psychological perspectives. NeuroImage, 100, 316–324. Münsterberg, H. (1916). The photoplay: A psychological study. New York: D. Appleton. Oatley, K., & Yuill, N. (1985). Perception of personal and interpersonal action in a cartoon film. British Journal of Social Psychology, 24(2), 115–124. Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rigby, J. M., Gould, S. J., Brumby, D. P., & Cox, A. L. (2016). Watching movies on Netf lix: Investigating the effect of screen size on viewer immersion. Proceedings of the

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18th international conference on human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services adjunct, MobileHCI (pp.  714–721). Retrieved June 25, from https://discovery.ucl. ac.uk/id/eprint/1566747/1/Gould_p714-rigby.pdf Scorsese, M. (2019, November 4). I said Marvel movies aren’t cinema: Let me explain. New York Times. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/ opinion/martin-scorsese-marvel.html Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28(9), 1059–1074. Smith, A. (2018, September 5). Many Facebook users don’t understand how the site’s news feed works. Pew Research Center. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.pewresearch. org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/many-facebook-users-dont-understand-how-the-sitesnews-feed-works/ Sontag, S. (1977). On photography (Vol. 3). New York: Doubleday. Stam, R. (2000). Film theory: An introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Thompson, R. F., & Madigan, S. A. (2005). Memory: The key to consciousness. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press. Vertov, D. (1984). Kino-eye: The writings of Dziga Vertov. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Wise, K., & Reeves, B. (2007). The effect of user control on the cognitive and emotional processing of pictures. Media Psychology, 9(3), 549–566. Yoh, M.-S. (2001). The reality of virtual reality. Proceedings seventh international conference on virtual systems and multimedia. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/3927524_The_reality_of_virtual_reality

2 RECORDED MUSIC

I saw the Beastie Boys at Madison Square Garden for their Hello Nasty tour in August 1998 (see Figure 2.1). I was invited last-minute, and jumped at the chance. The opportunity to see the Beastie Boys on their first tour in years at such a venue could not be missed. I listened to the Beastie Boys for as long as I could remember. “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” from Licensed to Ill (1986) played on the radio constantly in New York, and although I didn’t really party at five years old, I was ready to fight for my right to do so. We hopped on the train into the city that afternoon. I had attended my first concert a few months earlier—Aerosmith at the New Haven Coliseum—and had been to a few shows in the interim. But it was clear that this one was going to be a different kind of emotional experience. The term parasocial is used by communication scholars to describe the one-sided interactions and relationships that users develop with media figures; we feel like we know them even though we have no real-world interaction (Giles, 2002; Cohen, 2004). Although parasocial theories were conceptualized to describe relationships with television personalities (specifically news anchors), they are particularly relevant to recorded music. Recorded music allows individual users to bring their favorite artists into their home and listen to them on demand and in any context—while getting ready in the morning, cleaning house, during dinner, or even lying alone in bed—giving fans the opportunity to fantasize that perhaps they were singing to, for, or with them. These parasocial interactions are amplified by musicians’ ability to communicate intimately with millions of fans remotely, which are then re-activated at events like shows. At Madison Square Garden that evening, the crowd created an alternative Beastie Boys universe. Everyone spoke Beastie, boomboxes blasted their music from all directions, people were selling T-shirts every

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Concert Ticket Stubs (1998): A collection of ticket stubs from my first six concerts, including Aerosmith at the New Haven Coliseum, Dave Matthews Band at Giants Stadium, the B-52s and the Pretenders at Jones Beach Theater, Steven Miller Band at Jones Beach Theater, Blues Traveler’s H.O.R.D.E. Fest at Jones Beach Theater, and the Beastie Boys at Madison Square Garden.

FIGURE 2.1

50 feet, and each mention of the Beastie Boys resulted in audible affirmations. The Hello Nasty album and tour had been years in the making, and they were playing to a hometown crowd “in the round”—on a stage in the middle of the f loor that rotated. It felt like all of New York City was there, like a massive family reunion. In this chapter, I argue that the intimacy of recorded music catalyzes parasocial relationships that become activated in shows like this one. As a child, I wanted the Beastie Boys to be my besties. When listening alone, I imagined that they were performing just for me—an experienced mirrored by millions of other fans. Then when I saw them live, listening to their music for years helped me to experience a powerful sense of togetherness with the band, with the fans, and with myself. Parasocial relationships with musicians are now recognized as a normal part of adolescent development (Giles, 2002; Steele & Brown, 1995; Boon & Lomore, 2001; Gleason, Theran, & Newberg, 2017), despite the relative novelty of intimacy on demand. This chapter traces how this expectation of an emotional connection between users and musicians emerged through recorded music.

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Just Push Play Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote that “music is the universal language” given that it can activate characters, information, and emotions as consistently as language constructed via words (Balkwill & Thompson, 1999; Fritz et al., 2009; Juslin & Laukka, 2003; Panksepp & Bernatzky, 2002; Mehr et al., 2019). Recorded music, by comparison, is a printing press, standardizing and replicating a communication modality that was once only available to a few. Despite its relatively new status as a medium—recorded music is just over 100 years old, or one-twentieth of 1% of human existence—it has changed how we humans think about ourselves and our behaviors. In a century, we have gone from listening to music in public and on special occasions, to spending over 32 hours per week jamming out to our favorite tunes (Nielsen, 2017). A cursory glance at the number of units sold in the early 20th century reveals the connection that we have with the opportunity to control access to music: three million records sold in 1900 compared to a population of 76 million, but that increased to 140 million in 1920 compared to a population of 106 million. After a dip in sales associated with the Great Depression, record sales rebounded after WWII and continued to rise until the end of the century. By 2000, 1.1 billion units were sold—almost four records for every American, and the American music industry was worth over $14 billion (Goldman, 2010). Recorded music had become an inescapable element in everyday American life. Music is melodic or amelodic auditory content that has been effortfully and intentionally created for aesthetic purposes. Similar to poetry, music is a memorable medium because it conveys consistent lyrical and emotional messages. We can remember the details of a song, including lyrics, tempo, and inf lection, even after years have passed, and the vast majority of people can sing a popular song from memory within 10% of the correct tempo (Levitin & Cook, 1996). In the extreme, music can even get stuck in our head, a common experience known as “earworms” or “involuntary musical imagery” (Williamson, Liikkanen, Jakubowski, & Stewart, 2014; Byron & Fowles, 2015). Alternatively, recorded music, or the storage, transmission, and replication of high-fidelity musical content independent of musicians or memory, allows users to take control of these psychological effects at will. Prior to the advent of recorded music, the only way to hear music was to make music or be in the presence of musicians making music. These restrictions made music an inherently social and f leeting experience; each live performance was different from the last, and the only way to listen to the same music was to be in the same place at the same time. With recorded music, users could engage with and control identical audio content asynchronously: the exact same content—with the same composition, notes, tempo, and lyrics—could be played and replayed on demand. This freedom detached music from musicians and allowed anyone to use music for any purpose. Recorded music effectively democratized the medium of music. It allowed one of mankind’s earliest forms

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of art and culture to be consistently consumed by individual users regardless of location or status. Since then, recordings have become deeply entwined with our everyday experiences. Music is continuously piped into public spaces like elevators, bathrooms, and hallways. Many of us cannot imagine certain activities (like driving, exercising, or cleaning) without music, and soundless spaces can even feel eerie. We spend more time listening to music than other leisurely media activities like reading books or watching television (Lonsdale & North, 2011). We use recorded music to distract, energize, and enhance the meaning of everyday activities (Sloboda, Lamont, & Greasley, 2008), helping us to manage our moods, construct our identities, and connect with others (Hargreaves & North, 1999). Although this chapter is concerned with the nature of private listening and personal use, recorded music also impacted community and collective activities by allowing individuals to precisely control public spaces. Records created the occupation of the disc jockey (DJ), a person who professionally plays and mixes together recorded music, regardless of physical discs, to create new shared experiences. The methods used to record and access recorded music have changed dramatically over the century, resulting in greater fidelity, innovative music production strategies like multitrack recording and auto-tune, and ever-shrinking storage requirements (collectivecadenza, 2012). Each of these technological advances enabled users to engage with identical authentic content regardless of time or location. Although these changes are at the forefront of public conversations about music, the psychological principles described in this chapter apply to recorded music regardless of storage media and mode of transmission, including but not limited to cassette tapes, MP3s, radio, and online audio streaming platforms. These technologies made using recorded music easier in the 21st century, thereby accelerating Americans’ adoption of the technology and revealing our longstanding relationship with recorded music. The widespread use of recorded music in the digital environment demands a retroactive investigation of our psychological relationship with the ability to control music. In this chapter, I argue that the capacity to play music to “tune” our audio environments on demand has significant implications for users both internally, by providing the opportunity to control our emotions, and externally, by allowing us to control a space and inf luence the emotions of others. This chapter will address the impact of storing and transmitting recorded music on creating experiences, with a focus on the psychology of controlling mood, emotions, and environment, as well as constructing identity and connecting with others.

Tuning Environments Prior to recorded music, controlling the aural environment required users to create music in real time through vocalization or instrumentation. Recorded

Recorded Music 39

music allows anyone to control music. With recorded music, users can guarantee that the surrounding audio represents and ref lects their personal states, either proactively or reactively. Users frequently choose music to help achieve specific environmental goals (Denora, 2000; Hargreaves & North, 1999; Sloboda, 1999), including making activities more enjoyable; Americans choose to listen to music while doing housework most (90%) of the time (North, Hargreaves, & Hargreaves, 2004). We also use music to avoid awkward silences, alleviate loneliness and boredom, and create atmosphere. We can isolate oneself from others to improve concentration and focus (Sloboda et al., 2008) even in crowded spaces. By simply playing a certain song or record, we can tailor our everyday experiences, and this opportunity quickly became a norm and an expectation of users seeking nuanced control. This potential was repeated in print ads for phonographs and record players from the early 20th century. It was promised that high quality experiences would change the user’s life by inviting a “completely new world of sound” into the home. Ads described hosting dance parties “as though you actually hired the entire band or orchestra itself ” (see Figure 2.2). Enhancing the home with recorded music would create family time and joy; one 1905 Christmas ad for an Edison phonograph claimed that the product “makes home happy because it pleases every member of the family, from baby to grandmother” (see Figure 2.3). This rhetoric of music as the promise of existential satisfaction echoes in the slogan for Tower Records, one of the largest purveyors of records and music in the late 20th century: “No Music. No Life.” Furthermore, recorded music created new opportunities for solo listening because it allowed the user to manipulate the space where they alone listened to music. Users could now experience intimate moments through music by personalizing private, individual activities. Several scholars have described the emergence of “bedroom culture” among teenagers through the second half of the 20th century, arguing that this intimate space serves as an opportunity for youths to explore their identities and find refuge from the rest of the world over which they have no control (Bovill & Livingstone, 2001; Lincoln, 2016; Durkin, 2006). However, the desire to personalize and control one’s immediate environment is relevant across age groups. Like visually decorating one’s space with furniture or art, recorded music allows individual users to create soundscapes and enhance the meaning of everyday activities. In 21st century media, this phenomenon is referred to as “personalization.” Personalizing virtual spaces, including webpages and social media profiles as well as characters and avatars, is associated with an embodied sense of power, resulting in greater presence and enjoyment of the virtual environment (Gee, 2008). But the opportunity to affect our emotions by transforming the environment over speakers or cocooning with headphones is not new—it is an extension of 20th century media. As described in the section intro, feelings of presence and immersion can be achieved by manipulating sensory experiences. By overloading certain sensory

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Ad for the Victrola XVII (1919): Advertising for playback devices emphasized the quality of sound and the ability to affect the audio environment of one’s home for any occasion. “Loud and clear enough for a whole roomful of dancers—and yet easily adaptable when only a few couples (or even one!) want a quiet little dance all their own.”

FIGURE 2.2

Recorded Music 41

Ad for Edison Phonograph (1905): Advertising for playback devices promised that everyone would have their domestic life improved given the diverse array of content that was available. “On an IMPROVED EDISON PHONOGRAPH you can hear the latest popular or finest classical, vocal, orchestral or band music; the gems of vaudeville, comic opera, or minstrelsy.”

FIGURE 2.3

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experiences, the brain is forced to focus cognitive attention on processing a specific stream, thus ignoring relevant cues from other modalities—the mode in which messages are shared. In the case of theatrical film, the modality of immersion was achieved by filling the user’s visual field with a large screen and f looding their hearing with surround sound. Visual immersion is foregrounded, and audio immersion supplements this experience (even if the visual field is eliminated, as described in the opening scenes of Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11). However, recorded music works differently. It immerses users by providing information to the auditory channel in isolation, encouraging the user to focus solely on sounds, relegating other sensory stimuli to the periphery (Sloboda et al., 2008). When users listen to music in familiar spaces, they can focus their attention on the varying audio content because they are habituated to extra-auditory stimuli. The posters on one’s wall or the smell of one’s own room will not disrupt their listening experience. Similarly, deploying familiar music in unfamiliar settings allows users to focus their attention on the stimuli that is personally gratifying, making any space an intimate space.

Tuning Emotions Whereas moods are generalized attitudinal states, emotions are nuanced sensations experienced in response to specific events, and involve both valence (i.e., good or bad feelings) and arousal (i.e., high or low energy) (Hepach, Kliemann, Grüneisen, Heekeren, & Dziobek, 2011). They can be simple—happiness, sadness, anger, and fear—or complex, like grief, frustration, embarrassment, and pride. Regardless of the emotion, music can make us feel. Music has been shown to improve mood (Oldham, Cummings, Mischel, Schmidtke, & Zhou, 1995), reduce stress, and contribute to well-being (Haake, 2011), as well as to improve body work, relaxation, and pain management (Sloboda et al., 2008). Individuals listening to pleasant music are more likely to non-consciously activate muscles associated with smiling, whereas those listening to unpleasant music are more likely to activate muscles associated with frowning (Lundqvist, Carlsson, Hilmersson, & Juslin, 2009). We can instantly feel happier, relax, wallow in our sadness, or take trips down memory lane. Music psychologists have researched these music-oriented psychological phenomena extensively, without acknowledging that this work deploys recorded music. This gap reveals the invisibility of the storage medium—recorded music gives us access to music—as well as an important but unanswered research question: what are the meta-psychological effects of enhancing control via recorded music, or the psychological effects associated with the opportunity to control our psychological states? The increased availability and accessibility of recorded music in the 20th century meant that anyone could use music to set a mood, which could be intimate, joyous, relaxed, or somber. However, much of the research regarding emotion regulation (Gross, 1998) focuses on people’s

Recorded Music 43

internal ability to control the experience and effects of one’s emotions, not the opportunity for external control through recorded musical content. Uses and gratifications theory postulates that we use media to gratify emotional and psychological needs (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973). Although users have deployed media to gratify needs for millennia—from cave paintings to movies—recorded music marked the first time we could package and use music like print media. The effects of this opportunity are broad. There is copious research on music therapy, or how individuals use music for therapeutic purposes (Denora, 2000; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007; Hargreaves & North, 1999): people with chronic pain who listen repeatedly to music report greater attention diversion and relaxation (Mitchell, MacDonald, Knussen, & Serpell, 2007) and greater perceived control over pain, as well as lower levels of pain and depression (Siedliecki & Good, 2006). However, this work largely bypasses the storage medium. Studies that investigate the effect of music on mood and emotion commonly feature experimenter-selected music, thus neglecting perceived control and agency on well-being and associated coping strategies. Users often take for granted that they can control the audio environment through their musical choices and anyone who has taken a road trip without being in charge of the music can attest that being forced to listen to the musical choices of others can cause frustration. The few researchers who have explored the psychological effects of choosing music have revealed that user-selected music is more effective than experimenter-selected content in achieving positive moods. After being exposed to a stressor, Elise Labbé and colleagues found that individuals who brought in their own relaxing music reported greater increases in relaxation and decreases in state anxiety. They also reported decreases in anger compared to those listening to classical music, the genre experimenters determined to be most “relaxing” (Labbé, Schmidt, Babin, & Pharr, 2007). Similarly, Cassidy and MacDonald found that self-selected music elicited better performance in a driving game task compared to car sounds alone or car sounds with high- or low-arousal music selected by the experimenters (Cassidy & MacDonald, 2009). Although we may not consciously select music to achieve specific goals, we know what kind of music we feel we need at any given moment (Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007). The combination of our uncanny recall of music and new opportunities to control music led users to contemporaneously narrate their lives with music and construct musical autobiographies ( Denora, 2000; Sloboda et al., 2008). Connections between music and life—also known as somatic markers, or the emotional tags that we associate with specific content (Damasio, 2006)— demonstrate the power of music that lies in these subjective associations. We use music to activate memories of specific events, moments, or eras (Stewart, Garrido, Hense, & McFerran, 2019; McFerran & Saarikallio, 2014; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007). Audio content is so integral to memories that it is unconsciously encoded and lies dormant until it is triggered. Over one-third

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(34.9%) of users listened to music to ref lect on particular memories (Lonsdale & North, 2011), and adults reported even more highly emotional memories when prompted with music (Sloboda, 1999).

Tuning Relationships This shared meaning of music also reveals the ability of recorded music to establish familiarity in both public and private settings, ultimately allowing users to develop close relationships with others despite a lack of real-world contact. As a psychological construct, identity is the combined totality of self that is constructed from symbols and signifiers that are personally relevant, including race, gender, religion, nationality, hobbies, and occupation, as well as the media that we use (Durkin, 2006). Although others may use certain things to identify you, your identity is what defines you. Recorded music amplifies expectations and connections while also changing the way new expectations and connections are created. Adolescents use music to develop (i.e., self-actualization) and display (i.e., portraying a social image to others; North et al., 2004) identity, reinforcing both their self-perceptions and how they are perceived by others ( Tarrant, North, & Gargreaves, 2001). Psychological research regarding identity developed alongside the cultural movements of the mid- and late-20th century as society and psychologists began to consider how different social categories affected individual functioning. Social identity theory (SIT) argued that our self-perception and feelings of satisfaction come from the groups to which we belong (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Similarly, self-categorization theory (SCT) claims that identification with groups changes depending on social context, allowing individuals to satisfy their social needs and motivations in different situations (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). Together, these theories explain how individuals embrace different groups in the process of identification, including groups constructed via music as described in the opening anecdote. Given the fundamental need to belong, categorizing as a fan of a given artist or genre quickly evolves into a group identity as individuals connect through shared characteristics and emotions that result from shared audio experiences. Interpersonally, recorded music serves as a key social marker we can utilize to understand others—allowing users to share experiences because audio was detached from limiting factors of live musical experiences. Research in this area reveals that preferences for certain musical genres or musical acts carry powerful messages about personal and political attitudes (Zillman & Gan, 1997; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2006; North et al., 2004) that can then serve as a “social lubricant” between strangers (Haake, 2011) and connect people who share similar interests (Denora, 2000). Each of these opportunities are made available because recorded music allows users to share emotional, personal, and individuated experiences despite having no contact in the real world. Although only

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decades old, recorded music has enabled emotional connections by becoming integrated into the daily activities of users, identity development, and media industry practices. Asking new people what kind of music they listen to is just as commonplace as inquiring about someone’s hometown. Wearing the T-shirt of one’s favorite band is an invitation for conversation if you are also a fan. This shared understanding has since become engrained within our interactions, thus providing a deeper reading of music as a “universal language.”

Recorded Music and Precise Emotional Gratification On Demand Recorded music continues to be a cultural inf luence on society because it provides an enduring, shared means of communication that is experienced individually and collectively. In this sense, our emotional attachment to music makes it inextricable from the lives of others, and how we feel about them, and recorded music allowed us to control these intimate interactions and reactions. For almost a century, recorded music has met our needs and been available at our beck and call like a friend who knows exactly what to say to make us feel what we want to feel, and to stop talking when we don’t want to hear anymore. We have become accustomed to controlling the aural environment for intra- and interpersonal effects, and sharing experiences through media with or without the physical presence of others. As we surround ourselves with music, we expect to be able to tune our emotions through environmental control. Although earlier research has focused on using upbeat music to maintain positive moods and limit negative moods, more recent work has closely explored how sad music offers psychological motivations and strategies. Individuals use sad music to experience emotional connections and trigger memories (Van den tol & Edwards, 2015). Sad music is pleasurable if it is non-threatening, aesthetically pleasing, and produces psychological benefits like empathy (Sachs, Damasio, & Habibi, 2015). Furthermore, exploratory work with adolescents found that music can temporarily increase negative feelings and make users feel worse in the process of ref lecting on or venting negative feelings. Ultimately, this process made users feel better (Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007). As Elton John said, “sad songs say so much” (1984). Sad music allows us to immerse ourselves in current emotions and feel less lonely by connecting to past emotions by re-activating earlier experiences. This capacity to connect to emotional and mental states across time has been essential to the widespread adoption of recorded music and its catalytic effect on the American psyche. In the same way that we can control our own emotions, we can control the emotions of others through recorded music. We can now deploy professional quality music in private and public spaces, thus setting a mood—including an intimate or sexual mood, a party mood, a relaxed mood, a somber mood,

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or any aural ambiance. However, the ability to affect others with specificity via music is more than emotional responses; we can activate collective images and memories with very specific versions of very specific songs through many of the processes described in the section on theatrical film and memory. Tchaikovsky’s Romeo & Juliet Overture might serve as a mental placeholder for romance, whereas John Williams’ theme from Jaws can elicit fear and apprehension with just a few notes. Images of war reverberate through Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” (1856) and the tumultuous 60s resonate in the opening chords of Jimi Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower” (1968). Robert Zemeckis expertly deploys music of different decades to activate memories of historical events throughout the 20th century in the 1994 film Forrest Gump; “in so doing, he is ensuring the effect of bonding between spectator and spectacle as well as spectator to audience” (Lapedis, 1999, p. 371). Prior to recorded music, groups and identity were largely constructed by geographic location; that is to say that we developed community with those that were like us and physically close to us. With recorded music, we could connect with others via music regardless of physical proximity and despite listening alone. Digital technologies have further accelerated this opportunity as musicbased communities do not need to wait for live shows—instead, they can connect via social media to talk about or engage with the music. This is evident in popularity of youth-created music videos in the early days of YouTube and current platforms like TikTok, where young people lip-sync to their favorite songs ( Kendrat & Corsbie-Massay, 2019). Whereas communities once created music, music can now create community because individuals have control of music. Even with the plethora of multimedia opportunities on demand in the 21st century, including streaming movies and television, web videos, and social media, recorded music still consumes a large quantity of our resources, both cognitive and digital. Given our continued love for recorded music, the constant drumbeat that the music industry is on the verge of collapse is surprising. These claims seem to be less about the demand for music, instead signaling anxieties regarding the business of music and its ability to commodify distribution in the 21st century. We consume recorded music in abundance and embrace technologies that guarantee high quality immersive aural experiences wherever and whenever we demand it and that enable us to access it on demand, with surround sound technology, home stereos, waterproof Bluetooth speakers, and even underwater headphones. Recorded music has become the soundtrack to American life, and we love it because it packages and delivers closeness, with both ourselves and others. The truth is that we love recorded music because it satisfies our needs without asking for anything in return. For the record, the Beastie Boys’ show was amazing and I was grateful for the experience. Unfortunately, “Fight for Your Right” did not make the set list that night. My 5-year-old self was devastated. We love recorded music because, in its exactness, it allows us to share experiences with our past selves. The live

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performance would not have been the version that I wanted to hear: the 3 minutes and 29 seconds from Licensed to Ill. It would have been reinvented and remixed, which would have been awesome, but nonetheless something completely different. As Prince said in 2011 on The George Lopez Show, “covering the music means that your version doesn’t exist anymore”—even if that means covering your own song. We loved that recorded music made us feel—in some kind of specific way—simply by pushing play.

Bibliography Balkwill, L.-L., & Thompson, W. F. (1999). A cross-cultural investigation of the perception of emotion in music: Psychophysical and cultural cues. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17(1), 43–64. Boon, S. D., & Lomore, C. D. (2001). Admirer-celebrity relationships among young adults: Explaining perceptions of celebrity inf luence on identity. Human Communication Research, 27(3), 432–465. Bovill, M., & Livingstone, S. M. (2001). Bedroom culture and the privatization of media use. London: LSE Research Online. Byron, T. P., & Fowles, L. C. (2015). Repetition and recency increase involuntary musical imagery of previously unfamiliar songs. Psychology of Music, 43(3), 375–389. Cassidy, G., & MacDonald, R. (2009). The effects of music choice on task performance: A study of the impact of self-selected and experimenter-selected music on driving game performance and experience. Musicae Scientiae, 13(2), 357–386. Cohen, J. (2004). Parasocial break-up from favorite television characters: The role of attachment styles and relationship intensity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 21(2), 187–202. collectivecadenza. (2012, August 28). 8 milestones in recorded sound. cdza. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://youtu.be/zTuZ7PzJkOI Damasio, A. R. (2006). Descartes’ error. New York: Random House. Denora, T. (2000). Music in everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Durkin, K. (2006). Game playing and adolescents’ development. In P. Vorderer & J. Bryant (Eds.), Playing video games: Motives, responses, and consequences. New York: Routledge. Fritz, T., Jentschke, S., Gosselin, N., Sammler, D., Peretz, I., Turner, R., . . ., Koelsch, S. (2009). Universal recognition of three basic emotions in music. Current Biology, 19(7), 573–576. Gee, J. P. (2008). Video games and embodiment. Games and Culture, 3(3–4), 253–263. Giles, D. C. (2002). Parasocial interaction: A review of the literature and a model for future research. Media Psychology, 4(3), 279–305. Gleason, T. R., Theran, S. A., & Newberg, E. M. (2017). Parasocial interactions and relationships in early adolescence. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 255. Goldman, D. (2010, February 3). Music’s lost decade: Sales cut in half. CNN Money. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/ napster_music_industry/ Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299. Haake, A. B. (2011). Individual music listening in workplace settings: An exploratory survey of offices in the UK. Musicae Scientiae, 15(1), 107–129.

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Hargreaves, D. J., & North, A. C. (1999). The functions of music in everyday life: Redefining the social in music psychology. Psychology of Music, 27(1), 71–83. Hepach, R., Kliemann, D., Grüneisen, S., Heekeren, H. R., & Dziobek, I. (2011). Conceptualizing emotions along the dimensions of valence, arousal, and communicative frequency—implications for social-cognitive tests and training tools. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 266. John, E., & Taupin, B. (1984). Sad Songs (Say So Much) [recorded by E. John]. On Breaking Hearts [vinyl recording]. Santa Monica, CA: Geffen. Juslin, P. N., & Laukka, P. (2003). Communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: Different channels, same code? Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 770–814. Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1973). Uses and gratifications research. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 37(4), 509–523. Kendrat, S. J., & Corsbie-Massay, C. L. (2019). I want my YouTube! Trends in early youth-created music videos (2007–2013). In J. Schulz, L. Robinson, A. Khilnani, J. Baldwin, H. Pait, A. A. Williams, . . ., G. Ignatow (Eds.), Mediated millennials. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited. Labbé, E., Schmidt, N., Babin, J., & Pharr, M. (2007). Coping with stress: The effectiveness of different types of music. Applied Psychophysiological Biofeedback, 32, 163–168. Lapedis, H. (1999). Popping the question: The function and effect of popular music in cinema. Popular Music, 18(3), 367–379. Levitin, D. J., & Cook, P. R. (1996). Memory for musical tempo: Additional evidence that auditory memory is absolute. Perception & Psychophysics, 58(6), 927–935. Lincoln, S. (2016). Bedroom culture: A review of research. Space, Place and Environment, 1–19. Lonsdale, A. J., & North, A. C. (2011). Why do we listen to music? A uses and gratifications analysis. British Journal of Psychology, 102, 108–134. Lundqvist, L.-O., Carlsson, F., Hilmersson, P., & Juslin, P. N. (2009). Emotional responses to music: Experience, expression, and physiology. Psychology of Music, 37(1), 61–90. McFerran, K. S., & Saarikallio, S. (2014). Depending on music to feel better: Being conscious of responsibility when appropriating the power of music. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 41(1), 89–97. Mehr, S. A., Manvir, S., Knock, D., Ketter, D. M., Pickens-Jones, D., Atwood, S., . . ., Glowacki, L. (2019). Universality and diversity in human song. Science, 366(6468). Mitchell, L. A., MacDonald, R. A., Knussen, C., & Serpell, M. G. (2007). A survey investigation of the effects of music listening on chronic pain. Psychology of Music, 35(1), 37–57. Nielsen. (2017, November 2). Time with tunes: How technology is driving music consumption. Nielsen Media. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/ article/2017/time-with-tunes-how-technology-is-driving-music-consumption/ North, A. C., Hargreaves, D. J., & Hargreaves, J. J. (2004). Uses of music in everyday life. Music Perception, 22(1), 41–77. Oldham, G. R., Cummings, A., Mischel, L. J., Schmidtke, J. M., & Zhou, J. (1995). Listen while you work? Quasi-experimental relations between personal-stereo headset use and employee work responses. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80(5), 547–564. Panksepp, J., & Bernatzky, G. (2002). Emotional sounds and the brain: The neuroaffective foundations of musical appreciation. Behavioural Processes, 60(2), 133–155.

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Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2006). Message in a ballad: The role of music preferences in interpersonal perception. Psychological Science, 17(3), 236–242. Saarikallio, S., & Erkkilä, J. (2007). The role of music in adolescents’ mood regulation. Psychology of Music, 35(1), 88–109. Sachs, M. E., Damasio, A., & Habibi, A. (2015). The pleasures of sad music: A systematic review. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 404. Siedliecki, S. L., & Good, M. (2006). Effect of music on power, pain, depression and disability. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 54(5), 553–562. Sloboda, J. A. (1999). Everyday uses of music listening: A preliminary study. In Music, mind and science (pp. 354–369). Seoul: Western Music Institute. Sloboda, J. A., Lamont, A., & Greasley, A. (2008). Choosing to hear music. In S. Hallam, I. Cross, & M. Thaut (Eds.), Oxford handbook of music psychology (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steele, J. R., & Brown, J. D. (1995). Adolescent room culture: Studying media in the context of everyday life. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 24(5), 551–576. Stewart, J., Garrido, S., Hense, C., & McFerran, K. (2019). Music use for mood regulation: Self-awareness and conscious listening choices in young people with tendencies to depression. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1199. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 7–24). Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall. Tarrant, M., North, A. C., & Gargreaves, D. J. (2001). Social categorization, selfesteem, and the estimated musical preferences of male adolescents. The Journal of Social Psychology, 141(5), 565–581. Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Van den tol, A. J., & Edwards, J. (2015). Listening to sad music in adverse situations: How music selection strategies relate to self-regulatory goals, listening effects, and mood enhancement. Psychology of Music, 43(4), 473–494. Williamson, V. J., Liikkanen, L. A., Jakubowski, K., & Stewart, L. (2014). Sticky tunes: How do people react to involuntary musical imagery? PLoS One, 9(1), e86170. Zillman, D., & Gan, S.-L. (1997). Musical taste in adolescence. In D. Hargreaves & A. C. North (Eds.), The social psychology of music (pp. 171–187). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

3 CONSUMER MARKET CAMERAS

My first camera was a long, thin 110-film camera with a very large f lash attachment. I don’t recall the brand, but I do remember never being able to load the film myself. As an only child, my camera was like a friend. It allowed me to document and converse with myself about interesting events and observations, much as one would with a close friend or sibling. I took pictures of my stuffed animals, my room, my life. I often turned the camera on myself, snapping selfportraits. These pictures never came out well—I couldn’t see the picture I was taking, and had to wait days for the film to be developed at the local pharmacy, but I still kept snapping. In 1995, a picture of myself came back that looked good. Although it was almost two decades before the term “selfie” would become the word of the year according to Oxford, this self-portrait made me feel pretty—a difficult process for any 14-year-old American girl. I kept that picture for years and looked at it when I felt sad or depressed, or questioned my self-worth. That picture became my own personal self-affirmation. I’ve had several different types of cameras over the years. My collection included point and shoot cameras, an old 35mm Pentax, a Polaroid i-Zone that printed sticker pictures instantly, webcams, and digital cameras (see Figure 3.1). Although each of these technologies let me capture my own reality and perspective, they each offered something different. There was a feeling of anticipation and excitement with the point and shoot cameras because I never knew exactly how the photos would look. The Pentax made me feel like a “photographer” because of the elaborate requirements to get “the shot.” The i-Zone was my first and only Polaroid and provided instant gratification that was worth pictures that cost more than $1 each. Low resolution webcams and digital cameras allowed me to take an almost infinite number of pictures and

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Left: Pentax K1000 35mm (1978); right: Polaroid i-Zone (1999): Two film cameras from my collection that are decades apart and drastically different in opportunities to capture, ref lect on, and share moments, but represent the diversity in the communication environment resulting from the medium of consumer market cameras.

FIGURE 3.1

Image Credit: Hannah Frankel, Jessica Elizabeth Stewart

instantly check the quality. However, all these cameras allowed me to capture and share my own individual perspective by turning the camera on myself and my own life. Chapter 1 described how the potential of theatrical film draws on and impacts the process of memory encoding and retrieval by creating realistic images that document and demonstrate a perspective that is then interpreted and internalized by the viewer. Although consumer market cameras impact the same memory processes, users can take control of which moments to capture and which stories to tell. Through consumer cameras, we capture and curate moments that we anticipate wanting to remember. We also systematically amplify happy memories and edit or excise sad memories, a sharp departure from written records like family bibles, which dispassionately documented all types of important events, including births, marriages, and deaths (Milgram, 1976). Whereas the earlier theatrical film and recorded music offered intimate moments with the mass audience by creating and activating collective memories, consumer market cameras allow users to capture their own memories, thus making their intimate perspective public.

Take a Picture, It’ll Last Longer Since the invention of photorealistic documentation in the mid-19th century, capturing, printing, and replicating images has become essential to American culture and the American psyche. In the early years of cameras, this opportunity was reserved for professionals with extensive technical knowledge and those with the means to hire them. In 1900, Eastman Kodak sparked the

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shift toward amateur photography by introducing the $1 Brownie camera, thus democratizing the opportunity to document every life. The consumer market responded, and over 250,000 units were sold in the first year of production ( PBS, 1999). Sales of consumer market cameras increased slowly over the next few decades but began a steady and systematic climb at the end of WWII with increases in disposable income, the post-war baby boom, and the proliferation of camera brands and models. Analysis of annual reports from the major camera companies revealed a jump in sales from less than $250 million in 1950 to over $1.2 billion in 1960, solidifying photography as an all-American activity. Consumer market cameras are inexpensive cameras that can be used by non-professional photographers with little technical expertise. Much of the discussion about consumer market cameras revolves around the content—the images that users created with these technologies. Comparatively little work explores the impact of the opportunity to capture, revisit, and share images, moments, and memories. As a technology, consumer market cameras were a major turning point in the transition from media consumers—whose value was defined by their ability to purchase and consume industry-generated content— into content producers. The term user-generated content emerged in the 21st century to describe the proliferation of content produced by non-professional users given the greater availability and access of low-cost, user-friendly digital recording devices. In this chapter, I argue that these technologies only magnified behaviors and expectations that had been seeded decades earlier with the advent of mid-20th century consumer market cameras. The marketing of consumer market cameras promoted a rhetoric of need among consumers; similar to record players and eventually television and radio, cameras were a must-have item in order to record life’s most important moments (see Figure 3.2). This strategy acknowledges that the visual experience is “perishable” (Sontag, 1977, p. 62). That is, consumers needed to make intangible moments tangible by “placing [them] on a more permanent record” (Milgram, 1976, p.  519). Interestingly, advertisements for cameras (then and now) often neglect the resulting pictures. Instead, advertisements for consumer market cameras imply that simply taking a picture of a moment was sufficient to “capture” it. The opportunity to record one’s own experiences and perspective has become so standard that we often neglect to consider how this massive shift in media production disrupted our psychological expectations in the 20th century. Cameras can freeze moments in time, activate emotions, and tell stories by manipulating the aspects of the image in frame such as perspective or focal points. Furthermore, the photographer can instantly access memories by ref lecting on images and create memories in others by sharing their photographs. The capacity to create and share content almost effortlessly quickly became routine, and Americans’ expectation of agency and control over the documentation of their own lives became normal. The rest of this chapter will

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FIGURE 3.2 Ad for Eastman Kodak (1910): Advertising for consumer market cameras promoted the ability to capture family history for posterity, thus emphasizing the value of lives and moments as determined by the user. “Make Kodak your family historian . . . let it keep for you an intimate pictoral history of the home and all who are in it.”

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explore how Americans have developed a relationship with the capacity to easily capture, ref lect on, and share moments.

Capturing Moments Prior to consumer market cameras, there was significant cost to hiring professional artists, including painters, sculptors, or photographers. Therefore, visual documentation was reserved for people or events that were perceived as important or for those in power, thus ensuring that these people and events were represented in history, or the documentation of the past. That which was deemed valuable was recorded. However, corollaries of this statement are also perceived as true. We regularly observe the following logic statements when determining whether something has worth: that which is not valuable is not recorded (inverse), that which is recorded is valuable (converse), and that which is not recorded is not valuable (contrapositive). In each of these statements, the value of something is intimately associated with its documentation and a lack of documentation is assumed to indicate a lack of value, including locations, events, objects, and people. Consumer market cameras disrupted these associations. Events could be photographed because they were personally valuable to the user, independent of its social value, demonstrating a paradigm shift in recorded memory and human history. There is a bidirectional relationship between documentation and memory. We capture moments because they are important, and moments become important because they are captured. According to Stanley Milgram, “a photograph does not only record events. It creates them” (Milgram, 1976, p. 522). Burgess, Enzle, and Morry found that even strangers who take a picture together report greater similarity and affinity with each other; they argue that “the camera is communicative; it is a social instrument that says ‘Pay attention: This is an important social event for you’” (Burgess, Enzle, & Morry, 2000, p. 622). With consumer market cameras, anyone could actively participate in documenting life and history, including moments that were socially and individually meaningful, thus imbuing these moments with value. In doing so, they represented themselves symbolically and attained power through mediated representation, which “signifies social existence” (Gerbner & Gross, 1976, p. 182). It is often assumed that documenting events detaches users from the moment, despite the promise of advertisements that using cameras would help remember important moments. Even Stanley Milgram theorized in 1976 that “the photographic act devalues the moment because one trades the full value of the present instant for a future record of it” (Milgram, 1976, p.  520). However, this critique is too simplistic and ignores the phenomenon of focal attention as described in Chapter 1. Users may focus their attention on the object, thus improving memory. Or users may focus their attention to camera functions and photographic quality, thus distracting attention from the target object. Rarely

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do we acknowledge that the purpose and process of snapping photos moderates the effects of photo-taking on memory. Alternatively, users may off load memories by snapping pictures quickly to review later. Research reveals that users who snapped photos of artwork remembered fewer details (Henkel, 2014). This “photo-taking-impairment effect” reveals that snapshots—quick photographs that require little to no effort on the part of the photographer—may inhibit memory. However, the same researcher found that memory was not impaired when users were instructed to zoom in and snap a specific area of the artifact (Henkel, 2014). These seemingly conf licting findings reveal the importance of process: mindful photographs, where the camera serves to reinforce the specific goals of the moment on memory, encourage the user to consider the subject more deeply. Individuals who are asked to make their “pictures creative, beautiful, and meaningful to you” report improved mood and appreciation of their surroundings compared to individuals who are asked to “capture the best view of the subject matter” (Kurtz, 2015, p. 355). Furthermore, users are no longer restricted by a limited film strip and are free to record anything and everything, including personal emotions, events, and observations. Whereas early photography focused on isolated, infrequent, and exceptional events, the increasing availability of consumer cameras has shifted the practice of user-generated photography toward an affirmation of the individual (Van Dijck, 2008) and individuated play, resulting in more experimental photography. As the camera became a ubiquitous tool, users begin to find the beauty in their everyday lives. Users could take multiple shots of a given moment, resulting in images that feature multiple frames. Users were even free to be inspired by their own existence—to be their own muse. This is more than an exercise in narcissism; in my 2015 TEDxSyracuseUniversity talk, I defend selfies, “not as mindlessly captured, compulsively shared, and quickly discarded narcissistic droppings, but as effortful self-engagement” (L’Pree, 2015). Returning to my use of a film camera to take pictures of myself as teenager, it was an opportunity to document my life, my thoughts, and my emotions independent of others. Although I kept journals and diaries, the satisfaction of photography was completely different; I could see me—literally and figuratively—and my early selfies helped me understand myself and express my thoughts and emotions. According to Joseph August Lux, who published one of the earliest theoretical essays on the importance of amateur photography in 1900, “[the true amateur’s] task is the difficult art of seeing” (Lux & Jarzombek, 2001, p. 60). Consumer market cameras gave users a novel way of seeing the world, through the lens of a camera, and invited them to capture life as they saw it.

Reflecting on Moments Not only did consumer market cameras allow users to document their own lives, the resulting photographs also allowed them to revisit and relive these

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moments. Ref lecting on photos enabled a new way to encode and retrieve memories along with the accompanying emotions (Fawns, 2013) by activating areas of the brain associated with self-referential processing, visual and spatial memory, and recollection (Cabeza et al., 2004). Old pictures are invaluable to us because they are proxies for memories. Materially, they are tangible representations of people, places, and events, and we experience a sense of loss when photo albums vanish. As such, photographs can aid those suffering from dementia by allowing the individual to freely associate with a more familiar time without the demands of the present (Yasuda, Kuwabara, Kuwahara, Abe, & Tetsutani, 2009). However, this research investigates the immediate effects of looking at photographs; few scholars have explored why users’ are motivated to spontaneously look at past photos, despite the cliché trope of someone mournfully ref lecting on memories via photographs. This is an essential component to understanding the impact of this 20th century media on long-term psychological habits and practices. Looking at pictures of oneself can aid in the formation of one’s autobiography. By looking at pictures, we summon memories and literally revisit people, events, and times past—and construct a coherent sense of ourselves. Jacques Lacan proposed a mirror phase, a stage of human development, before language develops. In a mirror phase, a child develops a coherent sense of self by gazing at full-bodied individuals, either itself in the mirror, caregivers, or mediated representations (Lacan, 1968). Lacan argues that this is the beginning of conf licts between the individual imagined self and the supposedly objective symbolic self that carries meaning in society. The onscreen representation of the self can even affect perceptions of belonging and self-worth, especially when one’s expected self is not presented onscreen (Corsbie-Massay, 2012). Seeing oneself onscreen—or even someone similar to oneself—is implicitly satisfying because it affirms one’s existence and value in the larger culture. Lacan’s theory has been largely applied to moving images and theatrical film, which present coherently coordinated and socially valuable representations, but when applied to consumer market cameras, Lacan’s theory explains the American (and human) embrace of user-generated photography. Not only do consumer market cameras disrupt the expectations of industry-produced images, users could, by ref lecting on representations of their own life, also construct their own distinctive symbolic self. How we organize photos also reveals the role of consumer market cameras in the American psyche through this photos-as-mirror lens. Prior to the widespread adoption of digital cameras and display platforms (e.g., cell phones, laptops, websites) in the late 20th and early 21st century, personal pictures were either stored as unorganized stacks of individual prints, organized photo albums, or individual photos in frames or wallets—allowing for the collecting of, conversing about, and narrating memories respectively. Unorganized stacks of snapshots represent human memory and identity at the most basic

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level: a collection of moments and memories that are important and essential to who we are—even if we are largely unable to describe in detail the specific images in these piles of photos. Organized photo albums or collections convey an extended narrative about a set of experiences clustered in time and serve as a tangible manifestation of our autobiographical stories. Finally, individual photos embody important individuals and events that define who we are—we keep these moments separate from other photographs because they trigger our experiences and we use them to start conversations (Van House, 2009). In addition to capturing moments that users found valuable, consumer market cameras allowed users to ref lect and revisit these moments easily. They enabled the opportunity to literally see the faces and feel the emotions of our own lives and the lives of those around us. We no longer must remember the face of a loved one who has passed; they too are documented for posterity, and the capacity to ref lect on them imbues them with value. Although only a few decades old, the opportunity to externalize memories, in both capturing and revisiting them, taps into our most fundamental psychological tendencies. As a partner, consumer market cameras allow us to value ourselves with the push of a button, simplifying a previously lifelong process. Users are eager to revisit captured memories, perhaps because—like recorded music—it allows us to control our emotions and memories on a very individuated and personal level.

Sharing Moments Whereas ref lecting on moments is to use one’s pictures for oneself, users can also share images to connect with others and display their identity. The person we present to others represents and is integrated into our sense of self (CorsbieMassay & Maragh-Lloyd, 2019), and seeing someone’s photos—in their wallet, home, office, or social media profile—is a common experience that reveals how valuable photos are as representations of individuals and their publicfacing identities. In 2014, almost two billion photos were shared online each day ( Edwards, 2014). Sharing pictures can improve our self-esteem and mood, remind us that our existence is meaningful, and help us take control of our spaces, making them more personally relevant (Scheiberg, 1990; Hollis, 2014; Nabil et al., 2018), all of which are important fundamental psychosocial needs. Sharing our lives is so alluring, we are even willing to forego monetary payment for the opportunity to disclose our opinions and experiences (Tamir & Mitchell, 2012). Much of this research has been conducted in the past 20 years, in the era of social media and digital sharing. However, in the 20th century, sharing photos meant engaging in “collocated” (Van House, 2009) or “copresent” viewing. That is, in order to share photos, the photographer and their viewer were actively looking at the images in the same space and at the same time. This inevitable interpersonal real-world component led to social norms regarding

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the display of photos. Whereas photos in private spaces like the bedroom may be a more personal and intimate representation of oneself for oneself (i.e., for ref lection), photos in public spaces are designed to spark conversation with others (Petrelli & Whittaker, 2010). In the workplace, shared pictures demonstrate that the individual has a life outside of work and are more likely to feature family members, hobbies, and pets (Van House, 2009). This opportunity for shared experiences around one’s own content reinforced the value of the individual given the real-time positive (e.g., “Great picture!”) or negative (e.g., “Ugh.”) feedback. Even neutral, non-reactive observation of others’ photos indicates that the pictures and the life contained within has value and is worthy of one’s time. Interestingly, the popularization of consumer market cameras did not supplant professional portraiture in the 20th century. Department store photography continued into the early 21st century, demonstrating how user-generated content and professionally generated content satisfies different needs and can peacefully coexist. Whereas quick snapshots are taken with the intention to preserve f leeting moments, professional photography captures important moments for which we want high quality images, often with the intention of ref lecting or sharing (e.g., graduations, weddings, baby’s first photo shoot). It was not until the proliferation of digital cameras in the 21st century that department store photo studios began to collapse (Horaczek, 2013), as users could capture infinitely more moments and check them immediately for quality. Despite this newfound opportunity for users to stumble upon professional-appearing content, professional photography still has a place despite the perception that anyone can do it themselves.

Consumer Market Cameras and Being Yourself Consumer market cameras allowed us to be ourselves in our relationship with media technology, an essential gratification and an underrated component of relationships. Whereas earlier mediums provided emotional support, consumer market cameras wanted to see us, wanted us to tell our story, and recognized that we were unique and valuable regardless of others’ opinions. Furthermore, they allowed us to use this novel means of communication to connect both intrapersonally and interpersonally. However, when we talk about user-generated photography in the 21st century, we often consider current phenomena like selfies and the sheer volume of photos shared online as an outcome of digital technology, disregarding the fact that Americans were already accustomed to capturing life and observations that they deem valuable, revisiting tangible memories, and communicating with images. These tendencies have changed the way we interact with and document the present, thus drastically affecting how we think about “history.”

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We snap everything, from the most mundane meals to the most historically impactful events. In doing so, we imbue these experiences with value and ensure that they are documented regardless of whether we will revisit them. By not taking a picture, we risk the moment being lost, either within our own memory or the collective memory—pics or it didn’t happen. In short, consumer market cameras allowed for the intangible to be made tangible, enabling users to insert themselves into history. Consider the photograph of Hillary Clinton on the 2016 campaign standing in front of hundreds of young people’s backs, as everyone attempted to take a selfie with the first female American presidential nominee in the background (Laurent, 2016), ensuring that they too were a part of the historical record (see Figure 3.3). We can all share in this intimate and collective moment alongside hundreds of eager Clinton fans and constituents, creating an important social event that is forever marked in time. Although some have argued that, as the limits on photography are removed with digital technologies, we may be “so busy taking photographs that [we] cease to be fully present in and appreciative of the moment” (Kurtz, 2015, p.  358), we

FIGURE 3.3 Hillary Clinton on the Campaign Trail (2016): As the first woman to earn the position of presidential nominee for one of the two major political parties in the United States, Hillary Clinton’s historic campaign was inspiring to many. At a campaign stop in Orlando, she visited the overf low room to greet hundreds of fans. Instead of shaking hands and taking pictures with each individual, she stepped on a box and invited everyone to take their own selfies with her in the background.

Source: Barbara Kinney/Hillary for America

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now expect the ability to document our everyday lives freely, regardless of the impacts on memory. We have little understanding of the psychological needs that inspire revisiting photos, but it is clear that revisiting photos activates emotions and memories. Even though we do not revisit most of our photos—less than 25% according to one 2019 survey (Hall, 2019)—there is still a fear of losing these tangible memories. Users raised in a digital world expect that their photos will always be available, despite the massive number of photos that are generated daily, or “photo glut” (Herrman, 2018). Several companies promote products that guarantee the security of consumers’ memories and many web platforms have incorporated features that “push” memories to users by highlighting content that was shared years prior. Facebook, Shutterf ly, and Timehop prompt users with past posts, inviting them to jump back in time through pictures, tweets, and videos. As our archives grow exponentially thanks to digital technology, these services become increasingly desirable. We revel in our own life stories and embrace technology that reminds us of our own history, especially if we cannot find the time or the inclination to sort through the thousands of pictures we have captured over the years. Consumer market cameras also made visual communication a means of communication in which anyone could participate. We want to share life’s moments via photos and communicate our experiences with others. As digital cameras and social media reduced barriers to creating and sharing photographs, the practice of sharing content became second nature. The billions of photos uploaded to the internet daily is a testament to how digital images have become a standard communication strategy in the 21st century. We share messages as well as events and emotions through photographs because we can, and sharing becomes a form of public archiving. As a result, “being seen” has now become a standard component of self-documentation and the public sphere. We take and share pictures—and subsequently tell stories—to insert memories in the larger discourse and ensure we are indelibly marked in the public record. We tell the stories we want to tell; we share the moments that we want to share, regardless of preexisting social norms regarding real-world photos. Although some may chastise “oversharers” or people who share “too many” pictures publicly on social media, this shaming does not result in less sharing, revealing that the psychological need to share trumps the need for social approval. When displaying pictures, we also invite feedback—a essential part of communication. We start conversations when we show our pictures to others. They are a way to interact with others in the real world, whereas online, we rely on comments and conversations—and possibly reply pictures—as well as mediated engagements. We track how many people have viewed or engaged with posts even if they do not explicitly respond with comments. Mobile apps like Snapchat even encourage communication through photos instead of text-based messages. According to Snapchat’s first commercial, released in early 2018,

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“Snapchat is a camera, where how you feel matters more than how you look,” where “a snap says more than a text” ( Johnson, 2018). This is the digital evolution of the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Photos are proxies for memories, and our very memories have become diversified. According to Lux, “everything must interest us [amateur photographers] from the sidewalk to the chimney. . . . There exist no instructions” ( Lux & Jarzombek, 2001, p. 63). I love taking pictures, and especially pictures of people taking pictures; I have now created a memory of someone else creating a memory and their memory-making is now part of my story as well. This is an example of why we love cameras, because they allow us to write our own story, constructing it in real time with the events that we choose to capture. Cameras helped Americans learn to love ourselves, because the pictures we take, review, and share are still a representation and embodiment of our selves.

Bibliography Burgess, M., Enzle, M. E., & Morry, M. (2000). The social psychological power of photography: Can the image-freezing machine make something of nothing? European Journal of Social Psychology, 30, 613–630. Cabeza, R., Prince, S. E., Daselaar, S. M., Greenberg, D. L., Budde, M., Dolcos, F., . . ., Rubin, D. C. (2004). Brain activity during episodic retrieval of autobiographical and laboratory events: An fMRI study using a novel photo paradigm. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16(4), 1583–1594. Corsbie-Massay, C. L. (2012). Racial and gender exclusion affect novel group identity (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. Corsbie-Massay, C. L., & Maragh-Lloyd, R. S. (2019). Developing and defending mixed identity: Lessons from the Caribbean diaspora. In J. Retis & R. Tsagarousianou (Eds.), The handbook of diasporas, media, and culture (pp. 547–561). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Edwards, J. (2014, May 28). PLANET SELFIE: We’re now posting a staggering 1.8 billion photos every day. Business Insider. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www. businessinsider.com/were-now-posting-a-staggering-18-billion-photos-to-socialmedia-every-day-2014-5 Fawns, T. (2013). Memory and meaning: Digital differences. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press. Gerbner, G., & Gross, L. (1976). Living with television: The violence profile. Journal of Communication, 26(2), 172–199. Hall, A. (2019, April 24). “Selfie generation” will never look at most of the photos they take on their phones. Mirror. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.mirror.co.uk/ tech/selfie-generation-never-look-most-14573040 Henkel, L. A. (2014). Point-and-shoot memories: The inf luence of taking photos on memory for a museum tour. Psychological Science, 25(2), 396–402. Herrman, J. (2018, November 29). It’s almost 2019. Do you know where your photos are? New York Times. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/ style/digital-photo-storage-purge.html Hollis, E. (2014). The memory place: A book of lost interiors. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint.

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Horaczek, S. (2013, April 5). Sears and Walmart shut down in-store portrait studios. Popular Photography. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.popphoto.com/ news/2013/04/sears-and-walmart-shut-down-store-portrait-studios/ Johnson, L. (2018, March 31). Snapchat takes a jab at Instagram and calls itself a “Camera” in first TV campaign. Adweek. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www. adweek.com/digital/snapchat-takes-a-jab-at-instagram-and-calls-itself-a-cameracompany-in-first-tv-campaign/ Kurtz, J. L. (2015). Seeing through new eyes: An experimental investigation of the benefits of photography. Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 11, 354–348. Lacan, J. (1968). The mirror-phase as formative of the function of the I. New Left Review, 51, 71–77. Laurent, O. (2016, September 26). The story behind Hillary Clinton’s epic group selfie. Time Magazine. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://time.com/4508252/ hillary-clinton-epic-selfie/ L’Pree, C. (2015, May 15). Psychology of selfies. TEDxSyracuseUniversity. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://youtu.be/mzMERmRKtwU Lux, J. A., & Jarzombek, M. (2001). Artistic secrets of the Kodak. Thresholds, 60–63. Milgram, S. (1976, June 3). The image-freezing machine. New Society, 1, 7–12. Nabil, S., Talhouk, R., Trueman, J., Kirk, D. S., Bowen, S., & Wright, P. (2018). Decorating public and private spaces: Identity and pride in a refugee camp. Extended abstracts of the 2018 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. Retrieved June 25, 2020 from http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/35629/1/Talhouk%20 et%20al%20-%20Decorating%20Public%20and%20Private%20Spaces.pdf PBS. (1999, October). The film and more transcript. PBS. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.pbs.org/ktca/americanphotography/filmandmore/transcript1.html Petrelli, D., & Whittaker, S. (2010). Family memories in the home: Contrasting physical and digital mementos. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 14(2), 153–169. Scheiberg, S. L. (1990). Emotions on display: The personal decoration of work space. American Behavioral Scientist, 33(3), 330–338. Sontag, S. (1977). On photography (Vol. 3). New York: Doubleday. Tamir, D. I., & Mitchell, J. P. (2012). Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(21), 8038–8043. Van Dijck, J. (2008). Digital photography: Communication identity, memory. Visual Communication, 7(1), 57–76. Van House, N. A. (2009). Collocated photo sharing, story-telling, and the performance of self. International Journal of Human-computer Studies, 67, 1073–1086. Yasuda, K., Kuwabara, K., Kuwahara, N., Abe, S., & Tetsutani, N. (2009). Effectiveness of personalised reminiscence photo videos for individuals with dementia. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 19(4), 603–619.

SECTION 2

Regular Media— Synchronizing Experiences

Regular media are communication technologies that disseminate messages at standard specified intervals, requiring users to synchronize their behaviors in order to engage—because of this synchronized broadcasting, regular media are integrated into the everyday lives of users. Successful relationships benefit from regularity, or the quality of being stable and predictable, through habitual interactions, and broadcast technologies like radio and television mimic these interactions. They provide messages around the clock, ensuring that users can engage with information, entertainment, and major cultural events from the comfort of their own homes. Prior to radio and television (network and cable), most messages were transmitted via storage mediums, and therefore the transmission of messages was limited to the speed at which physical objects could be transported. As a result, individuals engaged with the same messages but rarely at the same time. Although near-immediate transmission of content was available through late-19th century wireless technologies like the telephone and telegraph, these technologies were largely used for one-to-one communication, not mass distribution of messages. The widespread adoption of radio and television in the mid-20th century allowed for the immediate transmission of audio and visual content, literally connecting audiences nationwide through synchronous experiences. Furthermore, media can only be regular if it is regularly available, and the placement of radios and televisions in the home also ensured that the device itself was a part of daily life and the overall family structure. These developments, coupled with the broad array of content available through radio and television, marked a key point in the progression of the American psyche and our structured relationship with media technologies.

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Regular mediums do not just make content available. By streaming a constant f low of synchronized content, they allow users to individually participate in collective activities. Because televisions and radios were used in private environments, this virtual participation existed independent of the associated social expectations of being in public—we could attend the Academy Awards in our underwear. At the same time, users relied on and trusted the featured personalities, as well as the networks and channels, living with a perpetual omniscient and well-connected companion who shared news, music, entertainment, and advertising, linking their home seamlessly to a more complicated and diverse world. This opportunity evolved over the course of the 20th century from radio to network television to cable television: radio was a worldly audio-only storyteller, television added video to create a more f leshed virtual companion that sought the adoration of the largest audience, and cable targeted our specific needs and desires in order to make niche audiences feel special. Each of these technologies simultaneously exploited and affected Americans’ sense of community, culture, and identity by providing a f lowing stream of messages, establishing shared schedules, and fostering a concrete image of American identity directly into users’ homes.

Flow and Accessing Information This embrace marked a shift in the communication environment from a model of pull media—where users would actively seek out content—to a model of push media—where users could access a stream of messages by simply turning on a device. Loges (1994) notes that this unending stream of information works like a “canary in coal mine,” which served as an early warning to coalminers of harmful gasses underground. Audiences rely on media because of a psychological need for information and producers deployed programming strategies to retain users over extended time periods in a phenomenon Raymond Williams describes as “f low” (Williams, 1974, p. 94). Similar shows were scheduled in a single evening, program hosts linked shows explicitly to retain audiences and programming tricks like bumpers ensured that programs f lowed seamlessly. This constant f low was unique to broadcast media and an outcome of regularly accessible information that commodified user attention by selling “eyeballs” to advertisers, or the guarantee that users would attend to advertising messages. Originally conceptualized to describe television programming, f low can be used retroactively to describe streaming practices of radio. Together, these strategies helped broadcasters retain the largest possible audience over time. For users, f low made the experience of listening and watching more similar to community interactions—conversations and content would naturally drift from one topic to another and retain users’ engagement over time. For centuries, individuals needed to be in the same place (collocated) at the same time (copresent) to be simultaneously aware of current events, and radio and

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television emulated these experiences virtually. Being aware of and talking about the events in a community is essential to feeling like one is part of a community (Baumeister, Zhang, & Vohs, 2004; Shibutani, 1966); to not be aware, or to have one’s awareness delayed, inhibits one’s feelings of community. The phrase “FOMO” (Fear of Missing Out) has been popularized in recent years to describe the phenomenon of 24-hour connectivity through digital and mobile media, but this sentiment was present in the mid-20th century as information was synchronized and perpetually available through radio and television.

Synchronizing Schedules Regular media required users nationwide to synchronize their schedules in order to engage with broadcast content. Sharing schedules ensures individuals adopt community behavioral norms, explicitly and implicitly, thus fostering feelings of community and entitativity ( Lickel et al., 2000) by ensuring that all members are simultaneously aware of and engaged in the same activities. Prior to broadcast media, patterns of regular community participation were evident in neighborhood activities like festivals, fairs, speeches, and worship or calls to prayer. Unfortunately, the psychological impact of shared experiences in shared time but at different locations (copresent but not collocated) remains largely unexplored by psychologists, despite the critical research in sociological and cultural studies regarding televised events as cultural phenomena that connect through routine and standardization (Ellis, 2004). This section seeks to inform this under-served area of research. Over time, users came to depend on media for habitual use and companionship, a psychological phenomenon that continues into the 21st century. The convention of habitual consumption was not common in prior mass media like theatrical film and recorded music; although some users were “regular” moviegoers or avid fans of live music, there was no expectation that schedules would be synchronized or that others would engage with specific content as part of a collective routine. By contrast, television and radio were integrated into users’ schedules as users engaged with these technologies daily: morning talk shows during breakfast, evening news before dinner, and late-night talk shows before bed. Commonly referred to as appointment viewing, users’ favorite weekly programs required them to be in front of the television at a designated time. Entire blocks of programming—like NBC’s “Must-See TV” on Thursday nights or ABCs “TGIF”—demanded regular watching habits, or else users might miss out. Yearly and semi-yearly events like the Super Bowl, Grammys, and Olympics became important moments in the collective calendar. Regular media helped foster a national culture that felt local by connecting users with no former contact or connection, thus synchronizing concrete norms, conventions, and a sense of community and culture. As these opportunities became normal, a cultural

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expectation emerged that users would engage with content regularly. Phrases like “water cooler conversation”—discussing the previous night’s programming at work—and “spoiler alert”—notifying conversation partners that one may give away the ending or a plot twist before they have engaged with specific content—speak to the cultural expectation that people would watch a show as soon as it was available. Because radio and television broadcast throughout the day, users could integrate their media use into their daily schedule. Suddenly, there was a new opportunity for synchronization across physical distant communities, allowing users to commune via regularly scheduled programming.

Community, Culture, and Identity Benedict Anderson argued that the rise of communication infrastructures helped people to imagine themselves as part of the same nation, “conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (Anderson, 2006, p.  7). By participating in shared rituals and circuits of culture, users found themselves affected by what Anderson terms “synchronic novelty.” That is, people could see themselves as “living lives parallel to those of other substantial groups of people—if never meeting, yet certainly proceeding along the same trajectory” (Anderson, 2006, p. 188). To engage with content as it is happening is to be a part of a national community. A community is a group of people living in the same place or having shared characteristics, which can result in feelings of fellowship. A shared identity emerges when these communities and connections with others impact individuals’ self-perceptions. Although any U.S. citizen may be categorized as “American,” the idea of an “American identity” emerges when members within this category exhibited shared norms, beliefs, and behaviors. A shared identity means that the attitudes and actions of the group are internalized by individual members such that their self-perceptions are affected by the status of the group. Prior to broadcast media, there was a national ethos of the United States, but the national identity was a combination of localized communities loosely connected through rhetorical and political design. Radio and television used regular f low to promote social norms and customs, including food, dress, language, and major celebratory events. This ensured that national characteristics and their associated expectations were widely known, shared, and engaged with by each individual member regardless of geographic disparity. In short, broadcasting forged “a link between the dispersed and disparate listeners” and promoted “a sense of communal identity” (Morley, 2000, p. 106). By participating in this extended stream of information, users integrated the information gleaned from broadcast media into their norms of social reality in a phenomenon called “cultivation” (Gerbner & Gross, 1976). Broadcast media disseminates messages about the world to users who construct perceptions of the world from repeated engagement with message trends (Hawkins & Pingree, 1980). The widespread adoption of broadcast

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media coincided with the emergence of a cohesive American community and national identity, as these technologies provided a window into the norms and practices of a typical American—despite the inherent impossibility of such a thing—thus providing a tangible representation of American-ness that was then integrated into the schemas of individual users and deployed as exemplars of the larger group, despite its inherent bias toward the majority group.

Expectations of Regularity in the American Psyche Regular media helped to establish a social environment wherein individuals could synchronize experiences in time. In this way, regular media codified the American community through feelings of localness and fostering a social expectation of engagement with this newfound cultural channel despite disseminating largely corporate-produced national content. Widespread adoption of radio and television and the associated opportunity for individuals to share experiences in real time made it possible for them to ask the questions: “Where were you when?” Where were you when Kennedy was shot? Where were you on 9/11? The rest of this section will closely analyze the three mediums that launched the psychosocial shifts endemic to the mid-20th century: radio, network television, and cable television. In this section, Chapter 4 discusses how radio drastically affected Americans’ relationship with communication technology. It could be used for multiple purposes, including news, entertainment, advertising, and companionship, and for multiple members of the family. This psychological reliance on an omniscient source of information is foundational for understanding the multipurpose adoption of 21st century media like smartphones and social media. Chapter 5 explores how network television coupled this reliance with expectations of multimodal domestic accessibility, which, over time, encouraged Americans to expect access to any and all media content from the comfort of their home. Network television also granted them virtual access to previously exclusive events like the presidential inaugurations and places they could not visit, like outer space. Chapter 6 expands on this argument, describing how cable television diversified the broadcast spectrum, ensuring that users could gratify their unique media needs through 24-hour hyper-targeted programming. By allowing and encouraging users to selectively participate in specific conversations, cable television seeded the widespread embrace of echo chambers that would come to define 21st century social media. We often focus on the negative impacts of business conventions when discussing regular media. The potential of radio and television was tempered by the longstanding business practices of the media industry, resulting in an illusion of choice and an availability paradox wherein users have access to abundant information but choose to rely on a few sources to reduce cognitive load, each of which will be described in the following chapters. Through radio,

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network television, and cable television, American audiences became habituated to expecting an abundance of information and options within the home. However, instead of engaging with all of the content that was available in order to expand our world view, we selectively engage with a limited amount of content that reinforced their preexisting world views, a behavioral norm that has come to define 21st century media.

Bibliography Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso Books. Baumeister, R. F., Zhang, L., & Vohs, K. D. (2004). Gossip as cultural learning. Review of General Psychology, 8(2), 111–121. Ellis, J. (2004). Television production. In R. Allen & A. Hill (Eds.), The television studies reader. London: Routledge. Gerbner, G., & Gross, L. (1976). Living with television: The violence profile. Journal of Communication, 26(2), 172–199. Hawkins, R. P., & Pingree, S. (1980). Some processes in the cultivation effect. Communication Research, 7(2), 193–226. Lickel, B., Hamilton, D., Wieczorkowska, G., Lewis, A., Sherman, S., & Uhles, A. N. (2000). Varieties of groups and the perception of group entitativity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 223–246. Loges, W. E. (1994). Canaries in the coal mine: Perceptions of threat and media system dependency relations. Communication Research, 21(1), 5–23. Morley, D. (2000). Home territories: Media, mobility and identity. London: Routledge. Shibutani, T. (1966). Improvised news: A sociological study of rumor. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company. Williams, R. (1974). Television: Technology and cultural form. London: Routledge.

4 RADIO

I often say that I was raised on television, but radio came first. I could listen to the radio without parental supervision before I could watch television in private (see Figure 4.1). I listened to a lot of Top 40 radio (Z100.3) through the 1980s and 1990s, and the morning show was a major conversation topic through middle and high school. Eventually, my musical tastes evolved, and I added a few new locations on the dial: classic rock (Q104.3), alternative rock (92.3 K-Rock), and hip hop (Hot 97.1). Radio was my constant companion, with me in the morning as I got ready for school, in the car as I traveled, and in my bedroom in the evening. In my mother’s office, the local adult contemporary station—WFAS 103.9—played throughout the day, broadcasting inoffensive content, including local news, events, and school closings on snow days. I listened to that station for hours at work because it was perfect for an office environment, and my mother was not the only one who knew this. Local businesses relied on WFAS for ambient sound in their offices and as their telephone hold music. WFAS was on everywhere in Westchester all the time. For me, radio was a conduit to music and, if necessary, live updates about important and timely events. My relationship with radio changed when I started listening to National Public Radio in the mid-aughts. Before that, I had been around people who listened to NPR—including dedicated fans of certain programs like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and Car Talk and people that kept the station on all day—but I never listened to NPR because I didn’t like people “talking at me.” Before discovering NPR, I relied on CNN all day but video was distracting, I couldn’t commute with a television, and advertising-sponsored journalism meant that marketing factors determined content. NPR was different. I could listen while engaging in other activities, on the go, and, as a public radio station, without

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Portable Transistor Radio: Broadcast radio allowed users to engage with live streaming audio content in the home, in the car, and on the go. Despite its brief 20–30 years as a consensus medium, radio offers opportunities that television did not, specifically hyperlocal broadcast, portability, and private listening.

FIGURE 4.1

commercial breaks. Since then, I have been a contributing member of my local NPR station, marveling at the time spent on national, international, and local stories, and the standard practice of listener participation. I never called in, but I attended live tapings while living in Los Angeles and commented online, which led to invitations to contribute on KPCC’s Take Two (2013) and Airtalk with Larry Mantle (2016). In Syracuse, I am a regular contributor on WAER’s Pop Life with Joe Lee. Although I always listened to the radio, NPR was the first time I felt that radio listened to me.

Long Time Listener, First Time Caller Radio marked a paradigm shift in mass communications toward collective synchronized engagement. Prior to radio, audiences accessed content when durable media became available. Newspapers, film reels, and records could take days, weeks, or months to transport, making synchronous experiences impossible. Wireless communications like the telephone and the telegraph enabled the transfer of information around the world almost instantaneously but the telephone was restricted to one-to-one communications, and the telegraph required proficiency in Morse code. Radio allowed users to engage in real time with news and entertainment—including local, national, and global

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conversations—without delay, without special skills, and, as an audio-only medium, while engaging in other activities. Introduced to the consumer market in the early 1920s, radio was in 90% of American homes in just over 20 years (Desjardins, 2018). Currently, radio reaches more than 90% of Americans in every age bracket, making it the most wide-reaching mass medium—54% of Americans use radio daily, less than the 75% that watch television daily, but more than the 45.7% that use social media daily (Nielsen, 2019). The term “radio” is often used synonymously with the content that is transmitted via radio waves. Technologically, radio is the receiver that converts radio waves into audio information, thus allowing geographically disparate audiences to engage with the same audio content simultaneously. It was developed at the end of the 19th century and used primarily for military and interpersonal communication purposes through the turn of the 20th century. Eventually, broadcast radio became widely available in the early 1920s. There are multiple categories of radio technology, including amplitude modulation (AM), frequency modulation (FM), and satellite radio (XM). Unlike theatrical film or recorded music, radio users could not control the order or the pace of the content; they—along with everyone else—were subjected to the content decisions of the broadcaster, ensuring that all users experience the content concurrently in an identical format, leading to an important outcome of regular media: a sense of community. Several aspects of radio distribution and reception made it uniquely valuable as a regular medium during the early 20th century. Radio provided content directly to users, allowing audiences to simultaneously tune into the same audio content regardless of an individual’s geographic location or concurrent activity. Users could listen individually, in small groups or public spaces. They could be at home, at work, commuting between the two, or just sitting on a park bench. They could be dedicated and actively engaged in the experience, or distracted, passive listeners. This diversity of potential engagement encouraged interaction. In 1935, up to 15% of the American population (20 million people) listened to any given broadcast (Cantril & Allport, 1935). Furthermore, content was free once a user purchased a receiver—a major difference from other contemporary media like theatrical film, recorded music, and newspapers that required users to purchase each individual piece of content. Access to synchronized, effectively free content boosted the popularity of radio. Its adoption outpaced telephones—an impressive indicator of the public’s desire for broadcast content over enabling real-time interpersonal interactions. Even during the Great Depression (when users were largely cutting back on unnecessary items), the number of American households with a radio jumped from 10% to 68% between 1925 and 1935. By the end of the 20th century, nearly every home (99%) reported having a radio (Desjardins, 2018). Radio content sampled trends from earlier media, making it familiar to audiences and accelerating its adoption. Radio plays deployed genres and styles

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from both traditional stage performances and the relatively new medium of film. Newspaper formats (e.g., headlines, op-eds) inf luenced news programming. Variety shows sampled the waning genre of vaudeville, but were the most popular evening shows during the golden age of radio (1930–1950) and featured monologues, sketches, musical numbers, and audience interaction anchored by entertainers like Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and Eddie Cantor, as well as George Burns and Gracie Allen, who would also go on to be television pioneers. The unique capacity of radio also created new genres: its regularity spawned live events programming (e.g., messages delivered by politicians, religious services, and sporting events), talk shows, and serial programming like detective dramas and soap operas,1 and its domestic placement allowed for cooking shows and children’s programming. Together, these advances in media content ensured that radio provided something for everyone, making it a must-have device. Earlier media like theatrical film and recorded music required individuals to be collocated—in the same physical location—to experience the same content at the same time. By contrast, radio allowed audiences to simultaneously engage with the same content at the same time, regardless of physical proximity. This freedom enabled the f low of immediate information and collective virtual experiences, radio synchronized audiences and fostered community. Furthermore, the producer and the audience were connected in time, unlike theatrical film and recorded music, which required the physical transportation of storage media, and this synchronicity allowed for user interactivity. Radio producers combined the technologies of radio and telephones to enable listeners to affect programs in real time, creating genres like chat radio, song requests, and radio therapists. These shared virtual experiences made “community without propinquity” (Calhoun, 1998) possible. Given the limited geographic reach of broadcast signals, radio before an era of industry consolidation was “hyperlocal”—it connected communities in relative geographic proximity without the need for immediate physical proximity. Radio started to serve as a virtual town square—a public space used for community gatherings.

Persuading With Audio The practices of radio further evolved as the technology became smaller, mobile, and wearable. AM radios became standard in new automobiles in the 1930s, and FM radios were available in the 1950s. The transistor radio, developed in 1954, allowed users to take their receiver with them, dislodging radio from home environments. Users could now listen to content in comparative isolation, either in physically private spaces or via headphones, creating semiprivate spaces and personalizing the listening experience. Individuals with shared interests or characteristics could tune in to certain shows that resonated with them, thus sharing experiences with like-minded others. These practices transformed radio from a domestic, family-oriented social experience to

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a portable, individual experience, thus fostering personal relationships with radios. According to Cantril and Allport’s The Psychology of Radio, one of the few psychological analyses of the medium that was published in 1935, radio disrupts the circular relationship between performer and audience; contrary to Reeves and Nass’ claim that users are polite to—and expect politeness from— media technologies (Reeves & Nass, 1996), radio liberated listeners from the social expectations of politeness (Cantril & Allport, 1935). Americans’ growing reliance on audio in the absence of visual content was a completely novel experience for many Americans and held unique persuasive potential. Prior to radio, the low cost of newsprint satisfied the need for time-sensitive information that quickly became out of date. Hearing something meant being collocated, or within earshot. As described in the chapter on recorded music, audio has a unique capacity to recreate feelings of presence. Therefore, it is unsurprising that aural information is processed differently than text, visual, and audiovisual content. However, changes in the audio environment are not as easily processed as those in the visual environment; for example, switching between multiple voices via radio can be cognitively overwhelming (Potter, 2000), whereas the visual cues accompanying the switching of speakers simplify processing. Cognitively speaking, pictorial information is primarily processed in the visual cortex in the occipital lobe toward the back of the brain, whereas spoken or verbal information is primarily processed in the auditory cortex in the temporal lobes. Interestingly, text, either written or spoken, is processed between the auditory and visual cortices in a region called Wernicke’s area, demonstrating the overlap in between these two processes. We allocate different attention to different sensory modalities to elaborate visual and audio information differently (Grunwald & Corsbie-Massay, 2006). The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) describes the relationship between effortful processing of messages and their retention and internalization (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). High-effort thinking—otherwise known as the central route of processing—is characterized by high personal relevance, low distractions, high accountability, high repetition, high knowledge, and a high need for cognition. These factors result in more critical engagement with the message. Alternatively, low-effort thinking—otherwise known as the peripheral route—is characterized by low personal relevance, high distraction, low accountability, low repetition, low knowledge, and low need for cognition. Unlike theatrical film or newspapers, which require the user’s focused attention to process the associated information, radio users could choose whether to engage effortfully, switching between high and low effort processing depending on the time of day, mood, personal motivation, availability of resources (e.g., time), distractions, and content, especially given the assortment of available programming. Using radio for important news that is relevant to people’s daily lives may result in high-effort thinking or the central route, whereas using radio for entertainment or as supplemental background noise may result in low-effort thinking or the peripheral route. When content is processed via

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low-effort thinking, users can still be persuaded through superf luous cues like catchy slogans or aesthetically pleasing music and psychologically credible voices (Belin, Fecteau, & Bédard, 2004; Albright, Richardson, Kempe, & Wallace, 2014; Belin, Boehme, & McAleer, 2017). Some studies have explored the effects of message modality on elaboration and persuasiveness (Booth-Butterfield & Gutowski, 1993; Chaiken & Eagly, 1983), but the effects of audio-only persuasion have received only limited research attention. In reviews of source effects in communication and persuasion, only 8% of studies manipulate audio ( Wilson & Sherrell, 1993; Corsbie-Massay, 2016), but there is little consensus on the impact of audio compared to other modalities (Braverman, 2008; Smith & Shaffer, 1995; Appiah, 2006). Furthermore, users were no longer captive audiences as with theatrical films in theaters to watch films, resulting in a major disruption in the practice of engaging with media. Audiences were now free to listen to content at their discretion, tuning into programs in the beginning, middle, or end, but they were also likely to miss out on essential cues. Unlike print media and recorded music, information that had been traditionally deployed to judge the credibility of content was no longer perpetually available if users tuned in late, were not paying attention, or if the transmission was disrupted. There was no guarantee that users would be aware of and apply all of the available information, including speaker introductions, conf licts of interest, essential narrative components, and program genres. This exponential increase in possible user interactions sparked a paradigm shift in strategic persuasive communication strategies. For example, according to Cantril and Allport, radio producers started to use more succinct language and direct points, stating that “a radio argument need not be sound nor complete, but it must be well organized” (Cantril & Allport, 1935, p.  8). This emphasis on style over substance would eventually come to define the latter half of the 20th century. Similarly, voice and an accessible personality became particularly important; the most popular evening programs were hosted by stars of the stage, including Al Jolson, Jack Benny, and Bob Hope. By deploying these known celebrities, radio conventions simultaneously relied on and reinforced parasocial relationships to manipulate processing effort and emotional connections. These programs also used the first and second person of language and clever openings to create a connection with the audience. Phrases like “my friends” directly addressed users individually while simultaneously acknowledging the larger community. Each of these strategies garnered users’ attention and encouraged personal connections, with both the hosts, and—as will be argued in the next section—the device.

Trusting the Device as a Source The rapid rise in radio adoption habituated users to a high level of content availability, or the extent to which content can be easily retrieved when

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desired. For centuries, individuals had to leave home to acquire information or to be entertained. News became domestically available with home delivery of the newspaper in the mid-19th century, and home entertainment became possible with recorded music. Although books were available, their cost was largely prohibitive for many users before the mid-19th century. Furthermore, radio marked an important convergence of media technologies where a single device could gratify multiple needs, a shift from earlier patterns of usage wherein different mediums had been used for different purposes—newspapers for news, theatrical film for entertainment2—thus disintegrating the social divisions between content according to platform. Research into the relationship that users develop with their devices has revealed that users now become emotionally attached to their smartphones because these technologies gratify a wide diversity of needs on demand (Elhai, Levine, Dvorak, & Hall, 2017; Song, Larose, Eastin, & Lin, 2004; Rubin, 2008; Magsamen-Conrad, Dowd, Abuljadail, Alsulaiman, & Shareefi, 2015; Emanuel, 2015). Radio exhibited these characteristics almost a century earlier when it established a one-stop media shop for all emotional and information gratification, seeding an environment wherein communication technology became a trusted source. Radio was a perpetual all-inclusive window into the world and quickly became a trusted companion by mimicking interpersonal communications. Radio was part of the daily domestic experience, and much like a houseguest who could not outstay their welcome, it was simultaneously entertaining and engaging but not too distracting and disruptive. According to Cantril and Allport, Radio is a guest in the home and therefore caters to the expectations of the home. . . . The radio is a modern substitute for the hearthside, and a family seated before it is obedient to its own conventional habits and taboos. (Cantril & Allport, 1935, p. 15) Radio had become regular, repetitive, and omnipresent in everyday American life, and this increased availability was accompanied by decreased user attention and greater variance in user interactions with content effortlessly switching from the center of attention (i.e., foreground) to an ambient presence (i.e., background). This newfound possibility for developing trust disintegrated the traditionally straightforward relationship between the source and the audience, resulting in the massive shifts in persuasion strategies described earlier. In response, users could either become more effortful and critical in their radio engagement or place their trust in the device; the latter is clearly easier. Instead of selecting the specific content—as with theatrical film or recorded music—users would select a specific channel or program and accept whatever content their chosen outlet provided. This negotiated strategy was a compromise between actively reading the content and passively accepting messages.

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It relied on easily distinguishable characteristics, such as the channel on the dial, radio personalities, and program formatting cues. This reliance and passive engagement with radio helped users come to trust the radio to satisfy their needs, which in turn fostered an affinity for and a personal relationship with the device. This trust is evident in the shift in casual references to information sources, from branded outlets (e.g., “I read it in the New York Times”) to the device (e.g., “I heard it on the radio”), a tendency that has become even more pronounced with social media streams (e.g., “I get my news from social media”). Uncritical trust in a medium resulted in one of the most discussed instances of media-induced panic. In 1938, Orson Welles’ adaptation of War of the Worlds, which featured a fictionalized newscast of a supposed alien invasion in New Jersey, led many listeners to interpret the radio play as a real, non-fiction news broadcast (see Figure 4.2). They trusted it because it used all the associated narrative tropes and audio cues of news programming, and many listeners missed the initial disclosure that the program was entertainment and not actual news

Orson Welles’ Adaptation of War of the Worlds: Welles interpreted the science fiction classic as an original radio broadcast and deployed traditional cues of live radio. The American relationship with radio as an honest source of up-to-theminute information about current events discouraged critical engagement with a (fictionalized) news story about aliens.

FIGURE 4.2

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coverage (PBS American Experience, 2013). They were also dealing with pervasive anxiety resulting from global tensions that would lead to World War II. Although the number of actual listeners who were legitimately duped is debatable, front page stories on newspapers around the nation testified to the legitimacy of the panic: the Boston Daily Globe announced “RADIO PLAY TERRIFIES NATION,” Chicago’s Herald and Examiner read, “RADIO FAKE SCARES NATION,” and Denver’s Rocky Mountain News called it a “HOAX.”

Communicating Contemporaneously The national impact of the War of the Worlds broadcast also reveals one of radio’s unique potentials in comparison to its predecessors: the capacity to engage geographically disparate audiences at the same time. Prior to radio, mass media content was produced long before it was shared and user feedback could not be integrated to affect the original product. At best, users could submit letters to producers in hopes of affecting the later content (e.g., letters to the editor). Radio ensured that producers and audiences were connected in real time, thereby establishing a virtual community. Communities are defined by their shared interests and experiences. Similarly, radio also fostered feelings of familiarity through synchronized activity, thus changing the collective understanding of the American community and identity. According to Cantril and Allport, “no crowd can exist, especially no radio crowd, unless the members have a lively ‘impression of universality.’ Each individual must believe that others are thinking as he thinks and are sharing his emotions” (Cantril & Allport, 1935, p. 8). Users are aware that they are experiencing events at the same time as other listeners even if the rest of the audience is virtual and intangible. Their sense of shared community is indelibly impacted by the knowledge that an unseen multitude of Americans are listening synchronously, even if they are not interacting. These new social connections and shared virtual experiences were promised to audiences at the inception of radio by electronics companies eager to sell devices. Promoted as an essential component for any home and designed to fit in with living room furniture, early radio ads touted the capacity of the device to improve the domestic experience by bringing the world into the home. An early ad for Atwater Kent Radio invited users to summon “singers, musicians, story-tellers . . . as easily as you would turn a page of this magazine” (see Figure 4.3). Users were also promised that simply having a radio would expand experiences and make users more sophisticated by allowing them to virtually visit locations and activities while never leaving the comfort of home (see Figure 4.4). These promises were reinforced in the Federal Radio Act of 1927, which established the Federal Radio Commission—this agency would eventually

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Ad for Atwater Kent Radio (1927): Contrary to Cantril and Alport’s warnings of the authoritarian potential of radio, advertising for radio emphasized how users could take advantage of the new opportunities of broadcast technologies by accessing and controlling the world from one’s living room. “They’re all about you this very minute, waiting for your summons—singers, musicians, storytellers—a band of minstrels beyond the power of King or Caliph to command before the days of radio.”

FIGURE 4.3

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FIGURE 4.4 Ad for Sensitone Regenerative Radio Receiving Set (1922): Despite the hyperlocal nature of radio’s limited broadcast signals, advertising for radio promoted the opportunity to connect with content and culture across geographic distances. “Shelbyville, MO., hears concerts in Havana, Cuba. A user in Winnipeg, Can., hears Fort Worth Texas, and Schenectady, N.Y.”

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become the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) in 1934—to control and monitor access to the broadcast spectrum. Broadcast licenses were awarded to individuals or organizations that advanced “public interest, convenience and necessity.” This acknowledged that radio was unique because it could reach wide segments of the audience and demanded legislation to protect the public need for information access and democracy. Similarly, Cantril and Allport acknowledged the potential for unethical radio use in 1935: “men in every country of the globe will be able to listen at one time to the persuasions or commands of some wizard seated in a central palace of broadcasting, possessed of a power more fantastic than that of Aladdin” (Cantril & Allport, 1935, p. 3)—although the fears of rising fascism in Europe echo through this foretelling. The printing press had been widely adopted across the Western world for over 300 years by 1927, and yet no documentation had been established regulating its usage or the associated messages. Radio transmits to users within range, making it an inherently local medium. However, the business of radio encouraged local stations to contract with national networks to streamline content production and distribution. This fostered real-time national conversations and established a national community that felt local. This seeming paradox of national-as-local was essential to the emergence of an American identity in the 20th century and the emergence of the “general American public.” National broadcasts like FDR’s fireside chats addressed the American public as a single entity, thereby reinforcing this sense of homogeneity. It is estimated that 81 million Americans tuned into President Roosevelt’s address to Congress the night of December 8, 1941 (Brown, 1998), where he labeled the previous day, “a date which will live in infamy.” Similarly, 62 million Americans tuned into Roosevelt’s fireside chat on December 9, 1941 ( New York Times, 1946) as he addressed the nation using first- and secondperson language to describe the recent history of Europe and Asia and how “we” find “ourselves” in this war. Simply being aware of shared events is not sufficient to construct a community; community requires engaged and active participation. Radio’s capacity to synchronize experiences redefined the collective understanding and impact of “liveness” for interactivity. Live broadcast is commonly understood to mean that content is being produced and distributed in real time, which allows users to participate and affect content as it is being created, but it is also used to indicate that content was not staged, regardless of whether it is distributed at a later time, or even time distribution of pre-produced content. Although not all of these definitions allow for actual interactivity (i.e., affecting the content through one’s actions), they all allow individual users to share content as a common experience. By sharing experiences in temporal proximity but without geographical proximity, audiences can connect with others immediately and purposefully. Despite differences, these definitions of liveness universally allow

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users to engage in simultaneous virtual experiences, thus fostering feelings of entitativity ( Lickel et al., 2000) and community. However, it must be acknowledged that Black, rural, and poor Americans were largely left behind in radio acquisition, thus furthering their marginalized status within the American community and collective identity. According to census data from 1940, radio adoption among non-white families was half (43.3%) that of white families (86.6%). Only 7.5% of “Negro” families reporting owning a radio in the home. Rural ownership was about 20% behind urban rates, and the South was about 30% behind the Northeast until 1950 (Craig, 2004). These groups adopted radio as it was losing its status as a consensus medium to television in the 1950s. Because radio was no longer the primary focus of media industry, marginalized groups, including Black Americans and farm workers, could take advantage of the low production costs and use radio as a tool of rebellion against mainstream (read: white, urban, middle-upper class) belief systems (Ward, 2004; Williams, 2005; Hilliard, 2003). Users could then listen synchronously in private, making the radio a distinctive conduit to forging subcultural identities and social organization.

Radio and Worldly Availability Although the reign of radio as the consensus medium was comparatively short with the rise of its younger cousin, television, it set the stage for a culture of broadcast that would be embraced with network and cable television in the latter half of the 20th century. After radio, Americans expect and demand to have the world constantly streaming in their home and the freedom to engage with media unencumbered by social expectations. We fell in love with radio because it could be with us all the time, providing anything we might want. It gave us access to local, national, and international news, our favorite music, and interesting people and stories, and it generally served as the most sophisticated and entertaining companion one could have. Radio ensured that Americans could access entertainment and information, thereby immediately gratifying multiple needs in their home. In 1939—barely 20 years after its entry into the consumer marketplace—most Americans (79%) said that they would give up going to the movies if forced to choose between moves and radio. Only 14% said that they were willing to give up radio ( Levine & Levine, 2010). The world was vast and valuable, and not having a radio meant depriving yourself and your family of relevant local, national, and global information and culture. Furthermore, users did not need to dedicate their attention to radio because it filled the home with information and culture, thus creating a richer ambient environment in which to go about your everyday tasks. This approach continues to be embraced throughout the second half of the 20th century and defines the American understanding of

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media in the 21st. We live in a hyper-mediated environment where content is omnipresent. Although Williams did not describe the phenomenon of “flow” until 1974, this approach to audience engagement emerged and evolved with the potentials of radio. In the 1920s and 1930s, the BBC treated radio as an “occasional resource like theater, cinema, or the concert hall” (Scannell, 1986, p. 18) discursively discouraging continuous use. However, over time, it became evident that users were integrating the radio into daily life. In this sense, it became similar to a “domestic utility—always on tap like water, gas or electricity—it must always have an available content” (Scannell, 1986, p. 18). In the 21st century, “streaming” describes the availability of content via digital streaming services, which sequence content automatically through algorithm-determined playlists that require little effort on the part of the user. Features like autoplay on YouTube and Spotify Radio simulate the experience of radio, but lack the unique technological opportunity for synchronized engagement. It is clear that the conventions of radio, and broadcast content in general, maintain an important place in the Americans psyche. Digital technology in the 21st century, including smartphones and social media, inherited much from radio. We now rely on a single outlet for information, entertainment, and other emotional needs; over three-fourths of American adults own a smartphone and check it an average of 80 times per day (Perrin, 2017). The discussion of smartphone dependence is intimately related to the convergence of needs that the technology can gratify, a social and technological trend that was seeded by American use of radio. Radio demonstrated that users will embrace technology that streams content and gratifies many of their emotional and informational needs, even if they do not have nuanced control over the experience. However, in order to cope with an unending stream of content, users came to trust media technology above and beyond their own capacity to judge messages independently. Even with novel audio opportunities, like portable digital music players, streaming services, and podcasts, broadcast radio offers interesting and gratifying content however and whenever with little effort. We use radio alongside other activities; currently, 66% of out-of-home listening happens in the car and 31% happens at work (Nielsen, 2019). We love radio because it meets us wherever we are. In 2015, Angie Martinez, a DJ on Hot 97 and “the voice of New York,” spoke at Syracuse University about her experiences as a radio host on 9/11. She was not a journalist, an expert, or a pundit, but fans desperate to make sense of events turned to her for support; they wanted to hear her experiences and share their own. In her words, “radio is right there. It’s with you. . . . You treat your listeners like your friends. It’s a friendship.”

Notes 1. Serial narratives had been featured in newspapers and magazines (see Sherlock Holmes in the Strand Magazine, a monthly magazine in the UK), and extensive

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research has explored how these unique narratives can engage users and affect behavioral and attitude change, especially around health messages internationally (Storey, Boulay, Karki, Heckert, & Karmacha, 1999; Farr, Witte, Jarato, & Menard, 2005). 2. Newsreels were often explicitly separated from the featured film.

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Grunwald, T., & Corsbie-Massay, C. (2006). Guidelines for cognitively efficient multimedia learning tools: Educational strategies, cognitive load, and interface design. Academic Medicine, 81(3), 213–223. Hilliard, R. L. (2003). Farm and rural radio in the United States: Some beginnings and models. In The one to watch: Radio, new ICTs and interactivity (pp. 201–208). Rome: FAO and Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Levine, L., & Levine, C. (2010). The fireside conversations: America responds to FDR during the Great Depression. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lickel, B., Hamilton, D., Wieczorkowska, G., Lewis, A., Sherman, S., & Uhles, A. N. (2000). Varieties of groups and the perception of group entitativity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 223–246. Magsamen-Conrad, K., Dowd, J., Abuljadail, M., Alsulaiman, S., & Shareefi, A. (2015). Life-span differences in the uses and gratifications of tablets: Implications for older adults. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 96–106. New York Times. (1946, May 26). CBS says 25,217,000 heard Truman Friday. New York Times, p. 24. Nielsen. (2019, June). Audio today 2019: How America listens. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.nielsen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/06/audio-today-2019.pdf PBS American Experience. (2013, October 29). War of the worlds chapter 1. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-war-worlds-chapt-1/ Perrin, A. (2017, June 28). 10 facts about smartphones as the iPhone turns 10. Pew Research Center. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/ 2017/06/28/10-facts-about-smartphones/ Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 19). New York: Academic Press. Potter, R. F. (2000). The effects of voice changes on orienting and immediate cognitive overload in radio listeners. Media Psychology, 2, 147–177. Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rubin, A. M. (2008). Uses-and-gratifications perspective on media effects. In J. Bryant & M. B. Oliver (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (3rd ed., pp. 165–184). New York: Routledge. Scannell, P. (1986). Radio times: The temporal arrangements of broadcasting in the modern world. In P. Drummond & R. Paterson (Eds.), Television and its audience: International research perspectives: A selection of papers from the Second International Television Studies conference. London: BFI Pub. Smith, S. M., & Shaffer, D. R. (1995). Speed of speech and persuasion: Evidence for multiple effects. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21(10), 1051–1060. Song, I., Larose, R., Eastin, M. S., & Lin, C. A. (2004). Internet gratifications and internet addiction: On the uses and abuses of new media. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 7(4), 384–394. Storey, D., Boulay, M., Karki, Y., Heckert, K., & Karmacha, D. M. (1999). Impact of the integrated radio communication project in Nepal, 1994–1997. Journal of Health Communication, 4(4), 271–294. Ward, B. (2004). Radio and the struggle for civil rights in the South. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

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Williams, J. (2005). Black radio and civil rights: Birmingham, 1956–1963. Journal of Radio Studies, 12(1), 47–60. Wilson, E. J., & Sherrell, D. L. (1993). Source effects in communication and persuasion research: A meta-analysis of effect size. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 21(2), 101–112.

5 NETWORK TELEVISION

I watched a lot of television as a child. A lot—like eight to ten hours a day. If I was awake and not in school, I was watching everything from early television like The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy, educational television like Sesame Street and Square One TV, afternoon cartoons like Chip N Dale and Animaniacs, “quality television” like All in the Family, and trash TV like Jerry Springer. I was a latchkey kid and an only child; I would come home after school, turn on the television, and plant myself on the couch for hours. We only had seven channels, and I knew all their schedules. I could recite the song intros by heart and would sing along at full volume. I could intuitively estimate the length of commercial breaks and jump between channels. I watched so much television that my mother would feel the set when she came home from work to see if it was warm, then reprimand me for watching too much TV. In response, I learned to switch sets between programs to avoid overheating the box. I still am an avid fan of television in adulthood, but my programming choices are much more deliberate. Although I no longer need to rely on television for up-to-the-minute information with 24-hour high speed internet access, I watch television for live events like sports, awards shows, and breaking news. During the Olympics and World Cup, the television is on for hours at a time. The same goes for election night coverage and a royal wedding. I enjoy turning on a device and knowing that I’m participating in socially relevant events. I also expect that important events will be on television, but this rarely works in my favor. When I was living in downtown Los Angeles, I heard helicopters and sirens outside my window one afternoon. I looked outside and saw nothing. I turned on the television to check for local news coverage and still nothing. The commotion continued, but I assumed that it was a film shoot. After about ten minutes, I got a call from a friend asking me if I was at home. “Yes,” I replied. “Good. Don’t go outside.”

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A Wall of Televisions: Over the past 80 years, television has been derided as a boob tube, an idiot box, and a vast wasteland. However, these monikers are a testament to our tortured relationship with the technology: it is omnipresent and inexplicably alluring, and we are frustrated with its role in our lives. In the top 10 American guilty pleasures, television-related activities rank at #2 (falling asleep watching TV), #9 (binging a whole TV series in one day), and #10 (watching TV all day) (Schmall, 2018).

FIGURE 5.1

A police chase that began in Echo Park had worked its way through Westlake and Silver Lake. It ended in downtown Los Angeles on the corner behind my house after the suspect collided with another car. The suspect fired on police and they returned fire. Streets were shut down in every direction. I went onto the roof of my building, and dozens of my neighbors were there watching the unfolding events. The shootout then became breaking news on local stations, but there was nothing when I originally checked. I expected television to alert me to pressing issues, and when it didn’t, I assumed that there was no issue. I didn’t realize the danger that was in my immediate vicinity. I realized that my psychological dependence on television was predicated on a on the same logic of representation and value described in Chapter 3: that if something is important, it will be on TV.

Where Were You When . . . Television may be the most pervasive and representative medium of the 20th century. It is a window into the world that is situated in the center of American living rooms as well as public spaces like Times Square. It represents and

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shapes American expectations of life by offering a stream of alluring and engaging audiovisual messages available to anyone with a receiver. Writing in 1956, Allan Williams outlined the possibility of television as an educational device, stating that television “holds greater promise for education than any other single development since the invention of the printing press” (Williams, 1956, p. 187). This singular device effectively supplanted earlier communication technologies with its robust, accessible, and varied content. Like theatrical film in its audiovisual experience, television brings the user to places and things far beyond their imagination, but unlike film, television brings the world to the user wherever they are. Like recorded music in its domestic capacity, television can control the environment, alleviate boredom, and provide companionship on demand. However, unlike recorded music, the content is controlled by channels and networks. Like radio in its synchronicity, television connects disparate audiences around the world by livestreaming global events, but adds images and visual information. Together, the power of television were like nothing Americans had seen before. It saturated the American market in its first decade, skyrocketing from 9% of households in 1950 to almost 90% of households in 1960 ( Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition, 1998). It was the medium that came to define the era. The term “television” is often used to describe the programs and industry conventions of television content. However, as a media technology, a television is a device that receives and converts radio waves into audiovisual information. Network television technology in the United States refers to free broadcast content like that of American radio. We must distinguish the technology of network television from the phenomenon of the network era, or the content and business practices accompanying network television technology from its launch in the late 1940s to the launch of cable television in late 1970s. During this time, three major networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) dominated the national airwaves by contracting with local affiliate stations to distribute programming nationally. Many scholars have investigated how these conventions impact viewers, but the current analysis focuses on the sheer capacity to deliver synchronized audiovisual content to users, regardless of conventions and content. Television was first introduced at the 1939 World’s Fair, but only became widely available to the American public after World War II. In the 1940s, moving images were still a recent phenomenon and restricted to movie theaters. Television brought this relatively novel format outside of the theater, and audiences were riveted. Whereas movie theaters restricted access through tickets and limited seating, television made moving images and audiovisual content domestically available, thereby integrating video-based messages into the daily activities of Americans. Even before television achieved the 90% saturation rate in the early 1960s that would come to define the mediated environment

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of the latter half of the 20th century, sitting around the television was a common activity because Americans visit neighbors’ homes with televisions if they themselves were without a set. Television effectively extended users’ daily experiences by offering interesting worldly things not yet seen and turned the home into an interactive learning environment; according to Gerald Lesser, “this is television’s most useful mission” (Lesser, 1974, p. 250). In those post-war years, the media technology of television and its potential was discussed in newspapers, on the radio, and in movies. Early television ads focused on the technical capacities of each brand’s model (e.g., screen size, video quality) and the opportunity connect with others—much like radio a few decades earlier—while television stations and networks produced lowestcommon-denominator programming in order to reach the largest possible audience. This resulted in an informative, f lexible, shared window that presented sanitized, structured, and simple representations of reality at a national scale. This approach led some theorists and regulators to deride television for its negative impact on viewers and, by extension, society. They touted a negative promise, that television promoted an unprecedented level of passiveness, apathy, and inactivity among users. Terms like “boob tube” and “idiot box” dominated the American conversation for decades. In 1961, then-FCC Chairman Newton Minow famously used the term “vast wasteland” to describe the effects of strategies deployed by television broadcasters in order to acquire the largest possible audience, effectively creating a race to the bottom. Driven by rapid growth and public concern about the new medium, television became one of the most researched media technologies of the 20th century. Much of this scholarship has focused on how content impacts viewer attitudes and behaviors. However, American audiences have integrated the media technology of television—a pervasive, omnipresent window—into their everyday lives impacting American psychology, culture, and technological expectations in ways beyond the content alone. The rest of this chapter will describe how the invention and widespread adoption of television normalized regular video communications and the effects of this virtual representation of reality within daily life. Television consistently provided concrete examples of what is normal, important, and expected of all members of the American community. Although the declaration that “television is dead” occurs once or twice a decade with every technology, the psychosocial and cultural trends associated with the invention of television are still present in digital technologies as the content of television and its delivery methods continue to evolve.

Communicating With Video Video communication, or the capacity to connect and correspond through moving images, offered more sensory information across multiple channels. Although the medium of moving images incorporates many of the psychological

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phenomena described in theatrical film, video communication also entails receiving moving audiovisual messages as a form of regular interactions. This communication strategy involves the objective messages afforded with earlier media, as well as non-verbal information from individuals onscreen and the production crew directing the visual and audio production. Although this information was available with theatrical film, these instances were discrete, lasting only a few hours at most. By contrast, television beamed messages through the day directly into the home. The non-verbal components of interpersonal interactions are essential to understanding the impact that television as a communication medium has on viewers. Non-verbal communication is the information that is delivered independent of actual speech or written language; it includes body language, facial expressions, gaze, and voice inf lection. The presence of human faces triggers unique emotional responses not possible with auditory or text-based information, and the reception of messages can be impacted by non-verbal artifacts. For example, the term “I’m fine” can have a wide range of meanings based on the speaker’s body language. Microphysiognomy—the practice of reading personality traits from faces—has been shown to change the interpretation of verbal information, affect decision making, and result in greater confidence in decisions (Hassin & Trope, 2000). Film theorist Béla Balázs described microphysiognomy as the intricate changes in facial expression achieved through close-ups, which can “radiate a tender human attitude in the contemplation of hidden things” (Balázs, 1970, p. 315). He argued that such close-ups ground the viewer in the emotions of the characters. By increasing emotional arousal and demonstrating intentions to communicate (Kampe, Frith, & Frith, 2003; Senju & Johnson, 2009), facial expressions and eye gaze can “provide information, regulate interaction, express intimacy, [and] exercise social control” ( Kleinke, 1986, p. 78), encourage feelings of physical closeness (Argyle & Dean, 1965), and “personalize” stories (Graber, 1990). By allowing for the dissemination of these nuanced expressions as a form of regular mass-mediated communication, television normalized what was once only available via interpersonal interactions. In the early days of television, producers experimented with different capacities of television, including a direct address to the audience in order to foster emotional connections. Failed attempts at connecting with audiences through video communication demonstrate the limited power of the medium. Christopher Walken’s “Continental” on Saturday Night Live featured an aging playboy who used questionable means to entice women to his apartment to engage in non-consensual and lecherous “romantic” activities. The camera is positioned as the woman’s point of view. Walken’s “Continental” is a parody of a show adapted from radio called The Continental that aired on CBS in 1952. It featured, “suave, debonair, sultry-voiced Renzo Cesana, Italian by birth but American by choice,” who provided “a romantic monologue directed to the

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women in the audience” (Brooks & Marsh, 2003, p. 283). The potential of the television to place users into virtual interactions, in this case, passively adopting a submissive intimate position, did not resonate with users, thus relegating it to satirical fodder. The widespread use of television for news, entertainment, advertising, and companionship inspired researchers to investigate how moving images moderate media effects. Programming that uses eye contact—television news, talk shows, and live events—engage with the viewer intimately and involve them in the activities of the program. Feelings of interaction and emotional connection are heightened when media figures turn their head and eyes toward the user (Cummins & Cui, 2014), resulting in a more intense parasocial experience (Hartmann & Goldhoorn, 2011). Even simply nodding one’s head while describing discriminatory information about a group can result in greater implicit agreement with stereotypes (Castelli, Carraro, Pavan, Murelli, & Carraro, 2012). Furthermore, the visual modality enhances the encoding, storage, and retrieval of certain information (Lang, 1995). Moving images can cause viewers to overlook individual names and associate information with categories, groups, or institutions. They can also heighten feelings of personal relevance, and encourage the user to perceive the reporter or narrator as a “legitimate” actor in the situation (S. D. Cooper, 2000). At the same time, “the need for attractive images affected decisions on what to report” (MacDonald, 1993, p. 151), revealing a cyclical phenomenon between available content and user psychology. In these ways, video communication continued the trends of radio for diminished critical engagement and simplified responses to increasingly complicated multimodal stimuli, a phenomenon that is essential to the larger understanding of the psychosocial and cultural effects of television as a medium. According to Neil Postman, “television gives us a conversation in images, not words” (Postman, 1985, p.  7), resulting in massive structural changes to society. This addition of copious information in a new modality was alluring and moving images effectively guaranteed an audience as users shifted toward television and away from other mediums, like newspapers, theatrical film, and radio. As Bruce Woolley said in 1978, “video killed the radio star.” Conversations about the power of communicating with video often feature John F. Kennedy, who is regularly referred to as the first “television president” (see Figure 5.2). His first presidential debate against Richard Nixon was broadcast on television and an estimated 74 million Americans watched (Webley, 2010) the drastic difference in appearance between the candidates. Television amplified Kennedy’s appearance, demeanor, and charm. According to Frank Stanton, president of CBS at the time, “Kennedy was bronzed beautifully. . . . Nixon looked like death” (Druckman, 2003, p.  563). In an often-repeated poll by a commercial research firm, individuals who watched the debate on television were more likely to say Kennedy won, whereas those who listened

FIGURE 5.2 Customers Watching President Kennedy Address the Nation Regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis on Televisions in an Electronics Store (1962): John F. Kennedy is often referred to as the first television president because of his looks, his charisma, and his ability to connect with Americans through the relatively new medium of television. Video information allows users to deploy cognitive assessments that were previously used for interpersonal interactions only.

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to the debate on the radio were more likely to say Nixon won. This disparity led many to claim that television had shifted American attention to appearance over substance. However, a 2003 study revealed that television viewers were more likely to report that Kennedy had won because they were more likely to base their judgments on leadership effectiveness and integrity whereas radio listeners based their judgments on leadership effectiveness only (Druckman, 2003). That is, Kennedy benefitted from the video format because integrity—a characteristic that is difficult to define but which we are quick to determine ( Bryan, Perona, & Adolphs, 2012)—was activated via non-verbal cues.

Repeating Information Regularly The effects of television on learning, memory, and social attitudes are amplified by its capacity to provide regular, repeated video content. Emotionally, regularity and repetition are comforting. We hear and see the same things every day, from billboards and landmarks on our daily commute, to the people in our lives. Psychologically, repeated audiovisual content is more likely to be remembered and recalled because repetition reinforces examples that the user can access when making judgments (Meader, Knight, Coleman, & Wilkins, 2015; Shrum, 1996). In addition, prolonged, regular, and homogeneous content presented through multiple sensory modalities can reduce critical processing (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). Taken together, repetition—especially in the context of video messages that are entertaining—can reinforce norms, including social, behavioral, and cultural. Although advertising, and especially television advertising, relies on repetition, several studies have found that repetition does not improve brand attitudes or purchase intentions (Belch, 1982; Rethans, Swasy, & Marks, 1986; Liebers, Breves, Schallhorn, & Schramm, 2019). However, repeating a single idea fosters a sense of social agreement, a more subtle and insidious outcome that overt attitudes about products. Repetition can foster pluralistic ignorance, the “notion that the public misperceives the opinions and behaviors of others” ( Eveland Jr., 2002, p. 692), leading to individuals endorsing what they perceive to be the group norm, regardless of their own personal opinions or attitudes. The repetition of an issue in news outlets results in greater agreement among audiences of the issue as the “most important problem,” a phenomenon known as agenda setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). With entertainment programming, content analyses reveal distinct trends in media discourse that are in opposition to American demographics, behaviors, or attitudes, and cultivation studies reveal that people who spend more time “in the world of television” are more likely to report that social reality is statistically similar to televised reality (Gerbner & Gross, 1976, p. 180). Television can also model behavior. According to Bandura and colleagues’ social cognitive theory (SCT), viewers learn how to behave from watching

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others, including watching people’s actions through media. Studies demonstrate that exposure to information through video provides the necessary practice to transfer meaning into reality, including acquired knowledge (Bandura, 1976) and behaviors (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961). In the now famous Bobo doll study, Bandura and colleagues demonstrated that children who watched adults play with Bobo dolls in an aggressive manner were themselves more likely to roughly engage with the doll (Bandura et al., 1961). Television models sanction behaviors that may be internalized and mimicked by users, and its capacity to elicit these effects is compounded by its regularity. The practice of television is also defined by its positioning. Domestic placement allows for habitual, non-conscious television use (e.g., morning news shows, evening companionship, late night sleep aid), resulting in competing psychological effects. Whereas its regularity and integration into daily life encourages trust and companionship on par with a partner, the medium is struggling for the attention of users as they engage in other activities within the home, such as cooking, cleaning, eating, sleeping, or engaging with other people. Although this domestic competition was also present with radio, the nature of audio content—as described in Chapter 2 on recorded music—allows users to engage in multiple tasks while listening. Alternatively, television also demands the dedicated visual attention of the user, and producers deployed increasingly sensational content like f lashing graphics, varied volume between content, and bumpers to ensure eyeballs. Designed to affect the psychology of an individual user, these strategies have greater cultural significance when television devices are placed outside the home but continue to broadcast the same content. These attention-grabbing strategies are now everywhere as televisions have become fixtures in banks, waiting rooms, airports, buses, and even taxicabs revealing the psychosocial positioning of television and video communications. The regularity of video content also allows for extended parasocial relationships with media figures, who are now integrated into the daily routine of users similar to real-world social interactions. Whereas earlier media restricted celebrity access to discrete venues, television allowed the user to experience the extended journeys of their favorite media figures, which can have a real-world impact. For marginalized individuals who lack real-world role models, media figures can serve as virtual support systems. Recent research has revealed that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adolescents are more likely to choose LGB media figures as their favorites, especially if they did not have real-world LGB friends (Bond, 2018). Alternately, television can share regular, repeated, intimate stories about individuals the viewer does not have real-world contact with—a powerful way to disrupt longstanding social discrimination. The social contact hypothesis states that contact with members of a stereotyped group is the best method to combat discriminatory attitudes and prejudice (Allport, 1954). Television

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provides a window into the lives of marginalized groups that are often stereotyped. Shows like The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–1977), The Cosby Show (NBC, 1984–1992), and Will & Grace (NBC, 1998–2006) have been credited with impacting the attitudes of the American public by presenting counterstereotypical narratives of working women, Black families, and gay men. However, these programs have also been critiqued for their simplification of complex issues (Gray, 1989; Battles & Hilton-Morrow, 2002) and for leading viewers to believe that discrimination against these groups is no longer an issue ( Jhally & Lewis, 1992; Bodenhausen, Schwartz, Bless, & Wänke, 1995). These contradictory impacts are part of the regular and repetitive potential of television. Television is unique in its ability to repeat messages directly into the home at regular intervals, thereby providing a common understanding of what is important as well as agreed-upon facts and norms around which to engage with others. Users report greater certainty about a concept when there is perceived social agreement, but only when they want to belong to that group (Clarkson, Tormala, Rucker, & Dugan, 2013). In other words, if you want to be a part of a group, and you believe that the group agrees on some idea, then you too may report that you believe this idea strongly. This relationship is bidirectional; as television content streams normative attitudinal and behavioral lessons, users seek out answers to attitudinal and behavioral questions from television. Television’s repetition reinforces central aspects of American culture and imparts knowledge to users about social norms and expectations, encouraging “cultural thickening” (Löfgren, 2001) and fostering social community by producing a shared sense of reality, even if that reality is not real. Although media have served as a source of information before and after television, television established a uniform and concrete window to the world by featuring robust, consistent information through multimodal stimuli, as well as fictional and non-fictional programming. This added to more than a national conversation—it established an American identity. Television helped people understand what it meant to be “American.”

Belonging The desire to belong—feeling like we are accepted in a larger social group—is a fundamental psychosocial need that can be gratified through groups as small as pairs or as large as humanity itself. Groups “directly affect how people perceive their interests and lead to the development of collective, shared interests” ( Turner & Bourhis, 1996, p. 35), and we identify with groups that are personally satisfying, either because they meet various emotional and cognitive needs, or because they are framed as socially valuable. Positive group memberships increase personal self-esteem and satisfy our need to belong. They also provide feelings of control and a meaningful existence by lessening ambiguity

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about our place within society (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). When considering potential groups, we think of our shared interests and whether we will be welcomed. Not seeing one’s demographic group in a larger superordinate group with whom one might share interests can negatively impact feelings of belongingness and worth (Corsbie-Massay, 2012). The ability to observe and practice group participation can encourage an individual to identify with that group even if that group is not personally important to them. In these ways, television can help unite users with a community they feel they belong to. Television embodies clear and vivid representations of national identity by regularly and repeatedly presenting a biased representation of the world that is framed as “normal.” In doing so, it establishes a collective ideal of a “normal American.” By placing this representation in the private domestic space, the media technology invites users to compare themselves to and replicate a mediated exemplar in order to belong. Imagine sitting outside in the cold, looking into a window of a warm, happy family smiling and laughing at a table full of food. This cliché activates feelings of pity for the individual stuck in the cold, but it is also an apt metaphor for the role of television. We sit in our home gazing into a desirable life just out of reach and compare our current situation to what is on the other side. According to social comparison theory, we determine our worth by comparing ourselves to others (Festinger, 1954),1 and television allows us to see individuals who are framed as exemplary group members. It encourages us to replicate their appearances and actions to mirror the group and verify that we belong. This ongoing, shared window affirms viewers’ understanding of the world and satisfies feelings of belongingness. Although sharing an event in real time was initially possible with broadcast radio, television offered a multimodal presentation, allowing audiences to view history through a collective lens as it unfolded. Television can transport audiences from their couch to the rest of the world and beyond in real time. It delivered 600 million to the surface of the moon in 1969, 750 million to the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana in 1981, and 95 million onto Southern California highways as police pursued OJ Simpson in 1994. Furthermore, the placement of television in the home ensured that programming would be part of users’ everyday lives. This ensured that users would regularly experience this simulation of the real world, speaking to an audience of one and an audience of millions simultaneously. Television has the potential to give access to an illusory public sphere where users passively engage with society while still maintaining individual identities within their home. According to Lynn Spigel, television as a home theater “allowed people to draw a line between the public and the private sphere . . . or a line between the proscenium space where the spectacle took place and the reception space in which the audience observed the scene” (Spigel, 1992, p. 199). Watching large televised events became an expectation of national culture and, subsequently, a hallmark of national identity. Participating in these events,

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both real and staged, allowed individuals nationwide to connect with something larger than themselves. During the second half of the 20th century, many major global events were defined by their live news coverage (e.g., the assassination of political leaders in the 1960s, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the attacks of September 11, 2001) and media events, or “[ceremonies] in real space staged for televisual transmission” (Morse, 1998, p. 217), became standardized. Sporting and entertainment events, as well as special programming, like television specials or season finales of popular programs (M.A.S.H. in 1983, Seinfeld in 1998), drove public discourse, and there was an expectation that Americans would be participating in these national activities. Whether broadcasting breaking news or creating standard formats, television constructed, activated, and capitalized on the fundamental need to belong. This expectation of participation with regular media and mediated events affects interpersonal interactions. Not only is the identity of the nation on display, but users also connect with each other through their emotional reactions to these cultural touchstones. This is evident in the question asked about an important event like 9/11: “Where were you when .  .  .” This question acknowledges the uniqueness of a community created around shared virtual experiences. Each person, regardless of their location or status, is expected to recall where they were and how they felt at a unique point in time. Individuals who do not partake in these events are subsequently excluded from social conversation and community involvement, regardless of their personal interest in the content (McDermott, 2019). In the short term, they cannot participate in the watercooler conversations; in the long-term, they are unable to participate in the historical and cultural knowledge of the community. Television elevates specific events to collective experiences, resulting in shared cultural touchstones that users can discuss in order to connect with others.

Network Television and Visceral Availability Despite the rapid advances in video technology on the other side of network television—including cable television and magnetic tape, which will be described in Chapters 6 and 7—as well as a plethora of other mediums including video games and the internet, more Americans still engage with television than any other medium ( Nielsen, 2019), and primetime network programming still rates as the most popular. According to Nielsen, all but nine of the top 100 most watched primetime telecasts in 2019 were on networks2 (Schneider, 2019). American households still watch almost eight hours of television every day (Madrigal, 2018), and many still rely on live broadcast television for media events like sports and awards shows, as well as breaking news. The technology of television, or the opportunity to synchronously access audiovisual content, has been integrated into American life—but we fell in love with television because it was with us all the time, providing robust multimodal messages that

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made us feel deeply connected to others and ourselves. In the wake of network television, American audiences expect to access video communication anytime and anywhere, and that others will be engaging with this content at the same time regardless of geography, allowing everyone to visualize a shared American identity. The paradigm shift toward communicating with video has elevated video communications to the default. Video has largely replaced text and the printed word—the primary form of communication through the 20th century. Building on the need for visual evidence brief ly described in Chapter 3 regarding consumer market cameras, television furthers the bias for visual information over other formats. Nowhere is this more evident than in the meteoric rise of YouTube since its inception in 2005. In 2019, it was estimated that 500 hours of video were uploaded to the site every minute (Hale, 2019). Social media and websites, once heralded as the return of print, now embrace a language of video, and online marketers recommend video ads over still images or text to increase engagement (Newberry, 2019; Cooper P., 2019; Hughes, 2018). The language of images and video as a means of conversing and conveying information is normal in the 21st century, but this trend is rooted in the 20th century technology of network television. Video communication has become a fixture in the American household and the public sphere. Although much of this chapter has focused on free access to television within the domestic space, televisions are ubiquitous in public spaces like lobbies, waiting rooms, buses, and elevators. Together, an abundance of public and private screens creates an environment that ensures Americans can always use television, but this can be in conf lict with industry interests (see Figure 5.3). Several service providers now offer unrestricted access to content at home, on the go, on demand, and more. The common 21st century expectation that video content should be available to the user on their time and at their convenience is an outcome of 20th century shifts in the media environment. The common question “where were you when” emerged through sharing synchronized experiences via television regardless of geographic location and represents one of the most inf luential shifts in social interactions. Events like the assassination of Kennedy in 1963 and the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 drew millions of Americans to television in a desperate attempt to obtain information during situations that were rife with uncertainty. Radio coverage of such historical events was also available, but television incorporated video, making the mediated experience of these events more visceral. The nation was glued to the television on the day of the event and in the weeks after, waiting for updates (Sneed, 2013; Jurkowitz, 2013). This collective national experience can drive connections between strangers who have experienced this similar mediated trauma. However, these social connections are not only reserved to massive breaking events. “Where were you when the last episode of Seinfeld aired?” may not have the same significance but can still connect strangers in

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American Broadcasting Cos., Inc. v. Aereo, Inc. (2014): Aereo allowed subscribers to view live and time-shifted streams of broadcast network television by turning devices into virtual “digital antennas,” fulfilling the promise of network television in a digital era. However, the broadcast networks claimed that the company was infringing on their copyright, and instead, Aereo should pay networks retransmission fees for the opportunity stream their content, similar to cable providers despite the content being technically free via antenna. The court ruled in favor of the broadcasters.

FIGURE 5.3

emotional ways. In the 21st century, social TV—using social media to connect with others in real time during broadcast television events—f lattens this experience such that we can connect with strangers immediately and reveals how the need to connect with others can even be layered on top of television by users in new and novel ways (Ducheneaut, Moore, Oehlberg, Thornton, & Nickell, 2008; Lin, Sung, & Chen, 2016). The widespread adoption of television reinforced the expectation that television is a window that represents reality. The national synchronization of audiovisual content, coupled with the homogenized representation of “American,” encourages users to identify with an overly simplistic cultural representation that lacks the actual diversity of its people. This expectation of what an American looks, sounds, and acts like is constantly presented and re-presented via television and contrasts sharply with the actual diversity of over 325 million individuals spread across 3.5 million square miles of land. Homogenous representations of Americans in entertainment, journalism, and advertising serve to define the national narrative, simultaneously drawing on and reinforcing assumptions of American-ness. Given the desire to have one’s life represented in

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an “accurate” or “appropriate” manner, this mediated exclusion can be painful for groups that have been historically misrepresented (Corsbie-Massay, 2012), thus seeding the psychological environment that would result in an explosion of user-generated content when digital technology made this opportunity available. National network television changed what we expect from media, from ourselves, and from each other. Television allows us to easily connect with others, both temporally and emotionally by providing robust—often emotional— virtual experiences that are shared in real time, which then become the source material by which we understand our community and our place within it. Television’s oracle-like status has become inseparable from our daily lives as it has instilled a habitual need for representation and an understanding of oneself in comparison to fictionalized—and f lawed—norms. Even when we know that television isn’t real, we still love looking to it for the world that we want to be a part of.

Notes 1. We can either compare ourselves with those who are better off than we are (i.e., upward social comparison) or those who are worse off than us (i.e., downward social comparison). Although upward social comparison can negative impact one’s selfesteem, it can also inspire individuals to achieve. Alternatively, downward social comparison can elevate one’s self-esteem by reminding the individual that their situation is not as bad as others. 2. The College Football Championship on ESPN ranked #6 with 24.9 million viewers, but the next cable telecast was an episode of Game of Thrones on HBO at #47 with 16.1 million viewers. More than half of the telecasts (56) were on CBS, 26 of which were episodes of The Big Bang Theory or Young Sheldon; NBC made the list 15 times, FOX 13 times, and ABC 5 times. Interestingly, 37 of 100 were sporting events.

Bibliography Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Argyle, M., & Dean, J. (1965). Eye-contact, distance and affiliation. Sociometry, 28(3), 289–304. Balázs, B. (1970). Theory of the film: Character and growth of a new art. London: Bristol Typesetting Company. Bandura, A. (1976). Social learning analysis of aggression. In E. Ribes-Inesta & A. Bandura (Eds.), Analysis of delinquency and aggression. Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(3), 575–582. Battles, K., & Hilton-Morrow, W. (2002). Gay characters in conventional spaces: Will and Grace and the situation comedy genre. Critical Studies in Media Communications, 19(1), 87–105. Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.

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Belch, G. E. (1982). The effects of television commercial repetition on cognitive response and message acceptance. Journal of Consumer Research, 9(1), 56–65. Bodenhausen, G. V., Schwartz, N., Bless, H., & Wänke, M. (1995). Effects of atypical exemplars on racial beliefs: Enlightened racism or generalized appraisals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 31(1), 48–63. Bond, B. J. (2018). Parasocial relationships with media personae: Why they matter and how they differ among heterosexual, lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents. Media Psychology, 21(3), 457–485. Brooks, T., & Marsh, E. (2003). The complete directory to prime time network and cable shows: 1946-present. New York: Ballantine Books. Bryan, R., Perona, P., & Adolphs, R. (2012). Perspective distortion from interpersonal distance is an implicit visual cue for social judgments of faces. PLoS ONE, 7(9), e45301. Castelli, L., Carraro, L., Pavan, G., Murelli, E., & Carraro, A. (2012). The power of the unsaid: The inf luence of nonverbal cues on implicit attitudes. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42(6), 1376–1393. Clarkson, J. J., Tormala, Z. L., Rucker, D. D., & Dugan, R. G. (2013). The malleable inf luence of social consensus on attitude certainty. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 1019–1022. Cooper, P. (2019, October 30). 25 Twitter stats all marketers need to know in 2020. Hootsuite. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-statistics/ Cooper, S. D. (2000). An effect of the medium in news stories: “The pictures in our heads.” The New Jersey Journal of Communication, 8, 173–188. Corsbie-Massay, C. L. (2012). Racial and gender exclusion affect novel group identity (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. Cummins, R. G., & Cui, B. (2014). Reconceptualizing address in television programming: The effect of address and affective empathy on viewer experience of parasocial interaction. Journal of Communication, 64, 723–742. Druckman, J. N. (2003). The power of television images: The first Kennedy-Nixon debate revisited. The Journal of Politics, 65(2), 559–571. Ducheneaut, N., Moore, R. J., Oehlberg, L., Thornton, J. D., & Nickell, E. (2008). Social TV: Designing for distributed, sociable television viewing. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 24(2), 136–154. Eveland Jr., W. P. (2002). The impact of news and entertainment media on perceptions of social reality. In The persuasion handbook: Developments in theory and practice (pp. 691–727). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117–140. Gerbner, G., & Gross, L. (1976). Living with television: The violence profile. Journal of Communication, 26(2), 172–199. Graber, D. (1990). Seeing is remembering: How visuals contribute to learning from television news. Journal of Communication, 40(3), 134–155. Gray, H. (1989). Television, Black Americans, and the American dream. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 6(4), 376–386. Hale, J. (2019, May 7). More than 500 hours of content are now being uploaded to YouTube every minute. Tubefilter. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.tubefilter. com/2019/05/07/number-hours-video-uploaded-to-youtube-per-minute/ Hartmann, T., & Goldhoorn, C. (2011). Horton and Wohl revisited: Exploring viewers’ experience of parasocial interaction. Journal of Communication, 61(6), 1104–1121.

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Hassin, R., & Trope, Y. (2000). Facing faces: Studies on the cognitive aspects of physiognomy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(5), 837–852. Hughes, B. (2018, December 27). Personalized videos boost social media engagement. Social Media Week. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://socialmediaweek.org/ blog/2018/12/personalized-videos-boost-social-media-engagement/ Jhally, S., & Lewis, J. (1992). Enlightened racism: The Cosby Show, audiences, and the myth of the American dream. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Jurkowitz, M. (2013, November 22). 50 years ago, America turned on the television. Pew Research Center. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2013/11/22/50-years-ago-america-turned-on-the-television/ Kampe, K. K., Frith, C. D., & Frith, U. (2003). “Hey John”: Signals conveying communicative intention toward the self activate brain regions associated with “mentalizing,” regardless of modality. Journal of Neuroscience, 23(12), 5258–5263. Kleinke, C. L. (1986). Gaze and eye contact: A research review. Psychological Bulletin, 100(1), 78–100. Lang, A. (1995). Defining audio/video redundancy from a limited-capacity information processing perspective. Communication Research, 22(1), 86–115. Lesser, G. S. (1974). Children and television: Lessons from Sesame Street. New York: Vintage Books. Liebers, N., Breves, P., Schallhorn, C., & Schramm, H. (2019). Fluency in commercial breaks: The impact of repetition and conceptual priming on brand memory, evaluation, and behavioral intentions. Journal of Promotion Management, 25(6), 783–798. Lin, J.-S., Sung, Y., & Chen, K.-J. (2016). Social television: Examining the antecedents and consequences of connected TV viewing. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 171–178. Löfgren, O. (2001). The nation as home or motel? Metaphors of media and belonging. Sosiologisk Årbok, 14(1), 1–34. MacDonald, F. J. (1993). One nation under television: The rise and decline of network TV. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Madrigal, A. C. (2018, May 30). When did TV watching peak? The Atlantic. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/whendid-tv-watching-peak/561464/ McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176–187. McDermott, J. (2019, July 20). I didn’t watch the moon landing. Esquire. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.esquire.com/news-politics/a28452621/moon-landing-stories/ Meader, A., Knight, L., Coleman, R., & Wilkins, L. (2015). Ethics in the digital age: A comparison of the effects of moving images and photographs on moral judgment. Journal of Media Ethics, 30(4), 234–251. Morse, M. (1998). Virtualities television, media art, and cyberculture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Newberry, C. (2019, November 4). 33 Facebook stats that matter to marketers in 2020. Hootsuite. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://blog.hootsuite.com/ facebook-statistics/ Nielsen. (2019, June). Audio today 2019: How America listens. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.nielsen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/06/audio-today-2019.pdf Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

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Rethans, A. J., Swasy, J. L., & Marks, L. J. (1986). Effects of television commercial repetition, receiver knowledge, and commercial length: A test of the two-factor model. Journal of Marketing Research, 23(1), 50–61. Schmall, T. (2018, July 2). America’s top guilty pleasures revealed. New York Post. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://nypost.com/2018/07/02/americas-topguilty-pleasures-revealed/ Schneider, M. (2019, December 27). Top rated shows of 2019: Super Bowl LIII, “The Big Bang Theory,” “Game of Thrones” dominate. Variety. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/top-rated-shows-2019-game-of-thronesbig-bang-theory-oscars-super-bowl-1203451363/ Senju, A., & Johnson, M. H. (2009). The eye contact effect: Mechanisms and development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(3), 127–134. Shrum, L. J. (1996). Psychological processes underlying cultivation effects further tests of construct accessibility. Human Communication Research, 22(4), 482–509. Sneed, T. (2013, November 14). How John F. Kennedy’s assassination changed television forever. U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.usnews. com/news/articles/2013/11/14/how-john-f-kennedy-assassination-changed-televisionforever Spigel, L. (1992). The suburban home companion: Television and the neighborhood ideal in postwar America. In B. Colomina (Ed.), Sexuality & space (pp.  185–218). New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Turner, J., & Bourhis, R. (1996). Social identity, interdependence and the social group: A reply to Rabbie et al. In Social groups and identities: Developing the legacy of Henri Tajfel (pp. 25–63). Jordan Hill, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5(2), 207–232. Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition. (1998). Tuning in: Communications technologies historically have had broad appeal for consumers. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www. karlhartig.com/chart/techhouse.pdf Webley, K. (2010, September 23). How the Nixon-Kennedy debate changed the world. Time Magazine. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from http://content.time.com/time/ nation/article/0,8599,2021078,00.html Williams, A. S. (1956). Television in education: Possibilities and obstacles. American Journal of Education, 64(4), 187–190.

6 CABLE TELEVISION

I was born 63 days after the launch of MTV. MTV was the benchmark of cool in the 1980s and 1990s, but my mother refused to pay for cable. She argued that I watched too much television already and we didn’t need to pay when network television was free. I got my MTV fix when I spent summers in Soesdyke, Guyana, with my grandfather, who did not have the same concerns. He also had a 15-foot satellite dish in the backyard that allowed us to watch channels from around the world. Two months of every year, I hung out with American video jockeys—or VJs—on MTV in Guyana for hours listening to the hottest music and their celebrity gossip. I was barely a “tween,” but MTV made me feel like I was a cool teenager. I returned from those summers awash in pop knowledge, still connected to American youth culture even though I was overseas. In 1998, MTV launched Wanna Be a VJ—a reality competition that predated Survivor (2000) and American Idol (2002). Jesse Camp, a notoriously freespirited 18-year-old from Connecticut, won the competition in April 1998, just as I was preparing for my first year at MIT with the intention of becoming a geneticist. Sixteen months later, disenchanted with biology, I dropped out and embarked on a journey to “find myself.” I read books, watched TV, and went to San Francisco. My trip coincided with the auditions for Wanna Be a VJ 3, so I went. I loved MTV, I was fairly knowledgeable about music and popular culture, and I thought I’d be good at it. There were already over a hundred people waiting outside the studios before the auditions, so I packed up a sleeping bag and got in line around midnight. It was fun, like a giant sleepover with hundreds of strangers that wanted to be MTV VJs. Nobody slept. At 8 am, the line started to move. Applications included the question: what three albums would you take with you to a desert island? I wrote The Beatles (aka The White Album, 1968), The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein (1976), and

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Voodoo (2000). They herded the crowd into the studio lot, and it took two or three hours before I got to the front of the line. The first round of “interviews” involved reading lines from a cue card. I made it past this first round— apparently, I could read clearly and look into a camera. Then I was asked to wait in a holding room with a hundred other people. After another two hours (and a nap), I sat on a stool in front of a camera and talked with MTV representatives. Thank you for coming out. Just a few questions. Looking at your album choices. . . . When did The Beatles break up? ME: (still tired) I don’t know . . . 1969? 1970? THEM: Ok. Ok. Who is Dr. Funkenstein? ME: It’s an alter ego of George Clinton. THEM: And who is George Clinton? ME: (shocked) You don’t know who George Clinton is? THEM: (blank stares) ME: Parliament Funkadelic? P-Funk? Get up for the downstroke? THEM: (blank stares) ME: (exasperated) It’s funk. Like quintessential funk. THEM: Ok. Thank you for your time. THEM:

I was amazed that representatives for MTV, the source of coolness and music culture for my entire life, didn’t know George Clinton. Upon later ref lection, I realized that they might be testing my ability to explain music to an uninitiated audience. The right answer probably involved a response involving samples in The Chronic (1992) and Doggystyle (1993), but I wasn’t savvy enough to think of it on my tired feet. I didn’t win, but somewhere there is footage of 19-year-old me being interviewed for a position as an MTV VJ.

It’s Not TV; It’s Cable Although rarely discussed as a unique media technology, cable television marked an important inf lection point for the evolution of television in the United States but is rarely discussed as a unique media technology. Cable technology emerged alongside broadcast television in the 1940s, but a freeze by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) prevented nationwide deployment of cable until 1972. In 1984, the Cable Communications Policy Act (CCPA) deregulated the cable industry and the number of television channels quickly proliferated from a scant three networks (plus PBS) to dozens of channels streaming content 24-hours a day. By the end of the century, approximately 65% of American households were wired for cable, accessing almost 200 networks. In 2020, there are now over 800 cable channels that provide niche content, including sports, music, entertainment, lifestyle, shopping, and education. Although cable never surpassed this saturation peak at the end of the

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20th century, the possibilities associated with cable television defined the last two decades of the 20th century and has since become synonymous with the general term “television.” Cable television delivers audiovisual content via coaxial cable that is hardwired to the home or venue (see Figure 6.1). By not depending on radio waves, cable transmits high-fidelity messages on a wider broadcast spectrum, thus allowing for more channels not available over network television. In order to combine the experience of network television and cable television for users, cable providers pay retransmission fees to local stations to simulcast their content, which is freely available. Whereas network television content was free to access once the user had purchased a device and connected an antenna, cable television requires the user to pay a fee to the service provider for access, which meant that service providers had greater control over access. For example, channels and content that had not been paid for could be scrambled. This resulted in two categories of cable television: basic and premium. Basic cable includes channels and content that are purchased as a package from the provider and supported by advertising. By contrast, premium cable channels (e.g., HBO, Showtime, sports packages) and pay per view (PPV) programming were purchased for an additional fee. While they were not directly funded by commercial advertisements, some content was sponsored.

Coaxial Cable: Introduced in the late 1940s in Oregon, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and urban areas, cable television is delivered via coaxial cable that is connected to the home—as opposed to radio waves and antenna—and for which the user pays a fee to the service provider.

FIGURE 6.1

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Cable television would lead to the downfall of the network era described in the last chapter, because of massive changes cable afforded to the media industry, including content, audiences, and business practices. Whereas radio and network television sold devices with the promise of a new media experience, cable channels courted consumers by promising to correct the f laws of network television by offering tailored content, a sharp departure from the lowest common denominator programming of network television. Through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, slogans like “I want my MTV,” “HBO People don’t miss out,” and “ESPN: Everything worth seeing” distinguished cable from traditional network programming and resonated with audiences eager for more niche content. This branding gave consumers a reason to spend extra money for a luxury that would meet their specific needs. Cable television emerged alongside a tipping point in American television ownership: the rise of the multiset household, from 43% in 1975 to 76% by 2000 (Nielsen, 2010), which marked a change in television viewing habits from a collective to an individual experience, making niche marketing—targeting small but dedicated audiences—a particularly successful strategy. With more sets, family members could watch shows independent of others in the household. Cable channels capitalized on this change in ownership by encouraging users to identify with the brand, creating and capitalizing on subcultural identity (Hebdidge, 1979) even within a single household. In the early years, several cable channels relied on third-party video content, archival material, and back catalogs (e.g., HBO, 1972; TBS 1976) in order to fill a 24-hour broadcasting day at a comparatively low cost. Other channels invented ways to produce new content cheaply and quickly. ESPN (1979) introduced SportsCenter, which featured sports news, commentary, and analysis. Similar to radio, the Home Shopping Network (HSN, 1982) featured salespersons discussing products in real time and invited users to call in and contribute. MTV (1981) combined these strategies, airing music videos and promotional content produced by music labels alongside low-budget banter from attractive young people. CNN (1980) was an exception because it provided original high-budget programming throughout the day, functioning like a steady news ticker, and experienced a massive spike in ratings during major news stories. As the medium evolved, cable channels began to create higher-budget original programming with specific audiences in mind. MTV launched Remote Control in 1987 and The Real World in 1990, targeting young Americans interested in pop culture and interpersonal drama. Comedy Central (originally HA!) aired reruns of comedy programming and produced stand-up comedy and new content like Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988–1999) and South Park (1997–). HBO produced documentary series including Real Sex (1990–) and Taxicab Confessions (1995–) as well as scripted programs like Oz (1997–2003), Sex and the City (1998–2004), and The Sopranos (1999–2007) for audiences eager for more edgy programming. In 1996, Fox News and MSNBC launched as

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partisan alternatives for 24-hour news, mimicking the news programming of CNN while targeting specific audiences. The availability of diverse original content helped drive cable subscriptions. Although the genres of television remained largely unchanged through radio and television network eras, cable broke the mold by allowing—requiring— round-the-clock content. This desperate need to fill time, without the same pressing concern for ratings, allowed cable producers to embrace the potential of television described in the last chapter that often went unrealized due to financial demands. Hours of quickly edited footage filled the airwaves, changing the expectations of what “television” could look like. Furthermore, cable channels were subject to less stringent standards regarding obscenity, profanity, nudity, and violence. The subsequent experimentation resulted in new approaches to live programming, new formats like marathon programming, and new genres all together. C-SPAN (1979) aired public programming in its entirety without commercial breaks or concern about “running out of time,” and networks like E! aired live red-carpet footage hours before awards ceremonies officially began on networks. Syndicated programming provided easy content for cable networks, and marathons of reruns could be made available regardless of expected ratings. Channels quickly became known as an alternative “home” for certain shows and branded themselves through these popular programs (e.g., Law and Order on USA). This opportunity satisfied fans, regardless of their interest in the channel’s other programming. MTV, heralded for its innovation in production and business strategies, introduced and promoted entirely new genres of content, including the music video and unscripted television, while also embracing live programming—the Video Music Awards were launched in 1984 and MTV Spring Break was a fixture from 1986 to 2005 (L. Hart, 2016). The network also took advantage of its position as content producer and distributor, featuring marathons of their own shows, as well as clip shows, recycling their own content (e.g., “Best of MTV Spring Break”), thus continuing to attract users. Cable television extended the psychosocial structures and popularity of network television by offering greater content quantity and improved quality. Targeted channels exploited and reinforced a preexisting need to belong to guarantee popularity among users. For a fee, users could access content that was of specific interest to them, regardless of the larger American audience. Cable appeared to solve the vast wasteland problem. Despite consistently lower ratings compared to primetime network programming, cable defined much of the cultural discourse in the last decades of the 20th century. The rest of this chapter describes how the technology of cable resulted in psychosocial trends of guaranteed domestic availability, tailored content that speaks to niche audiences by activating identity, and emotional gratification on demand. In the 21st century digital environment, we now take these phenomena for granted, even though

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the fact that the shift from localized communities, to consensus culture, and back to locally mediated communities, all occurred within the past 150 years.

Guaranteeing High-Fidelity, 24-Hour Content Whereas Chapter 4 on radio made audio content available in the home, and television made video content in the home, cable guaranteed perpetual domestic access to high resolution content. Fidelity and image quality increase feelings of presence in video games and other interactive environments (Alexander, Brunyé, Sidman, & Weil, 2005; Corsbie-Massay et al., 2014; Gerling, Birk, Mandryk, & Doucette, 2013). Although few researchers investigated the psychological impact of image quality, Bracken demonstrated that highdefinition television (HDTV) resulted in greater sense of presence as compared to standard-definition televisions (Bracken, 2005). This increased fidelity, and subsequent increase in presence ensured that users would be more engaged with and psychologically dependent on their television because of its improved ability to enhance emotional responses. Extraneous artifacts can disrupt users’ sense of presence by reminding them of the mediation (Kelly, 2009), but little work has explored the impact of removing extraneous artifacts as was the ability with cable. Furthermore, research regarding feelings of presence and interactive learning environments reveals that authentic context is important and increases enjoyment for the user (Mikropoulos & Natsis, 2011), even though authenticity can be overwhelming by adding in extraneous information that may not be immediately relevant for the task at hand (Grunwald & CorsbieMassay, 2006). However, this research is mostly concerned with interactive spaces where active interaction is essential for user satisfaction, a phenomenon that I will further address in Section 3. The power of perpetually available, high quality video communication becomes evident when we consider the impact of its absence. The improved quality and fidelity, or an honest replication of content, coupled with the absence of extraneous artifacts that were inescapable with over-the-air broadcasting, made it easier for cable users to forget that they were watching television. There was a common expectation in the days of rabbit ears that the signal could fail at any time. Users might sporadically and without warning lose access to content, which can ruin one’s experience and turn a television into an expensive piece of junk.1 Alleviating the fear that content may end without warning also adds context to the impact of cable television on viewers, but has largely been ignored by media effects researchers. Some scholars have investigated the impact of losing access to content in a phenomenon known as “parasocial death”—the negative emotional effects associated with the end of a show or a character with whom the user has developed a relationship (Cohen, 2003; Cohen, 2004; DeGroot & Leith, 2018). This effect is markedly different

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from a temporary inability to access one’s desired characters or content, which may simply engender feelings of frustration and anger with media technology. Cable ensured that users could access a high-resolution representation of the world in the comfort of their own home, thereby altering the expectations of signal quality. This guaranteed content extended beyond signal quality to include programming that f lowed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Whereas network television programmed content in blocks for different demographics and assumed that users would eventually turn away from the television, cable television allowed content to f low indefinitely. This prompts an augmentation of Williams’ theory of f low described earlier. Cable can eliminate barriers between programming and commercials, airing content that synergistically promotes other programs or, conversely, eliminates narrative entirely. “MTV’s greatest achievement has been to coax rock and roll into the video area where you can’t distinguish between entertainment and the sales pitch” (Kaplan, 1987, p. 17). Flow no longer meant retaining audiences between programs or blocks of programs. Rather, cable television discouraged audiences from changing the channel because of its constant stream of satisfying content over extended periods of time. With cable, guaranteeing audience retention could be as simple as reminding them explicitly why they were watching in the first place (e.g., “This is CNN” announced by the incomparable James Earl Jones). Although similar to network television in its use, cable television guaranteed more programs, a greater diversity of content throughout the broadcast day. Whereas signal disruptions due to buildings, weather, or antenna positions were commonplace with radio and network television, the hardwired connectivity of cable guaranteed uninterrupted service. This assurance allowed for a wider broadcast spectrum and, subsequently, major developments in television content. Whereas network television targeted certain groups during specific timeslots, like housewives during daytime television, cable allowed each demographic and interest to be targeted through a dedicated channel. Network radio and television made information, entertainment, and events from around the world domestically available, but cable television ensured that information, entertainment, and events from around the world could be accessed throughout the day, regardless of time, much like your coolest, most knowledgeable friend on speed dial. This proliferation of tailored options ushered in an era of unprecedented media choice.

Guaranteeing Emotional Gratification on Demand We make choices based on our beliefs, attitudes, and emotions, as well as on the assumed outcomes of said choice (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). According to mood management theory, users choose content to increase the likelihood that bad moods are short lived and good moods are prolonged (Zillman,

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1988). Commonly referred to as “mood-specific preferences” (Bryant & Zillman, 1984), extensive psychological research has explored the effects of media content and the individual differences that predict usage. In addition, choice increases intrinsic motivation, perceived control, task performance, and life satisfaction (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000), and the opportunity to make a choice activates feelings of agency and control. Even simply offering a choice of how to engage with commercials increased users’ positive attitudes (Corsbie-Massay, 2020). Unfortunately, similar to research investigating mood management via music, much of this research deploys limited content—users choose between researcher-provided media in experiments—and other work reveals that these positive effects emerge only when choices are limited (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000). An overabundance of choice can overwhelm the user and cause psychological distress (Schwartz, 2004). Given these trends, cable’s abundance of choices was exciting but potentially cognitively taxing to users. Between 1979 and 1990, offerings increased sharply. There were 79 available channels by the end of the 1980s, and 200 by the end of the century (see Table 6.1). However, the effects of an increasing number of choices through cable television may be mitigated by users’ desire for control and satisfaction. Despite increased offerings, users tend to restrict themselves to a limited set of channels—the average American household tunes into 17 channels, a number that has remained stagnant ( Nielsen, 2014). This choice to rebuff more content options reveals that users are far from passive; they actively make choices about their content and then commit to those choices, a tendency rooted in technological trust described in Chapter 4. By limiting choice within the experimental environment, researchers have not yet explored the effects of increasing options providing perpetual emotional gratification. If users can receive emotional gratification from an outlet that is regular, available, and without social expectations and trappings, then they may come to depend on the outlet and subsequently the device itself to satisfy their emotional needs, and potentially failing to develop other coping strategies. Users may become frustrated when they do not have access to the emotional content to which they have become accustomed, and potentially less likely to engage in creative emotional gratification. In this sense, media gratification is like permissive parenting, which is characterized by an abundance of freedom and a lack of responsiveness or sensitivity. Permissive parenting has been associated with children that have “low self-control and low self-reliance” and are more “immature” (Karen, 1998; Neal & Frick-Horbury, 2001). The overwhelming amount of information available to cable television users can also result in information overload and fear of missing out. In order to mitigate these outcomes, users rely on single outlets to filter out extraneous information in a form of self-imposed avoidance. This tendency is then deployed by cable channels to connect with their audiences, discouraging user

112 Regular Media—Synchronizing Experiences Table 6.1 Timeline of Selected Cable Channels

Year

Channel

1972 HBO (Home Box Office) 1972 TLC (The Learning Channel) 1976 Showtime 1976 TBS (Turner Broadcasting System) 1977 CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) 1979 ESPN 1979 CSPAN 1979 Nickelodeon 1980 CNN (Cable News Network) 1980 Cinemax

1980 BET (Black Entertainment Television) 1980 USA

Year Channel

Year

Channel

1983 CMT (Country Music Television) 1983 Paramount (formerly The Nashville Network) 1983 Disney Channel 1984 Lifetime

1992 Hallmark 1993 Food Network

1994 Starz 1994 HGTV (Home and Gardens TV)

1984 AMC (American Movie Classics)

1994 IFC (Independent Film Channel)

1985 Discovery 1985 VH1 (Video Hits One) 1986 QVC (Quality Value Convenience) 1987 E!

1994 FX 1994 Bloomberg TV

1988 TNT (Turner Network Television) 1989 CNBC

1996 MSNBC

1989 A&E (Arts & Entertainment Network) 1991 Comedy Central 1991 TruTV

1996 Animal Planet

1980 Bravo 1981 MTV (Music Television) 1982 HSN (Home 1992 Syfy (formerly Shopping Network) Sci-Fi) 1982 PlayboyTV 1992 Boomerang 1982 The Weather Channel 1992 Cartoon Network

1995 History Channel 1996 Fox News

1996 Al Jazeera

1996 Science 1996 Fox Sports Network 1998 BBC America 1998 ESQUIRE 1999 NBA TV

interaction with the wealth of available information by design. Users could tune into a channel and find something that spoke to them at any hour of the day, thus encouraging an affective familiarity with the channel, not just the featured program, thereby reducing channel surfing. This availability paradox creates insular communities and echo chambers that simultaneously foster feelings of perceived worldliness while restricting awareness. The digital media environment has amplified this tendency. Users online rely on trusted sources

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to break through the clutter, while discouraging use of other outlets. This “filter bubble” has become a common refrain in the 21st century digital media environment even when the number of sources is almost infinite. Cable television allowed users to gratify objective and subjective needs from a single source at their convenience, shortening or even eliminating the wait time between the onset of desire and its gratification. With cable, users could satisfy their desires for news, sports, music, or comedy instantly, depending on their mood in the moment. This extension of domestic availability, from news and entertainment into a robust spectrum emotional gratification, ensured that cable could satisfy a need for companionship in a less theoretical or abstract fashion. This all-encompassing emotional gratification encouraged users to foster a relationship with the channel and less so the specific program or content. This marked a key distinction in the evolution of push and pull media; although users would pull channels toward them, content could also be pushed to individuals guaranteed to be watching once they accepted the channel. If network television fostered a psychological expectation that the device was all knowing, cable television promoted the psychological expectation that a given channel was all knowing, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.

Guaranteeing Personalized Virtual Communities As previously discussed, cable television’s exponential increase in content allowed for channels to target ever smaller demographic and psychographic groups. This niche marketing strategy defined the cable era. Coupled with the increase in televisions per household, family programming became an outdated concept as different channels targeted users personally and developed personalities of their own (Sung & Park, 2011). Cable channels activated users’ identity as a marketing strategy, as evidenced in the slogans mentioned earlier for HBO, ESPN, and MTV, thus establishing and reinforcing niche communities, or groups constructed around distinct segments of the market. Although appealing to market segments was not new, it was not a viable television marketing strategy given the need for a broad audience base in the era of network television. Cable television’s expansion of the broadcast spectrum allowed channels to target specific segments through the day, thus providing a regular and perpetually available space of support for anyone within the target niche. As already described, identity is a wide-ranging phenomenon that affects every part of our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Aspects of identity are consistently activated through media consumption. Cable provided more opportunities for identity because of the increased broadcast spectrum, and each channel could focus on smaller, more ideologically disparate groups. Cable was emblematic of the increased choices available to consumers throughout the 20th century, and these opportunities were deftly deployed by brands interested in experimenting with different content strategies and encouraging users

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to define themselves. HBO was a must have for movie buffs, who could watch movies, including R-rated movies, in their entirety and without commercials, as well as behind-the-scenes documentaries and short films. MTV (see Figure 6.2) ensured that young people could visit their parasocial friends by featuring improvised dialog between VJs to “conjure up the natural ambience of teenagers gathered in a room to listen to music with their peers” (Kaplan, 1987, p. 19). With dozens—now hundreds—of channels, there was an implicit guarantee that there was a channel out there for each and every user, an alluring concept given that positive group memberships increase personal self-esteem, satisfy our need to belong, and provide feelings of control and a meaningful existence by lessening ambiguity or uncertainty regarding our place within society (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). This approach—catering to ever smaller slices of the audience—became important when the media channels continued to multiple exponentially at the start of the 21st century. By providing continuous content that engaged users at such an intersectional and intimate level, channels could attract users to their offerings. This selective exposure—the tendency we have to seek out and consume content that is supportive of our preexisting beliefs and positions—encourages users to stick with content that is in line with their expectations and desires (Hart et al., 2009; Festinger, 1957). Although this phenomenon was present long before the advent and adoption of cable, cable’s increased spectrum meant that outlets could target consumers without worrying about isolating or offending other large parts of the audience. Whereas network television attempted to garner the largest possible audience with general programming, cable television provided user-specific content that invited certain viewers and discouraged other audiences (Morley, 2000). With cable, users could choose content that enhanced their feelings of belongingness, both virtually and in the real world. In making these choices, users developed an affinity for cable channels, and by extension cable television itself, in ways that were not previously available with network television. Furthermore, cable television’s capacity to retain audiences for prolonged periods of time ensures that information was presented and processed sequentially, which can enhance the effects of selective exposure and confirmation biases on ideological conviction ( Jonas, Schulz-Hardt, Frey, & Thelen, 2001). Therefore, not only did networks seek to take advantage of targeting niche audiences, the potential of cable also reinforced an ideology of the niche audience. As a reliable emotional source, individual channels became a one-stop shop for all of a viewer’s needs, allowing channels to feature programming that was of interest to their demographic but outside of their original wheelhouse. For example, by targeting and developing a relationship with users in their teens and early twenties, MTV branched into programming that was not related to music but which resonated with this group, including MTV News and The Real

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MTV Logo T-Shirt: This reprint of a classic MTV logo from Junk Food is one of my prized possessions. Although I was too young to really embrace MTV in the 1980s, it defined the 1990s for me and I was excited to grab a piece of (reproduced) culture 20 years after its launch. My identity with MTV was more than just access to music. It defined my understanding of American-ness; I embraced this association and delved into the history of MTV, MTV and hip hop, and international MTV during college.

FIGURE 6.2

Image Credit: Hannah Frankel, Jessica Elizabeth Stewart

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World. This diversification of content prompted the channel to change its title from “Music Television” to “MTV” in 2010 (Stanley, 2010). Comedy Central’s now famous fake news programming, The Daily Show, launched in 1996 and would win dozens of awards with Jon Stewart as host, including two Peabody Awards for their coverage of the 2000 and 2004 elections. Toward the end of the 20th century, CNN produced Cold War (1998) and Millennium (1999)— made for television documentaries that connected history to current events. In 2012, CNN launched CNN Films, a motion picture division, and produced original series, including Parts Unknown With Anthony Bourdain (2013–2018), This Is Life With Lisa Ling (2014–), and United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell (2016–). Each of these examples, and many more on other cable channels, reveals how the technology of cable created an opportunity to experiment with the potential of television and create content for niche communities. Whereas radios and televisions in the network era were simply appliances that provided content, televisions in the cable era became opportunities for self-expression. The standard practice of niche marketing marks an important turning point in the fragmentation of the American audience and the rise of echo chambers—the phenomenon where individuals are exposed to a limited number of ideas and beliefs, and reinforce this limited discourse by systematically disparaging and eliminating differing thoughts and opinions. Although this term is often discussed in relation to content, echo chambers are a direct outcome of media technology that allows for increasing niche targeting. Cable television deployed these psychological tendencies as an audience retention strategy. It catered to users’ perspectives while insulating them from different perspectives, despite the availability of conf licting viewpoints a few channels up or down. In doing so, it increased the expectation of identity marketing to users’ preexisting demographic and psychographic characteristics, thus fostering ideological separation between audience segments. This ideological distance could then be used as a marketing strategy, amplifying and catalyzing differences as cable channels, much like music, became a means of identity signaling. Over time, these shifts in the mass media environment fostered different expectations among users, catered to psychological tendencies, and normalized visual communication as an opportunity for individuated content. Just decades after network television established the idea of a “general American public,” the potential of cable television brought about a shift toward a collection of publics. Previously, network television offered Americans a common window to the world—an opportunity that was hinted at but never fully realized by theatrical film—but cable television returned Americans to a set of subcultures no longer restricted by geography. Although the consensus audience and shared culture were never inclusive, widely viewed mainstream media outlets ensured that all publics were aware of certain conversations regardless of whether they

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themselves were actively considered by producers. Cable channels scuttled this national discourse and disrupted national mainstreaming by encouraging small but dedicated audiences. They assured users that their personal interests would be valued and their emotional needs would be gratified. Cable helped television embrace its potential as a virtual companion in the home. Whereas network television allowed for general companionship on a fixed schedule, cable television offered a nuanced community that was always available and sharing casual content that could make the user at home feel like part of an ongoing conversation.

Cable Television and Feeling Seen Cable television marked a shift in focus to individuated and intersectional user needs; although present in earlier mediums like ethnic and partisan newspapers, cable made this strategy viable with broadcasting. It set in motion the disintegration of the consensus audience and the rise of echo chambers, where each segment of the audience could view the world through its own tailored window. Although cable television never achieved the same saturation as network television, peaking at 65% at the end of the 20th century (Desjardins, 2018), the value in targeting smaller but dedicated audiences was evident and continues into the 21st century. Within a few decades, the expectation that high-fidelity media content will always be available and tailored to users’ personal needs has become the default norm. We fell in love with cable television because it appeared to know us better than we knew ourselves. It catered to specific dimensions of our character, turning these categories into deep-seated identity needs, thereby encouraging us to engage with the technology in order to “feel seen.” We were no longer television users; we were members of communities based on cable channels. Whereas radio and network television allowed for habitual consumption, cable television denoted a paradigm shift in American users’ psychological expectations, including guaranteed availability and choice, niche targeting, and a content vacuum that encouraged experimentation. Engaging with high-fidelity content impacts feelings of presence as well as emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral responses, but much of this research has focused on digital media of the 21st century. There has also been an increase in scholarly investigations into the effect of omnipresent media on psychological processes in recent years, especially given the availability of high-speed internet connectivity. However, this research often neglects how these potentials were available decades earlier with the advent and adoption of cable television. With cable television, users could access information at any hour of the day, including news, entertainment, and advertising through sensory-rich video communications from the comfort of their home. This initiated the 24-hour content cycle that continues through social media and other digital media platforms.

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Furthermore, poor or weak signals became intolerable once cable became the standard means of audiovisual transmission. We often attribute the expectation of guaranteed access to authentic content to the technologies and practices of digital media, but these opportunities were available decades earlier with the widespread adoption of cable television. The 24-hour content format was also a dramatic shift from network radio and television, which signed off after most Americans had gone to sleep. Alternatively, cable could air content even if it did not garner a critical mass. Cable networks responded to this challenge with experimentation, because any content was better than test signal or static. The need for cheap programming ushered in early reality television (e.g., MTV’s The Real World), clip shows (e.g., Comedy Central’s Short Attention Span Theater), and extended commentary and punditry programming (e.g., ESPN’s SportsCenter), as well as entirely new genres like music videos. In short, cable television made space for avantgarde television—content that pushes the boundaries of current techniques regarding a given medium. Cable television embraced alternative production methods because of the need for and space to display new content without traditional boundaries (see Figure 6.3). This innovative response to a content vacuum predates the advances of the internet, which similarly disintegrated the expectations of what content should look like.

FIGURE 6.3 Dungeon Majesty (2005): Screen shot from Dungeon Majesty, a show that followed four women playing Dungeons and Dragons in real time and embraced simple video effects that aired on public access channels and MTV2 across the United States from 2004 to 2010.

Source: Jennifer Juniper Stratford Artist/Director/Founder of Telefantasy Studios

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Cable also normalized targeting of specific demographic and psychographics, thus changing the popular understanding of television as a consensus medium and fostering expectations of individual attention and tailored media. Whereas network television provided general, socially agreed-upon content, cable television promoted individual needs with individualized messages. This trend laid the groundwork for the discursive environment of the 21st century where every individual can have a mediated home, where they can engage with content that is in line with their attitudes, beliefs, and world view. This approach cultivated echo chambers as a business strategy. It reinforced ideological beliefs in an increasingly fragmented marketplace and encouraged users to identify with channels by fostering in-groups through content and isolating out-groups to heighten positive self-attitudes about the media-constructed group. For example, the rise of the ‘liberal media bias’ talking point emerged in the wake of partisan cable news as a strategy to malign less ideologically conservative outlets (Watts, Domke, Shah, & Fan, 1999). Fast forward 25 years, and these approaches have become standard within the media industry. Cable technology, combined with industry strategies that promote individualism to obtain and retain audiences, ensured that those growing up after this era would be habituated to selective exposure and a lack of public consensus, even in the face of more content and information. This approach drastically changed the industry approach to audiences and the associated audience expectations of industry, and these trends have been amplified by advances in digital technology and audience targeting with social media, cookies, and big data. Channels, brands, and public figures themselves have professional identities that are personal and political, attracting ideologically consistent users, embracing smaller but more dedicated consumers who use these brands to reinforce and feel positively about their identities. Cable television revealed a lot about Americans that are applicable in the 21st digital environment: we are excited and willing to pay for 24-hour access to quality content tailored to our specific needs. More importantly, in this cluttered environment, we place our trust in this tailored content, and even connect their personal identities to preferred media outlets and brands. We love access to things that affirm what we believe and who we think we are: not simply a consumer in an undifferentiated consensus mass, but rather individually unique, valuable media users. Cable saw us for who we are and, like a reliable friend, connected us with other dedicated individuals, fostering dependence on outlets-as-communities.

Note 1. Television programs mocked this technological issue and entire episodes were built around sending family members up to the roof to fix the antenna; Married With Children regularly chided their own network with the FOX viewing positions.

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Bibliography Alexander, A. L., Brunyé, T., Sidman, J., & Weil, S. A. (2005). From gaming to training: A review of studies on fidelity, immersion, presence, and buy-in and their effects on transfer in PC-based simulations and games. DARWARS Training Impact Group. Bracken, C. C. (2005). Presence and image quality: The case of high-definition television. Media Psychology, 7(2), 191–205. Bryant, J., & Zillman, D. (1984). Using television to alleviate boredom and stress: Selective exposure as a function of induced excitational states. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 28(1), 1–20. Cohen, J. (2003). Parasocial breakups: Measuring individual differences in responses to the dissolution of parasocial relationships. Mass Communication & Society, 6(2), 191–202. Cohen, J. (2004). Parasocial break-up from favorite television characters: The role of attachment styles and relationship intensity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 21(2), 187–202. Corsbie-Massay, C. L. (2020). Avoidant engagement: A theoretical and practical model of interactivity and persuasion. In Schartel Dunn, S. G., & Nisbett, G. S. (Eds.), Innovations and implications of persuasive narrative. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang US. Corsbie-Massay, C. L., Christensen, J. L., Godoy, C., Miller, L. C., Appleby, P. R., & Read, S. J. (2014). Health communication and the digital divide: The role of display resolution on eHealth intervention effectiveness. Presented at international communication association (ICA) preconference: Digital divide research. Seattle, WA. DeGroot, J. M., & Leith, A. P. (2018). R.I.P. Kutner: Parasocial grief following the death of a television character. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 77(3), 199–216. Desjardins, J. (2018, February 14). The rising speed of technological adoption. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.visualcapitalist.com/rising-speed-technological-adoption/ Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gerling, K. M., Birk, M., Mandryk, R. L., & Doucette, A. (2013). The effects of graphical fidelity on player experience. Proceedings of international conference on making sense of converging media. Retrieved June 26, 2020 from https://dl.acm.org/doi/ pdf/10.1145/2523429.2523473 Grunwald, T., & Corsbie-Massay, C. (2006). Guidelines for cognitively efficient multimedia learning tools: Educational strategies, cognitive load, and interface design. Academic Medicine, 81(3), 213–223. Hart, L. (2016, March 30). MTV’s first spring break VJ remembers what spring break was like before camera phones. GQ. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.gq.com/ story/mtv-spring-break-vj-alan-hunter Hart, W., Albarracín, D., Eagly, A. H., Brechan, I., Lindberg, M. J., & Merrill, L. (2009). Feeling validated versus being correct: A meta-analysis of selective exposure to information. Psychological Bulletin, 135(4), 555–588. Hebdidge, D. (1979). Subculture. London: Routledge. Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 995–1006. Jonas, E., Schulz-Hardt, S., Frey, D., & Thelen, N. (2001). Confirmation bias in sequential information search after preliminary decisions: An expansion of dissonance theoretical research on email to information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(4), 557.

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Kaplan, E. A. (1987). Rocking around the clock: Music television, post modernism and consumer culture. New York: Methuen, Inc. Karen, R. (1998). Becoming attached: First relationships and how they shape our capacity to love. New York: Oxford University Press. Kelly, C. (2009). Cracked media: The sound of malfunction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mikropoulos, T. A., & Natsis, A. (2011). Educational virtual environments: A ten-year review of empirical research (1999–2009). Computers & Education, 56(3), 769–780. Morley, D. (2000). Home territories: Media, mobility and identity. London: Routledge. Neal, J., & Frick-Horbury, D. (2001). The effects of parenting styles and childhood attachment patterns on intimate relationships. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 28(3), 178. Nielsen. (2010, April 28). U.S. homes add even more TV sets in 2010. Nielsen Media. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2010/ u-s-homes-add-even-more-tv-sets-in-2010/ Nielsen. (2014, May 6). Nielsen report confirms what you’ve always known: 189 channels and nothing to watch. Nielsen Media. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www. nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2014/changing-channels-americans-view-just17-channels-despite-record-number-to-choose-from/ Schwartz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice: Why more is less. New York: Ecco. Stanley, C. (2010, February 8). There’s no music television in MTV’S new logo. Flavorwire. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.f lavorwire.com/68793/theres-nomusic-television-in-mtvs-new-logo Sung, Y., & Park, N. (2011). The dimensions of cable television network personality: Implications for media brand management. The International Journal on Media Management, 13(1), 87–105. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453–458. Watts, M. D., Domke, D., Shah, D. V., & Fan, D. P. (1999). Elite cues and media bias in presidential campaigns: Explaining public perceptions of a liberal press. Communication Research, 26(2), 144–175. Zillman, D. (1988). Mood management through communication choices. American Behavioral Scientist, 31(3), 327–340.

SECTION 3

Reciprocal Media—Affecting Experiences

Reciprocity—as an aspect of any successful relationship—means that both parties acknowledge and engage with each other. Reciprocal media are communication technologies that reciprocate, or respond to, the actions of users with corresponding actions. Defining certain mediums as “reciprocal” highlights how these mediums react to users’ actions with nuanced and tailored responses as one would with a human partner. Although earlier technologies act in response to the behaviors of users: pushing the shutter release on a camera to quickly expose the film and capture a picture, or turning on a radio or television to initiate a stream of content. However, in these examples, nuanced reciprocity—that is, the ability for the user to elicit specific changes with their actions—was impossible1 and the final content experience was largely determined by the producer. Reciprocal media required users to engage with the medium to elicit messages, ensuring that the experience was dynamic and tailored by and for every individual user every time. It is important to distinguish reciprocal media from interactive media given that the latter has become synonymous with digital technologies. Interactive media are communication technologies that present different content or messages according to the users’ actions with specific pre-determined messages. They are often digital, but this is not necessary—the Choose Your Own Adventure book series (1976–1998) is a common example of non-digital interactive media. Whereas interactive media is reciprocal—in that it responds to the actions of the user—reciprocal media may not always be considered interactive. An Etch-a-Sketch responds to the user’s actions by generating marks on the screen but is generally not considered an interactive medium. Similarly, magnetic tape, including audio and video cassettes, are not often considered “interactive,” especially given their analog format. Instead, they

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are reciprocal—the media responds to the actions of the user, starting, stopping, fast-forwarding, and rewinding content at the push of a button, resulting in different experiences (e.g., some users skip the opening credits of movies). Alternatively, video games are widely acknowledged to be interactive media because they are computer-based programs that respond to the actions of the user such that the user can impact the final content. However, their inherent reciprocity—the capacity to control a figure on the screen—exists regardless of whether users are concerned with the goals as determined by the game or the overall gaming experience. Dial-up internet service providers (ISPs) allowed users to access information and communities—traits commonly associated with interactive media—but it also allowed users to access the world at large, including goods and services. In this way, the media reciprocated the actions and needs of the user outside of formal media messaging and content. Magnetic tape, video gaming, and consumer market internet access through dial-up ISPs allowed for new forms of user interaction and control over content (e.g., when, where, and in what order) resulting in control over the subsequent narrative. This level of control was unprecedented for non-professional users, and the widespread adoption of these technologies allowed users to develop a sense of agency via technology, fostering an environment where anyone could participate, contribute, customize, and affect the mass messages that they received. These opportunities for control tap into preexisting psychological tendencies by offering users immediate responsiveness, feelings of ownership through content control, and the prospect of participating in communities regardless of real-world limitations. Although we refer to the internet as fostering an on-demand culture in the 21st century—the cultural associations with having one’s mediated needs immediately gratified at the user’s whim— these possibilities were widely available and normalized through reciprocal technologies decades earlier.

Immediate Responsivity Immediate responsivity is a hallmark of real-world and interpersonal interactions. Temporal relativity—the occurrence of events in a similar time period— moderates behavioral learning via stimulus–response interactions because individuals understand cause and effect by linking two pieces of information presented sequentially. The closer in time two events are, the stronger the cognitive link. Although there is more discussion about media and the effects of instant gratification with the advances in digital and mobile technologies of the 21st century, these conversations neglect the decades-long media trajectory that has habituated users to shortened response times. The capacity to immediately gratify one’s needs is a powerful incentive to adopt technology, and the gratification of needs via technology can impact our psychological expectations. For example, interactive interfaces increase self-efficacy, the foundation of human

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motivation and accomplishments (Peng, 2008), which can subsequently affect our real-world decisions. Throughout the history of media technologies, an increase in responsivity changes their overall use. Reciprocal media technologies can react to the actions of users and offer a wide array of responses. They allow users to record and replay content, control the specific presentation of content (e.g., pause playback to answer a phone call), direct the actions of a character through virtual worlds, and access resources in the real world—including information, entertainment, tangible commodities, and other people. In these examples, the simple push of a button immediately ensured that users’ robust desires were met instantaneously, thus freeing users from industry demands and fostering on-demand expectations. Reciprocal media also allows for interactivity that was not originally considered by the producer. Audio and video cassettes allowed users to produce material content, either through recording original material or through remixing the content of others to create something new, and these opportunities were also available with the push of a button. Video games launched machinima, a new genre of filmmaking wherein the user takes on the role of director and employs onscreen video game characters as actors. These media liberated technologies from the purview of experts and hobbyists, and users came to expect the opportunity to satisfy their need for agency.

Control and Ownership Control is a fundamental psychosocial need. A sense of agency over one’s environment and one’s life is essential for well-being, and attaining control significantly impacts attitudes and behaviors. We like things that we can control, and we make choices that increase our feelings of control. When one controls content, the content can become further enmeshed within their individual identity; this phenomenon is evident with every branded clothing item and laptop sticker that users deploy to simultaneously belong to a community and demonstrate their individuality. This overlap between the self and content ref lects an important psychological process that improves our self-esteem and fosters belongingness. Reciprocal technologies marked an evolution in mass communications and media by foregrounding and promising explicit control and agency to the user. We reclaimed our schedules via time shifting technologies using sanctioned (e.g., renting videos from the local Blockbuster) and unsanctioned (e.g., camming, bootlegging, mixtapes, and machinima) tactics. The opportunity to manipulate content freely simultaneously tapped into and reinforced this need for control, helping users navigate the increasingly cluttered media environment in the wake of cable television and ensured that media experiences were tailored to individual needs, regardless of the sheer multitude of available options. By liberating oneself from sanctioned media use and corporate

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expectations, users developed a sense of ownership over the content ( Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2018), and in some cases the technology (Turkel, 1982). This ubiquitous sense of control and ownership in the late 20th century triggered discussions of being in a relationship with technology—specifically computer technologies in the early 1980s. Sherry Turkle’s seminal 1984 book, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, features an ethnographic exploration of early computer cultures among ardent users who entered into close relationships with computers, precisely because computers are reactive and interactive and this opportunity to control and ownership of (virtual) worlds helps them to learn more about themselves (Turkle, 2004).

Participation and Belonging The opportunity to own content and control content is part of what Henry Jenkins calls “participatory culture.” In a participatory culture, users expect to access, manipulate, and interact with their media content. This encourages them to “believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another” ( Jenkins, 2009, p. 7). Humans are innately social beings, and belonging is a fundamental psychosocial need that drives human behavior. This is demonstrated in the ease with which we form social bonds, the difficulty we have in breaking those bonds, and the effect of belongingness on other emotions (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). To participate in a group or a community is to articulate one’s belonging. We seek out groups that satisfy this need, both real and virtual. In fact, being socially excluded from groups can elicit neurological pain responses (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2005; Williams & Zadro, 2001). Reciprocal media allowed users to record, reproduce, and distribute distinctive stories, including their own original content and edits or adaptations of industry-generated content. Reciprocal media allowed users to participate in communities independent of physical or geographic limitations, by making their preferred content available on demand. Magnetic tape ensured that users could access and engage with their favorite media figures in ways similar to satisfying parasocial relationships. Video gaming allowed users to immerse themselves in novel worlds where they could control the narrative and ensure belongingness, or simply leave that world for another, more welcoming world. Dial-up ISPs connected people with similar interests, regardless of location. Over time, this opportunity to participate fostered the expectation among users that they should be able to find or create groups that gratified their need to belong, a mediated need that evolved from cable television. Furthermore, reciprocal media also simplified self-expression, ensuring that if users could not find content that satisfied their need to belong, they could create their own content. This set into motion musical genres like punk, hip hop, and grunge, which proliferated thanks to magnetic tape; guerilla video artists who appropriated and remixed

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content as social commentary; and online communities and interest groups. With reciprocal media of the late 20th century, individual users took control of content, subsequently telling their own stories and listening to stories of their own choosing on demand. This opportunity to interact independent of industry gatekeepers defined the late 20th century, especially as stories from traditionally marginalized groups quickly became mainstream.

Expectations of Reciprocity in the American Psyche Reciprocal media helped to establish a communication environment where individuals could access, create, manipulate, and distribute messages. Considering the speed with which these late 20th century technologies have been integrated into the expectations of Americans reveals a psychological trajectory that leads us into the 21st century digital communication environment and participatory culture. Starting with the widespread adoption of magnetic tape and the subsequent control of audio and video messages, we have been working toward a culture of on-demand access for decades, or the sense that all media— including technology, content, the means of production, and by extension all information—should be available to users. In this section, Chapter 7 discusses how magnetic tape offered the opportunity to capture, edit, copy, distribute, and play back content that had once been proprietary or ephemeral. The chapter elaborates on the psychological impacts of possessing and controlling content, creating content, and distributing content independent of gatekeepers and how these opportunities tapped into psychological needs and established an on-demand communication environment wherein users expect to have their content available at their discretion and to be used as they see fit. Chapter 8 explores how video gaming invited the user to manipulate the content in real time, thus resulting in a distinctive experience tailored to every user. Through the psychology of controlling action and narrative, learning with games, and losing without consequences, this chapter describes how video gaming shifted the psychological expectations of interactive interfaces toward entertainment and “gamification” both within and outside media. Chapter 9 explores how dial-up internet service providers (ISPs) in the 1980s and 1990s, including Compuserve, Prodigy, and America Online (AOL), created a user-friendly conduit for the new and unprecedented resource of the internet. The opportunity to access information, social connections, and goods and services on demand ensured that Americans would come to rely on the internet and the technologies that make the internet available in the wake of dial-up ISPs because they provided a tailored—and potentially utopic—version of the world. Together, reciprocal technologies catalyzed a shift in American culture toward a homogenous expectation of real-time participation that continues to thrive and advance with 21st century technologies. Through the technologies

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of the last few decades of the 20th century, users established and resolved the paradox of collective individualism: with reciprocal technology, the actions of users yield infinite unique messages, thus ensuring that no individual experience (within or between users) is consistent, yet a collective understanding of and culture around these experiences develops regardless of their distinctiveness. The resolution of this paradox required substantial psychological adjustment regarding our expectations of community. Sharing consistent experiences and synchronizing experiences in time were no longer necessary—instead, we embraced media as a template, and engaging with similar content that varied between users and events was sufficient to foster connections.

Note 1. The record player is an important exception. For decades, it too responded to the actions of the user with a power button, similar to radio or television. Savvy users could pick up the needle and drop it into expanded grooves to jump between songs in an album. However, the emergence of hip hop toward the end of the 20th century encouraged users to force records to react by “scratching.”

Bibliography Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. (2005). Why it hurts to be left out: The neurocognitive overlap between physical and social pain. In Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology series. The social outcast: Ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying (pp. 109–127). New York: Psychology Press. Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jenkins, H., Ford, S., & Green, J. (2018). Spreadable media: Creating value and meaning in a networked culture. New York: NYU Press. Peng, W. (2008). The mediational role of identification in the relationship between experience mode and self-efficacy: Enactive role-playing versus passive observation. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 11(6), 649–652. Turkel, S. (1982). The subjective computer: A study in the psychology of personal computation. Social Studies of Science, 12(2), 173–205. Turkle, S. (2004). The second self: Computers and the human spirit. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Williams, K. D., & Zadro, L. (2001). Ostracism: On being ignored, excluded, and rejected. In M. R. Leary (Ed.), Interpersonal rejection (pp. 21–53). New York: Oxford University Press.

7 MAGNETIC TAPE

Magnetic tape largely defined my mediated childhood. By “magnetic tape,” I mean audio and video cassettes, which record, store, and play back audio and video content, as well as the associated devices, including stationary stereos, portable boomboxes or personal tape players (e.g., Sony Walkman), and video cassette recorders (VCRs). Unlike many of the previous mediums, in which content could only be produced with industry support, content available via magnetic tape included industry-generated content and user-generated content. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, I purchased audiocassettes and I recorded songs off the radio, spending hours waiting for my favorite songs anxiously holding my fingers over “REC” and “PLAY” in anticipation of pushing them simultaneously at the sweet spot between the end of disc jockey banter and the start of a song. I combined content from purchased tapes and the radio to create mixtapes that I would share with my friends (see Figure 7.1). I listened to them on a little boombox in my room, in the car, and on my Sony Walkman. Tapes were the soundtrack of my life in the late 20th century and I still have stacks of them in boxes waiting to be revived. I also watched a lot of video cassettes. We didn’t go to the movies frequently, but I was a regular at our local Blockbuster. Our home collection of VHS tapes included everything from the collector’s edition of Gone With the Wind (1939) to bootleg copies of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), and Soul Man (1986), all on the same tape in extended play (EP). We also owned several Land Before Time direct-to-video sequels and dozens of National Geographic specials. I was very proud of my ability to program the VCR given the running joke that programming one’s VCR was impossible (Filipczak, 1994; Garber, 2014), so I recorded all of my favorite shows because I could. I still have collections of Square One Television, Kids in the Hall, and a

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Tapes Haiku (2009): Cassette Tapes are widely assumed to be one of the lowest quality storage devices of the 20th century, but they offered durability and portability, something that vinyl, CDs, and even MP3s couldn’t match. Literal piles of tapes, both in cases and naked, were common and inevitably held a treasure trove of content.

FIGURE 7.1

Source: Jason Kohlbrenner

“mixtape” that I used for general recording. We had two VCRs, the standalone deck that was connected to the family television and a smaller TV/VCR combo that I could daisy chain to the first VCR to copy or edit video. Magnetic tape was one of the first opportunities consumer market users had to access, create, and distribute audio and video messages, disrupting the decades-old industry control of media. Through the multifunctionality of magnetic tape, users could “enjoy music at any time, at any place, in any wanted programme or programme compilation, in any desired sound quality and almost at any wanted price” (Andriessen, 1999, p. 12).

I Made You a Mixtape Magnetic tape was invented in 1930 for audio and expanded to video in the 1950s. It records multimedia information using a f luctuating signal to polarize magnetic film. Audio (8-track and audiocassette) and video cassettes were

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more durable, portable, versatile, and cheaper than records or film. Originally used by industry professionals in music and journalism, a surge of consumer market products in the 1970s made magnetic tape accessible to the general nonprofessional user. Coupled with the wide variety of recording and playback devices (e.g., home stereos, boomboxes, portable tape players, VCRs), these media technologies dramatically changed when, where, and how users could engage with content. Magnetic tape also enabled users to produce and distribute their own content, establishing an unprecedented level of user control and user-generated content in the media environment. Electronics companies who produced and distributed the technology focused on the potential of magnetic tape. Users were promised the ability to record professionally produced (e.g., television programs) and original content (e.g., home movies) on videotape. Ads for audio and video recorders emphasized quality content, guaranteeing studio sound and video without distortion or extraneous artifacts. Advertisements for playback devices highlighted speaker quality, portability, and freedom from network schedules by time-shifting their favorite programs. They assured users they could access and control content to meet their own individual needs (see Figure 7.2). Interestingly, programmable recording was never widely available for audio devices, possibly due to the conventional portability of audio as established by radio; users could connect with their favorite radio programs regardless of location or schedule, as described in Chapter 4, thereby limiting demand for time-shifting capabilities. Conversely, portable television devices like the Sony Watchman were never widely adopted by users during the 20th century. The promises in these advertisements largely conf licted with industry interests that were dependent on the sale of content, for which tape was simply a storage device. Music and film producers, as well as broadcasters, worried about the potential for piracy with magnetic tape, a discussion that dominated the public conversation toward the end of the 20th century. They assumed that users would forego traditional media use in favor of copied content, allowing them to bypass advertising, an essential source of revenue for television.1 In response, industry stakeholders and content distributors launched anti-piracy campaigns that defined these technically illegal activities as nefarious and amoral (Sinnreich, 2013). These fears were not unfounded. More than 250 million blank tapes were sold in 1979, which was estimated to cause a 15% loss in profits (Harrington, 1980). However, these industry concerns also led scholars, researchers, and the public to focus the discussion of magnetic tape on piracy and advertising, disregarding the impact of content control on psychological satisfaction. Americans saw the opportunities of magnetic tape quite differently. They used magnetic tape in a myriad of ways that were both anticipated and unanticipated by industry stakeholders. There was indeed a rise in video piracy of industry-generated content, but it was complicated by the differences in technology between audio and video. Sales from videotape manufacturing jumped

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FIGURE 7.2 Ad for Sony Walkman (c. 1980s): Ads for playback devices, specifically audio, focused on the infinite opportunities for listening that effectively liberated users from the domestic space. They emphasized the ability to take content anywhere and experience it in high fidelity, echoing much of the advertising rhetoric deployed in the 21st century. “Only Sony could give you fidelity this high in a package so small.”

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from $1 billion to $1.7 billion between 1981 and 1982 ( Japan’s Tdk Leads Market in Videotape, 1982). American homes with video cassette recorders (VCRs) went from 15% in 1985 to 75% in 1990. However, video piracy—defined as “those who profit economically from the unauthorized sale of content produced by others” ( Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2018, p. 16)—was limited, as general users were less likely to possess the multiple recording decks required to copy video content. As a result, semi-professional levels of at-home recording, although a consistent worry of the industry, were not widely seen. Instead, VCRs were used primarily for watching additional content (Levy, 1987; Van den Bulck, 1999) and video rental stores like Blockbuster—which launched in 1985 and expanded to over 8,000 stores nationwide by 1994—allowed users to choose from thousands of movies, television shows, and even music concerts, within a few miles or minutes of their home. The VCR became another channel through which users could access content. Similarly, despite industry worries, the media potential of easy copying did not halt the sales of music. This was unsurprising, given that repeated copying deteriorated sound quality, and after-market copies were inevitably inferior, which was an anathema to the social expectations of musical fidelity developed across the century as described in Chapter 2. In 1983, industry-generated audiocassettes outsold vinyl records (EP, LP, and singles) as the most popular music format (Swensson, 2014; Routley, 2018). Individual users were more likely to use a standard double tape recorder to copy and edit to create mixtapes, organized collections of (mostly musical) content that established a f low between artifacts and conveyed emotions or memories that could be repeatedly played or shared with others. As users sampled and remixed industry-generated content to tell new, highly personal narratives, it blurred the lines between industry- and user-generated content. Magnetic tape allowed for user-friendly, low-cost recording, editing, play back, copying, and distribution. This, along with the capacity to record multiple times on a single tape—a marked difference from printed content, celluloid film, and vinyl—removed limitations of previous media. Through magnetic tape, users could exert greater control over the nuanced playback of industrygenerated content, as well as record their own thoughts and experiences, including home movies, closed circuit television and video surveillance footage, lectures, live shows, and even their own stylized audio and video content. In these ways, magnetic tape simplified and made accessible the formerly industry-only production of video and audio, thus giving users the psychological tools of control and self-representation in these dynamic modalities. However, despite magnetic tape’s seismic effect on the media environment, the effects of this media technology on user psychology is largely absent from the literature. The rest of this chapter will add to this neglected area by specifically addressing how magnetic tape sparked changes in the communication environment that

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impacted the psychological expectations and norms of American users regarding possessing and controlling content, creating content, and distributing content, activities that we now take for granted in 21st century.

Possessing and Controlling Content The advent of magnetic tape enabled users to feel like they owned the content they recorded. Tapes were mine to use, copy, edit, and share. I consumed my favorite songs and inserted myself into music videos. My mastery of magnetic tape fueled my SpongeBob SquarePants obsession in college. I programmed my VCR to record every episode, even if I was at home to watch it. I then made a mix videotape of my favorite episodes along with interviews, bumpers, and other SpongeBob-related content to accompany my growing collection of SpongeBob-related merchandise. I even edited the episode “Procrastination” (2001) backed by Pink Floyd’s “Time” (1973) to create a music video. I didn’t question whether I was legally allowed to do any of this—I simply saw that the content was available and mine to play with. Magnetic tape allowed users to physically possess audio and video content and control it in ways that had never been previously available. Whereas theatrical film, radio, and television featured a set schedule, such that users were forced to engage with content in the manner determined by the distributor, magnetic tape invited users to engage with content without restrictions, on their own general and specific schedule. Although recorded music allowed users to play content on demand, vinyl records did not allow nuanced play control. Magnetic tape allowed users to play, stop, fast forward, and rewind at will, as well as easily sample and remix content to create new messages. Together, these potentials initiated on-demand expectations of users to regularly consume content at their convenience and use content freely. This seismic psychological shift continues to impact users’ media attitudes and behaviors today. To possess something makes you feel like you have the right to exclude others from accessing it. Although “possession is nine-tenths of the law,” there are several dimensions to possession that are relevant to the psychology of possessing content, like physical possession, legal possession, and psychological possession. Physical possession is the ability to obtain, retain, and use a thing. Prior to magnetic tape, individual users could physically possess durable media that contained print content and industry-sanctioned audio content. However, video content was only available on film reels, which were too expensive for the general consumer. Therefore, individual users were beholden to stakeholders that had the legal right to publicly display or broadcast the content. Research into psychological possession—feelings of ownership that exist outside of physical or legal ownership—touches on developmental psychology and the social construction of identity (Rudmin, 1986). Children as young as three begin to assert that things are theirs, exhibiting behaviors indicating “ownership.” They

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start to think that both tangible objects and intangible constructs like a song belong to them and not others (Neary, Friedman, & Burnstein, 2009; Goulding & Friedman, 2018). In adults, feelings of ownership can enhance prosocial acts of citizenship, responsibility, and stewardship, eliciting feelings of shared identity and duty, as well as feelings of jealousy (Pierce, Kostova, & Dirks, 2003). These outcomes are related to the psychological processes of “identity overlap,” where individuals define and come to understand themselves through material possessions and brands (Trump & Brucks, 2012). As described in earlier chapters, we use media content for mood management, and with magnetic tape, users now had access to an almost infinite amount of content that could be used for psychological maintenance. According to Levy, “one of the great ‘promises’ of VCR technology has been that it will substantially increase the variety of media content available to audiences” (Levy, 1987, p. 467). As described in Chapter 2 with recorded music and Chapter 6 with cable television, prior research features a limited set of choices from which the participant can choose, meaning that the relationship between choice, feelings of ownership, and control has rarely been investigated. Feelings of ownership are enhanced when individuals can control an object (Furby, 1991) and magnetic tape offered macro control (i.e., deploy media artifacts on demand) and micro control (i.e., minute control over the content itself with features like fast-forwarding, rewinding, and pausing). These two potentials simultaneously untethered users from the broadcast schedule, allowing them to engage with audio and video content at any time, and in any order. Magnetic tape offered users the opportunity to engage with the world’s content literally on demand (see Figure 7.3). However, little research has explored the full range of control options possible through magnetic tape. Studies that assess macro control or time-shifting tend to investigate user practices and the impact on copyright and the economics of the media industry. Research regarding micro control largely investigates the effects of skipped advertising. In both cases, the research is dominated by industry fears regarding consumer use, leaving a gap in the research regarding the psychological impact of control. Some research has investigated how children use VHS tapes, finding that children watch content repeatedly because it gives them a sense of control and consistency in an uncontrollable and inconsistent world (Cohen, Levy, & Golden, 1988). This research indicates that the potential of magnetic tape that allows users to control their experiences may have a positive effect on mood and subsequently self-esteem, self-efficacy, and overall attitude toward the media technology. For example, they often fast forward through scenes they find uncomfortable to watch, like Mufasa’s death in The Lion King (Mares, 1998). These effects may be amplified further given the saturated and potentially overwhelming media environment in the wake of cable television as described in Chapter 6. Simply offering the opportunity to control content can endear users to the platform that makes it available

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FIGURE 7.3 Toshiba TV/VCR Combo (c. 1994): This TV/VCR combo has been with me for decades. I played videotapes in my room. I programmed it to record content over the airwaves with a pair of rabbit ears. I used it to dub videotapes from the standalone VCR in the living room. It came with me to college. When I recently pulled it out of storage for my office after the university removed VCRs from the classrooms, I found a videotape in the deck with random shows from 2003, including Mr. Personality, a FOX reality show hosted by Monica Lewinsky.

Image Credit: Jessica Elizabeth Stewart, Hannah Frankel

(Corsbie-Massay, 2020). Given this association, it is expected that users would develop an affinity for technology that allows them to control media.

Creating Content Whereas Chapter 3 focused on the capacity to capture moments via consumer market cameras, the capacity to create messages—or actively and effortfully constructing content that is designed to elicit a reaction from another person— via photographic content was not addressed. For millennia, individuals have created content to elicit responses from others through original creative works, from cave paintings to poetry. This seemingly inherent human desire to express

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oneself is a testament to the psychological needs for self-expression as a means of maintaining well-being and positive self-perceptions. Users demonstrate their identity by creating content, expressing themselves in an affirmative manner, and creating worlds to which they belong. Prior to magnetic tape, nonprofessional content was limited to images, print, and live music. Magnetic tape democratized communication by diversifying the modalities in which non-professional users could create messages. With the low-cost medium of magnetic tape, users could create stylized creative audio and video artifacts as well as non-stylized content like home movies and personal narrative thoughts, all of which impact user psychology. Research on the production of original stylized creative work often focuses on the benefits of art therapy and art education. Creating art has been tied to less depression, reduced anxiety (Eaton & Tieber, 2017), reduced trauma (Stuckey & Nobel, 2010), and greater feelings of self-efficacy (Gilroy, 2006; Brooke, 2006)—similar to the effects of therapeutic writing—as well as better literacy and critical thinking skills (Kennedy, 2006). In a review of the benefits of arts education, Catherine Grytting describes how art education and art production benefit student development by fostering a joy of learning, supporting intellectual growth, supporting emotional growth, supporting social growth, and preparing leaders of the future (Grytting, 2000). However, existing studies often focus on the impacts of specific mediums (e.g., poetry, painting) and less so on the overall opportunity to create (Grytting, 2000). Furthermore, the overall value of content creation among those who are not perceived as clinically or pathologically disadvantaged has not been widely assessed. Work in the area of positive psychology—which focuses on the maintenance and effects of positive thoughts, emotions, and attitudes—reveals a consistent beneficial impact of media creation. Creating expressive and stylistic content is correlated with a more positive sense of self (Wilkinson & Chilton, 2013). Users can explore and play with different identities and worlds, thus increasing creative thinking—an important construct in youth development. Magnetic tape made creating content easier. Even those without formal artistic skills could sample and remix content—taking portions of preexisting content and editing it to create new content ( Jenkins, 2009). Although the process of sampling and remixing appears throughout history, magnetic tape marked a shift in this practice by providing a wealth of source material and allowing users to quickly copy, edit, and remix preexisting audio and video to create new messages. Especially essential to the rise of hip hop in the late 20th century, pause-tapes—extended repeated samples using the record and pause buttons—allowed hip hop artists to create looping samples that could be used in the creation of new music (Sorcinelli, 2019). Jenkins considered sampling and remixing a new media literacy skill, essential for success in a digital media environment and for fostering self-efficacy and awareness through media manipulation. Several media literacy advocates

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similarly describe “collaging” as a strategy to increase awareness of media messages and effects (Wade, Davidson, & O’Dea, 2003; Cohate, 2007). The mixtape, an iconic artifact from the late 20th century, is a great example of easy content creation. Content for mixtapes came from every source: sanctioned albums, content captured from broadcast, and audio vocalized by the user. These content snippets were then organized strategically to convey specific sentiments and to activate emotions. With mixtapes, users created experiences using the content of others by detaching specific subcomponents from larger artifacts, a special opportunity of magnetic tape. Mixtapes are a perfect example of how magnetic tape allowed anyone and everyone to create messages by collating the messages of others, thereby changing the communication environment to enhance user participation.

Distributing Content The beneficial psychological effects of creating content exist regardless of whether it is distributed, but making that content available to others provides additional benefits. Chapter 3 described the effects of sharing moments and memories with others via consumer market cameras and images, but this smallscale interpersonal sharing is different from mass distribution, where users can circulate their content widely, including to unknown parties. Prior to magnetic tape, non-professional users could copy text and images via Xerox machines, resulting in a proliferation of zines and other late 20th century underground print media. Magnetic tape made a similar opportunity available with audio and visual content. Although magnetic tape marked a seismic cultural shift in content distribution, researchers have only recently investigated the psychological precursors and effects of sharing content to large audiences instantly with the widespread adoption of social media. In the absence of financial compensation, users are intrinsically motivate to share information online ( Tamir & Mitchell, 2012; Toubia & Stephen, 2013) for reasons including affiliation; self-expression and identity representation; and information retrieval and dissemination (Buechel & Berger, 2015). However, there are two key disparities when retrospectively applying the psychology of sharing information broadly on social media to the psychology of distributing content through magnetic tape. Firstly, social media largely conf lates interpersonal sharing and mass distribution. Therefore, research that investigates social media rarely distinguishes between interpersonal motivations and motivations for mass impact, which may have distinct psychological processes. Secondly, magnetic tape lacks the social feedback built into social media platforms, such as likes and comments. This means users who create content may not ever know how many people “liked” their content. Despite a lack of feedback opportunities inherent to the medium of magnetic tape, the ease of

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creating and copying content encouraged traditional industry outlets to rely on users and provided an additional opportunities. Network and cable television embraced user-generated video to fill the content vacuum brought on by cable. Pulling content from users and repackaging it into something that could be distributed to the masses inspired one of the most popular shows of the 1990s: America’s Funniest Home Videos (AFHV, 1990). Users who produced the best content were even invited into the studio for public recognition and prize money. Although videos of family bloopers at the dinner table and teens screaming about their favorite artist may seem inconsequential, broadcasting this content converts the intangible sentimental value into tangible outcomes, including monetary and social capital. In this way, magnetic tape enabled new forms of feedback that imbue private, personal moments with socially recognized value. Storytelling can empower individuals (Rappaport, 1995; McAdams, 2001), and many psychologists have described how sharing stories and content impacts creators from traditionally marginalized groups in the new media environment, including selfies, blogs, vlogs, and poetry. However, decades earlier, magnetic tape put the tools of video and audio recording in the hands of more people and invited non-professional users to record, edit, copy, and distribute their own stylized content with minimal loss of quality. This allowed individual users to take ownership and control over their own narrative by creating and distributing content that was meaningful and symbolic. This opportunity is particularly relevant for marginalized groups that have been historically underrepresented in media production and misrepresented in media content due to industry expectations and assumptions. Magnetic tape disrupted this process and ushered in an era of innovation in music and video from marginalized groups. Independent, experimental, and avant-garde content from a more diverse slice of the population f lourished. Liberation from traditional routes to popular success led to artists in genres like punk, hip hop, and grunge, as well as female singer–songwriters, to promote their content independent of music labels. New filmmakers embraced video to tell diverse stories and create new genres like video documentaries and music videos. Artists could produce and sell tapes at local events, festivals, and even on the street. Audio and video cassettes were essential to the progression of media and culture at the end of the 20th century, which prominently featured ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, and marginalized working classes. The diversity of the American experience was widely shared thanks to magnetic tape, which ensured that content could be created solely for smaller markets, bypassing traditional distribution strategies that often targeted the largest possible audience. Audio and video content could be distributed directly to users, resulting in a new business model: direct-to-consumer, where users could support content even if it only had niche appeal by using private domestic spaces as media venues. Resulting emergent genres included children’s

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educational content, audiobooks, and at-home workout tapes. This approach fostered the expectation that desired content should be available regardless of whether it would attract a critical mass, an extension of the niche marketing approach endemic to cable television. With the low-cost opportunities of magnetic tape, it has become normal for users to document and share their own stories and to access stories of individuals, both marginalized and mainstream.

Magnetic Tape and Commanding Content Magnetic tape changed users’ control over industry-generated and user-generated content, allowing users to foster new and dynamic relationships with content and the technology. Although our relationship with magnetic tape was brief— less than 20 years—it left an indelible mark on what we expect from our media technologies. We fell in love with magnetic tape because it allowed us to be the programming director: we could choose which content was important and the order of presentation to elicit the emotions that we thought were valuable; we decided what content was worthy of distribution, and we created and distributed content that we felt wanted to see. For the first time, we could control and share extended experiences as if we were running our own television or radio station, and it was intoxicating. Although magnetic tape has been relegated to a nostalgic artifact of the 20th century, the opportunities that it offered users have been deeply integrated into our expectations, including expecting content to be available for individual use as well as the ability to create, distribute, and access content regardless of its mainstream appeal. The widespread adoption of magnetic tape and its associated opportunities also provide a nuanced lens through which to consider file sharing in the digital era—specifically music sharing, given its unique ability to satisfy multiple fundamental psychosocial needs, as described in Chapter 2. Unlike records, content could now be ripped, copied, and shared independent of industry-sanctioned storage devices, normalizing a behavior that would be later catalyzed by MP3 technologies and applications like Napster and Limewire that simplified the copying and distribution process. Although the media industry has systematically demonized “pirates,” or those that profit from the proprietary material of others, magnetic tape established a communication environment where sharing content was the norm. Magnetic tape allowed us to become the masters of our mediated fate, and everyday users (i.e., not those seeking to profit financially) could easily discount the criminal label of pirate when obtaining content solely for personal use and over which they felt a sense of ownership. When users are accustomed to physically possessing and controlling media content, an expectation emerges that all content should be available freely for user engagement, and even detached from the larger artifact. Although some have attributed this cultural attitude to the rapid evolution of digital technologies, it was seeded decades earlier with magnetic tape. Subsidiary streaming services (e.g., CBS All Access, Disney+, HBO GO), collaborative streaming

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services (e.g., Hulu, Tidal), and third-party streaming services (e.g., Netf lix, Spotify) evolved from services originally provided by Blockbuster and other video rental stores. As industry stakeholders become more aware of how users enjoy content, features like selecting and sharing clips, creating playlists, accessing content on multiple devices, and playing back content became standard industry promises. Thanks to user pressure, we can now engage with artifacts like scenes, songs, and episodes independent of larger movies, albums, or television series, a phenomenon rooted in mixtape practices. Embraced in the 21st century media environment, “user-generated content” has come to mean content created by non-professional users that is publicly shared via digital outlets. The low-cost, highly accessible opportunity to create content is regularly cited in the 21st century as a result of advent of digital technology and low-cost apps like Garageband and iMovie, but this myopic focus on recent digital technologies has jettisoned a more robust conversation about similar phenomena decades earlier. Sampling and remixing have become a hallmark of postmodern culture and require agreed-upon, fixed content on which artists can draw and add meaning given the audience’s familiarity with the original source material. Audio samples, quotes, screengrabs, and GIFs are regularly isolated from their original context and inserted into new narratives to add meaning and create new content using artifacts that have personal relevance. This à la carte approach to media content has been normalized: a user can pick and choose from the full menu. In this space, recorded content serves as its own instrument, spawning new genres and styles like hip hop, mashup (e.g., Amerigo Gazaway, Girl Talk), and lip-sync music videos (Kendrat & Corsbie-Massay, 2019). In short, the access and opportunities of magnetic tape helped to establish a common sentiment that drives user behavior: don’t tell me what to do with my content. Users were established as producers when these technological advances were coupled with the emergence of stories of everyday Americans as common media fodder and the cable-generated content vacuum. However, the ability of audiences to record and distribute their stories also triggered an expectation to see stories with which they resonated in mainstream media. If users did not see stories that interested them, they would tell their stories themselves, giving rise to now international musical styles and guerilla video artists. In doing so, users could now create the content they desired and build an audience without relying on traditional industry gatekeepers. As new genres and stories gained traction because they stood out from standard content, traditional industry stakeholders capitalized on this with shows like In Living Color, The Real World, and The Jerry Springer Show. In the 21st century, social media platforms, like YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram, allow users to access a seemingly infinite amount of content created by increasingly intersectional individuals, especially those that have been disregarded by mainstream media industry. There is a sense that someone is out there talking about the things that are personally interesting to each and every user, an opportunity that will be amplified by the

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internet—as discussed in Chapter 9 on dial-up internet service providers—but which is rooted in the communication possibilities of magnetic tape. Magnetic tape gave us unprecedented control over media content. This, combined with our psychological need to control our story, ensured that we fell in love with the opportunity command content and use it however we found most satisfying. Although f leeting—it was barely 25 years before cassette tapes were replaced by CDs and MP3s and VHS tapes were replaced by DVDs and Blu-rays—the practices of our relationship with magnetic tape have become the default in subsequent technologies. Unlike the other technologies mentioned so far in this book, magnetic tape has been effectively removed from the media environment and relegated to nostalgia, but our love for the practices associated with it are still present and continue to impact every technology in its wake.

Note 1. The consumer market launch of magnetic tape predated the deregulation and media mergers of the 1980s, so there was less crossover at the time between content and technology companies (Sony would purchase CBS records in 1988, its first major music content purchase), allowing the promise of audio and video playback devices that reinforced these fears.

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Garber, M. (2014, January 8). 58% of Americans still have a VCR in their homes and they probably still can’t program them. The Atlantic. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/58-of-americansstill-have-a-vcr-in-their-homes/282859/ Gilroy, A. (2006). Art therapy, research and evidence-based practice. London: Sage. Goulding, B. W., & Friedman, O. (2018). The development of territory-based inferences of ownership. Cognition, 177, 142–149. Grytting, C. (2000). The benefits of art education. Arts and Activities, 127(3), 66. Harrington, R. (1980, June 15). The record industry goes to war on home taping. The Washington Post. Japan’s Tdk Leads Market in Videotape. (1982, March 1). New York Times, p. D1. Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jenkins, H., Ford, S., & Green, J. (2018). Spreadable media: Creating value and meaning in a networked culture. New York: NYU Press. Kendrat, S. J., & Corsbie-Massay, C. L. (2019). I want my YouTube! Trends in early youth-created music videos (2007–2013). In J. Schulz, L. Robinson, A. Khilnani, J. Baldwin, H. Pait, A. A. Williams, . . ., G. Ignatow (Eds.), Mediated millennials. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited. Kennedy, R. (2006, July 27). Guggenheim study suggests arts education benefits literacy skills. The New York Times. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.nytimes. com/2006/07/27/books/27gugg.html Levy, M. R. (1987). Some problems of VCR research. American Behavioral Scientist, 30(5), 461–470. Mares, M.-L. (1998). Children’s use of VCRs. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 557(1), 120–131. McAdams, D. P. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5(2), 100–122. Neary, K. R., Friedman, O., & Burnstein, C. L. (2009). Preschoolers infer ownership from “control of permission.” Developmental Psychology, 45(3), 873–876. Pierce, J. L., Kostova, T., & Dirks, K. T. (2003). The state of psychological ownership: Integrating and extending a century of research. Review of General Psychology, 7(1), 84–107. Rappaport, J. (1995). Empowerment meets narrative: Listening to stories and creating settings. American Journal of Community Psychology, 23(5), 795–807. Routley, N. (2018, October 6). Visualizing 40 years of music industry sales. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/ Rudmin, F. (1986). Psychology of ownership, possession, and property: A selected bibliography since 1890. Psychological Reports, 58(3), 859–869. Sinnreich, A. (2013). The piracy crusade: How the music industry’s war on sharing destroys markets and erodes civil liberties. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Sorcinelli, G. (2019, April 24). Press pause: The history of pause tape production. Red Bull Music Academy. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2019/04/pause-tape-production-feature Stuckey, H. L., & Nobel, J. (2010). The connection between art, healing, and public health: A review of current literature. American Journal of Public Health, 100(2), 254–263. Swensson, A. (2014, February 20). 40 years of album sales data in two handy charts. The Current. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://blog.thecurrent.org/2014/02/ 40-years-of-album-sales-data-in-one-handy-chart/

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Tamir, D. I., & Mitchell, J. P. (2012). Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(21), 8038–8043. Toubia, O., & Stephen, A. T. (2013). Intrinsic vs. image-related utility in social media: Why do people contribute content to Twitter? Marketing Science, 32(3), 368–392. Trump, R. K., & Brucks, M. (2012). Overlap between mental representations of self and brand. Self and Identity, 11(4), 454–471. Van den Bulck, J. (1999). VCR-use and patterns of time shifting and selectivity. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 43(3), 316–426. Wade, T. D., Davidson, S., & O’Dea, J. A. (2003). A preliminary controlled evaluation of a school-based media literacy program and self-esteem program for reducing eating disorder risk factors. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 33(4), 371–383. Wilkinson, R. A., & Chilton, G. (2013). Positive art therapy: Linking positive psychology to art therapy theory, practice, and research. Art Therapy, 30(1), 4–11.

8 VIDEO GAMING

I spent a lot of time playing video games, mostly educational games on the computer like MathBlaster and SimAnt. I also played a lot of card and puzzle games like Microsoft Solitaire, Microsoft Mahjong, and Minesweeper. In 1990, I got my first (and only) dedicated gaming device of my childhood, a Nintendo Game Boy that came with a version of Tetris (see Figure 8.1). Then I acquired more traditional adventure and role-playing games (RPGs) like Super Mario Brothers and Kirby’s Dream Land, but Tetris was my jam; I still consider myself to be an expert, although I never participated in tournaments. Today, I spend about 15% of my phone time playing Kakuro or Euchre. I am a statistically “average” gamer. Around 60% of gamers play on their cell phones, and 71% of gamers play casual games ( Entertainment Software Association, 2019) that target a wide market with simple rules and short gaming sessions. Recognition of casual games has increased in the 21st century with the popularity of games like Bejeweled (2001), Plants vs. Zombies (2009), Minecraft (2011), and Pokémon Go (2016). In fact, casual games have been the source of some of the most important moments in gaming. In 2004 it was announced that Microsoft Solitaire (1989–1990) was the most used Microsoft application in the world (Plunkett, 2015). However, the public discourse, and subsequently the popular understanding of video games, focuses on the impact of violent video games on young people, this chapter investigates on the psychology of video gaming, or the practice of navigating onscreen action in a user-friendly interface, including the everyday games that populate our lives. My relationship with video gaming was largely casual. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, I was aware that I was not a part of console game culture. I never played sports games like football or hockey because I found multipleperspective interfaces confusing. I couldn’t master the intricate button sequences

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FIGURE 8.1 Tetris on Game Boy With Additional Games (1989): I played a lot of educational computer games, but the original Game Boy was the only gaming console that I owned in the 20th century. At 160×144 pixels, it was difficult to see and almost impossible to play in the sun, but four AA batteries meant hours of entertainment.

necessary to excel at fighting games; instead, I just mashed buttons in the hope that my onscreen avatar might take a little longer to lose. Similarly, adventure games, RPGs, and first-person shooters (FPS) featured many in-world features that required detailed controller sequences as well as complicated worlds and storylines that involved a heavy time commitment to master. To make matters worse, I didn’t have these games at home, so I could not perfect my gameplay alone before having to play with others. The lack of opportunity to practice made actual gameplay unsatisfying and my losses were always very public. So instead of taking the time to develop video gaming as a skill, I stuck with my simple puzzle games.

Leveling Up Video gaming was the penultimate medium of the 20th century, defining the communication environment in the decades before the internet reached the

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consumer market. Whereas earlier mediums allow users to engage with audio and visual content that was largely determined by producers, video gaming required the user to act upon the technology in order to engage with and, subsequently affect, the resulting messages. Like real world games, the user could win or lose depending on their actions. But unlike real world games, participation did not require resources like other players, equipment, and dedicated space. Invented in the middle of the 20th century and introduced to the American consumer marketplace in the mid-1970s, video games deployed awesome computational power to create a virtual world of play within a single gaming system that did not require specific computer skills to navigate. By the early 1980s, the video game industry was estimated at over $10 billion (Rogers & Larsen, 1984) and the medium was firmly established as a new form of entertainment. In 2019, video games sales cleared $150 billion, and 65% of Americans played video games, including console, computer, and smartphone games (Entertainment Software Association, 2019). Video gaming is the experience of electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a television screen or other display to elicit a specific outcome (i.e., win or lose) determined by the game. This definition is independent of the available games and devices on which games can be played. Instead, it focuses on the novel potential of video game technology as deployed across settings, including dedicated machines, or computers that run a single game (e.g., arcade cabinet games, dedicated handheld devices); computers that run games as well as other programs, including super computers, personal computers, and smartphones; and gaming consoles, or computers specifically designed for gaming that can run multiple games, often through cartridges or other storage media. Like recorded music, video gaming is a memorable medium—a novel format beyond text, images, audio, and moving pictures, that simultaneously conveys messages and aids in the retention of information. This definition of video gaming, as opposed to video games, embraces a variety of genres but excludes virtual worlds wherein users are free to navigate without prescribed goals or outcomes. Although games can exist in programs like Animal Crossing (2001) or Second Life (2003), winning or losing—the inherent definition of a “game” as compared to “play” (Suits, 1988; Huizinga, 1950)—is not built into the experience. Gaming is a long-established component of human culture that entertains, instructs, and fosters affinity and community between individuals and groups. Electronic and computer technologies were a catalyst that sparked an evolution in gaming but did not create the phenomenon. My intentionally broad notion of video gaming enables me to trace the emergence of this medium and the associated psychological responses it fostered. I argue that video gaming extended social and psychological trends while diversifying games and the opportunity to participate in games, regardless of one’s physical or social situation. Video gaming allowed users to play traditionally solo games with others and games that required partners, alone. Video games could defy

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the rules of society and the laws of physics. Entirely new games that could not exist in the real world could be created. Throughout the 1960s, engineers and computer scientists invented and played electronic games on computer interfaces in laboratories and at universities. Some of the earliest video games featured adaptions of tennis (e.g., “Tennis for Two,” 1958; Pong, 1972) where users attempted to keep a ball onscreen. As technology improved and computers began to shrink in size, stand-up cabinet games moved into arcades, and consoles moved into homes. Text-based games like Oregon Trail (1971), Zork (1977), and The Hobbit (1982) were mostly adventures where users made decisions to affect the outcome of the narrative, even if the outcome was simply for the character to not die. Visual games like Spacewar! (1962), Space Invaders (1978), Tetris (1984), and The Legend of Zelda (1986) allowed the user to control onscreen graphics and quickly eclipsed textbased games. As the technology improved, visual-based narratives moved from simple cartoon fantasies like Super Mario Brothers to complex fighting games like Mortal Kombat (1992) and first-person shooters (FPS) like Doom (1993). Games continued to advance through the 1990s, adding more complicated features and narratives and embracing networked gaming, or gaming with others over the internet. However, the current chapter does not address networked gaming given that it was not widely adopted until well into the 2000s due to a lack of high-speed internet connectivity in American homes. For an extended history of video games, see The Ultimate History of Video Games: Volume Two ( Kent, 2010). Whereas ads for radio and television focused on the quality of the device, ads for video gaming featured the games. Even ads that described the features of consoles highlighted the available games, which were often proprietary and not generally available across different platforms. More importantly, early video gaming was targeted to the youth market. This approach—video games as a toy—would come to define the public understanding of video gaming for several decades as a low-culture medium for children. This dismissiveness elicited a series of negative promises, similar to that of television. News media, ads, and pundits drove a social panic through the 1990s, provoking public concern about video games being “addictive” and promoting violent tendencies. This paranoia was enshrined with the 1993 congressional hearings (see Figure 8.2), which criticized games like Mortal Kombat (see Figure 8.3) and Night Trap ( Eschner, 2017). These conversations were often couched in the same general hypothesis that “video games are bad,” which is shortsighted at best and discursively debilitating at worst, because it defined the genre of video games according to the most violent examples. A “video games are bad” message ignored the behaviors of most gamers and prevented an unbiased public conversation about the educational potentials of video gaming. Despite the general academic acknowledgment that this approach to video games is problematic, researchers focused on the causal relationship between

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FIGURE 8.2 Senator Joe Lieberman at the Congressional Hearings on Video Games (1993): The panic around violence in video games during the early 1990s sparked congressional hearings spearheaded by Senators Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Herb Kohl (D-WI). The public hearings served as a catalyst for discussions about violence in video games—confirming preexisting fears in the population and introducing a talking point that would result in the longstanding strategy of scapegoating video games that continues into the 21st century.

Source: C-SPAN

video gaming and violence for years (Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Sherry, 2001; Greitemeyer & Mügge, 2014). Thankfully, an increased attention to the diversity of gaming and the positive psychological potential of games (Granic, Lobel, & Engels, 2014)—as well as the changes in discourse regarding gaming as users embraced smartphone and augmented reality gaming—shows that early concerns about violence were vastly inf lated. The current chapter examines the potential of video gaming free of this 30-year-old stigma. Although video games differ in genre, platform, narratives, experiences, and opportunities for interaction, they share several key components that have had a long-term impact on the psychological expectations of American media users. The core driver of video gaming is the ability for the user to manipulate the action on screen. However, as games, users could now lose without real-world consequences. As user-controlled content, users could engage with video game content ad infinitum, developing expertise through play—an essential component of psychological development. These potentials changed

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Mortal Kombat (1992): Although Mortal Kombat (Midway Games) was released in 1992 as an arcade game, its console release in 1993 changed the conversation. Suddenly non-gaming parents, who were largely unaware of content at the arcades their children frequented, saw the game coming into the home, which resulted in shock and outrage among the uninitiated.

FIGURE 8.3

the communication environment by involving users in the production of media messages, even if just for their own personal use. The current chapter discusses how the opportunities to control virtual words, learn through gaming, and lose without real-world consequences have been embraced in all aspects of American life, successively catalyzing shifts in culture and psychosocial expectations.

Controlling Action and Narrative The capacity to control aspects of the world is essential to our self-actualization, and feeling like we are in control is an important fundamental need. “Being in control means to know about the attributes of a situation, to anticipate its dynamics, and to be able to inf luence it according to one’s goals” (Klimmt, Hartmann, & Frey, 2007, p.  845). We desire to control our environments, and the micro control enabled by video gaming creates a sense of embodied power (Gee, 2008). We are so eager to feel in control that we can experience “vicarious agency” when instructions come before characters’ actions, ensuring

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that we are aware of something before it happens and allowing us to anticipate changes in the world, even if we are not in control (Wegner, Sparrow, & Winerman, 2004). Earlier media offered some control, preparing consumers for video gaming. For example, as discussed, recorded music allowed the user to choose prefabricated content, consumer market cameras allowed the user to determine which moments to capture for posterity, and magnetic tape allowed the user to determine what, when, and how content should be presented. Video gaming offered even greater control by allowing the user to consistently set in motion a complex set of actions with a single stroke, resulting in changes in the onscreen messages and story outcomes; the virtual world was at the user’s command. This investment in the outcome of the game fostered desire for repetitive play to improve control and ensure desirable results in the narrative (Grodal, 2000). Story and narrative are different. A story is the sequence of events, whereas narrative is how the events are told (Zucker-Sharff, 2011); whereas the story includes all of the elements and the general order in which they occur, the narrative varies between narrators, resulting in different emotional cadences and overall impact. Video gaming launched the era of interactive storytelling wherein video game designers developed the components of the game and the general order of events, but users controlled objects within the environment, the unfolding of events, and ultimately the outcome of the story. The user determined the direction of the action and was responsible for the continuation or demise of the overall experience, even in non-narrative games like Tetris. Controlling character choices increases feelings of control and subsequently enjoyment (Rogers, Dillman Carpentier, & Barnard, 2016), revealing why the experience of video gaming is incomplete if the user does not take control. Without the user’s actions, Tetrominos in Tetris would fall straight downward to create an awkward pile to end play, and Mario would be killed by the first Goomba he encountered (see Figure 8.4). Among other complex potentials for control in the video game environment, research has focused on avatars—the visual representation of a user’s character in a virtual setting. Originating from Hindu mythology to describe the mortal incarnation of gods, avatars are more than mere online objects manipulated by the user. Books, movies, and television invite the user to adopt the perspective of a character that is determined by the author. By contrast, video gaming invites the user to determine, embody, and reimagine the character that drives their customized story. Some games assign the player a single character (e.g., Link in Adventures of Zelda) whereas others offer a choice between different characters (e.g., Mario or Luigi in Super Mario Brothers). Occasionally, games offer different skills and game experiences for different characters. In addition to narrative choices, manipulating the actions of avatars can activate feelings of control, and these feelings of control can mediate users’ enjoyment of a game (Rogers et al., 2016). Furthermore, avatar creation can lead to greater

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FIGURE 8.4 Super Mario Brothers (1985): Super Mario Bros. was bundled with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) along with Duck Hunt. Much like Tetris, the default status of the game ensured that it was one of the most popular games of the time. The game begins with a small Mario being approached by a Goomba, forcing the user to jump over or on the character. If Mario refuses to move, the character dies and the game restarts.

identification and enjoyment (Turkay & Kinzer, 2014; Trepte & Reinecke, 2010) and greater presence and self-awareness when one can customize an avatar to resemble oneself (Ratan, Santa Cruz, & Vorderer, 2007; Vasalou, Joinson, & Pitt, 2007). Regardless of avatar style, they are “the embodied conception of the participant’s self ” (Wolfendale, 2007, p. 114), real or virtual, and the experiences, joys, trials, and tribulations experienced by the avatar are internalized and experienced by the user. Control over onscreen characters is an essential component of video gaming that results in a sense of embodied power and overall enjoyment. However, it is unclear how these virtual feelings of control translate to expectations of agency in the real world. This uncertainty is particularly evident in studies that limit control. Participants who cannot navigate an interface, or find that the software prevents them from interacting in a satisfying manner, may experience less enjoyment (Klimmt et al., 2007). They may also sense greater frustration, anger, or aggression (Schrader & Nett, 2018) and ultimately may cope by withdrawing from the technology altogether. The widespread adoption of video gaming ensured that Americans could easily satisfy this need for control independent of social expectations or interactions. This is a special, often

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ignored effect of video gaming: perpetual gratification of the need for control. Similar to the arguments made in Chapter 6 on cable television and perpetual emotional gratification, we have become habituated to the allure of virtual control and this may elevate the user’s baseline need and expectations for control, leading them to seek out further opportunities for control and return to technologies where they can attain it.

Learning With Games The opportunity to control the environment has been touted as a boon for learning since the 1980s and 1990s with educational computer games. The focus on the potential of this genre has decreased as more seductive conversations about violence in video games have dominated the public discourse. In the 21st century, the rise of “serious games” (Ritterfeld, Cody, & Vorderer, 2009) continues this trend of using video gaming for prosocial outcomes. A cursory summary of educational psychology reveals the capabilities of video gaming as a means of implementing learning strategies. Educator and philosopher John Dewey1 argued that the teacher’s role is to make sense of the world for children and to guide them through new experiences (Dewey, 1897). Maria Montessori theorized that in order for children to develop into fully-functioning individuals, they should be surrounded by a beautiful and skills-appropriate environment (Montessori, 2013). Jean Piaget theorized that children learn by interacting with the environment and will improve with multiple examples of the subject combined with assistance from adults (Flavell, 1963). Lev Vygotsky established the zone of proximal development—the difference between the most difficult task a child can accomplish alone and the most difficult task a child can accomplish with assistance (Vygotsky, 1967) and claimed that curricula should be designed to extend the children’s knowledge and not stop at what the children can learn on their own. Video gaming applies these theories and makes education accessible by providing users with a wealth of information in a structured yet mutable manner. As multimedia learning tools (MMLTs), educational games effectively create a classroom of one by constructing dynamic models of real-world processes that users can use to practice and hone skills,2 and research regarding MMLTs reveals that some of the best practices for learning in an interactive interface— creating active self-directed learners, providing authentic context, providing student-sensitive instructional feedback, establishing student-sensitive environments, and allowing for goal ref lection (Grunwald & Corsbie-Massay, 2006)—are often already applied in video gaming environments. Educational games, which emerged alongside entertainment games but never achieved the same recognition or popularity, can also gamify learning. Traditional, straightforward, didactic experiences can be translated into a gaming environment, complete with story, goals, feedback, progress, and

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challenges (Hamari, Koivisto, & Sarsa, 2014), as well as badges, levels, leaderboards, achievements, and points (Nicholson, 2015). Commonly referred to as gamification—or applying gaming elements to non-gaming activities—these strategies help motivate users by featuring rewarding incremental wins and are useful even in scenarios that traditionally do not feature winning and losing. Some of my favorite games included MathBlaster, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, which fostered skills in math, geography, and typing, respectively. Although the phrase “serious games” emerged through the early 21st century to describe virtual environments intended to educate or train (Ritterfeld et al., 2009), these examples demonstrate the potential and power of games outside of entertainment and how rules, regulations, and task-based missions can impact human psychology in general. Video gaming also offers tailored support in the form of scaffolding—the supportive actions or tools that allow an individual to progress through increasingly difficult tasks and a hallmark of education associated with Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. Comparatively easier early levels reduce the chance of later frustration and failure and systematically demonstrate how to control the onscreen action and move through the world. As mastery of key skills and concepts are achieved, levels become increasingly difficulty with more chances to fail and feature fewer supportive structures. Interestingly, recent studies reveal that aggression elicited from video games may be related to the frustration of losing and the inability to effectively accomplish tasks in world ( Przybylski, Deci, Rigby, & Ryan, 2014), indicating that video games may foster an expectation of success. This finding stands in opposition to the popular discourse that gamers merely mirror aggressive in-game behavior. Simple and intuitive interfaces, as well as training modules, can increase users’ ability to engage with the video game, thus mitigating aggressive responses by preparing users to navigate and excel in a virtual world. That is, the social impact of video gaming might be an expectation that learning should be entertaining, failing should be fun, and we should have the capacity to “win” even at things that were not previously seen as games, such as education, work, social networks, and dating (Frith, 2013).

Losing Without Consequences Psychological research investigating the experience of winning and losing is extensive. Winning in competition activates neurological reward mechanisms (Zalla et al., 2000), whereas losing can elicit feelings of pain and negatively impact self-esteem through feelings of self-doubt and incompetence (Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995). The fear of failure, or “the motivation to avoid failure because of the possibility of experiencing shame and embarrassment” (Caraway, Tucker, Reinke, & Hall, 2003, p. 419), has been associated with elevated feelings of worry and anxiety and lower self-esteem and optimism

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(Conroy, Willow, & Metzler, 2002). This is unsurprising, given that public failure can be uniquely harmful psychologically (Frey, 1978; Brown & Gallagher, 1992). Individuals afraid to fail internalize the inevitability of failure, thus fostering the belief that they are incapable of succeeding. This lack of selfefficacy, or a belief in one’s ability to handle tasks at hand, can then impact actual behaviors, including sabotaging interpersonal relationships (Conroy et al., 2002) and avoiding taking risks (Highbin, McCaffrey, & Pychyl, 2012). The ability to play video games privately, especially for activities that have historically have required multiple people, like sports, eliminates the potential public shaming when one loses. Having a safe space in which to lose helps alleviate fears of failure. Huizinga, one of the first scholars to explore play seriously, argued that, “the play-mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of exaltation and tension accompanies the action, mirth and relaxation follow” (Huizinga, 1950, p. 132). Games are a specific form of play but may not be purely recreational when winning and losing have major real-world consequences, like losing money or status. By eliminating the real-world consequences of game outcomes, video gaming enhances the pleasurable feelings associated with play, allowing users to lose without losing face. Furthermore, failure and losing are built into the experience of video gaming. The experience does not end when the character dies or when the user fails; it simply starts over from the beginning (or the most recent save point). Salminen and Ravaja found that players respond to failure and loss in video games with excitement, interest, and joy (Salminen & Ravaja, 2008), revealing that even loss and failure in video games can be interpreted positively by users if they believe that they can reach the goal with practice (McGonigal, 2011). This potential allows users to experience the negative feelings associated with losing, and then the immediate opportunity to alleviate those feelings by trying again, fostering self-efficacy. Video games promise to assuage the pain of losing through more play, and subsequently more losing ( Juul, 2013). Although we generally avoid failure, we play video games knowing that we will fail, but also knowing that this failure is part of the entertainment experience. By mitigating negative emotional impacts of losing and allowing users to practice indefinitely in safe spaces, video gaming invites users to develop an expertise over the game itself. An “expert” is someone with a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge or skill in a given area, and who can effectively elicit a desired outcome. Through video gaming, users can develop mastery without real-world restrictions common to gaining expertise, including resources and possible negative interpersonal interactions like being judged or discriminated against. Consider chess. Prior to computer chess, users had to compete against ever-increasingly skilled players in order to advance their own abilities. This meant finding a skill-appropriate opponent and coping emotionally with public losses. With computer chess, users could practice their game

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in private with a skill-appropriate virtual component without fear of being embarrassed. Because practice is framed as play and a “game,” users may be more willing to engage in video gaming for hours, developing proficiency without the negative connotations of “work.” Research has demonstrated that extended video game play is correlated with behaviors associated with expertise. Adolescents who played strategic games (e.g., RPGs), but not racing or fighting games, reported greater problem-solving skills a year later, which predicted higher academic grades (Adachi & Willoughby, 2011). The effects of video gaming on resilience and persistence can also be indirect. Video games have also been associated with enhanced creativity ( Jackson et al., 2012) and a belief that intelligence is incrementally attained, not inherent and absolute (Diveck & Molden, 2005). Puzzle games can improve mood, relax the player, and reduce anxiety ( Russoniello, O’Brien, & Parks, 2009). Together, these effects can help individuals develop coping strategies to persist in the face of difficulties or setbacks, making them more resilient. However, few scholars have investigated whether one’s perception of oneself as an expert mediates these relationships. As individuals become more proficient in any given task, they are able to exert greater control over their area of expertise and are more likely to achieve their intended goal. This implies that being an expert or having expertise may increase one’s perceived self-efficacy and problem-solving. But existing research on expertise does not investigate expertise as an outcome or perceived expertise as a mediator of psychological phenomena. This gap is particularly important because the experience of winning can gratify fundamental psychosocial needs, including self-esteem and meaningful existence, and individuals who obtain expertise in one area may approach other aspects of their lives differently.

Video Gaming and Safe Spaces Video gaming marked the start of an interactive media boom. Public discourse has simultaneously treated video gaming as childish entertainment and a scourge on society—this contradictory approach fails to acknowledge Americans’ meaningful relationship with the medium. Video gaming allowed us to explore and achieve the best version of ourselves. We could embody desirable characters, control virtual worlds, and become experts in the field of our choosing, all from the comfort and safety of our homes. Video gaming gave us a safe space, a place where we can feel confident that we will not be exposed to discrimination, harassment, or explicit emotional or physical harm. Although this term is often used as a pejorative ideological attack, it embodies the idea that we can grow, learn, and make mistakes out of harm’s way. This is almost impossible in the real world, outside of (ideally) the home, the classroom, and with close friends and partners—but video gaming insulates the user from real-world repercussions and fosters a sense of safety during periods of (virtual)

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vulnerability. Because of their relationship with video gaming, American users have become habituated to these potentials and expect control even if only in a virtual space, intuitive and responsive interfaces, and insulation from loss while embracing wins from future technologies and from life itself. Whereas magnetic tape allowed users to record and distribute content, video games allowed users to generate content. That is, we create messages through our actions even if it was initially provided by others. Video gaming gave us access to worlds and the ability to control characters. We were more than the narrator; we were the storyteller, and we immersed ourselves in the nuanced stories of our own creation.3 This level of control has become a standard expectation in the 21st century with advances in digital and networked technologies. Social media, for example, allows users to tailor content and media messages, including the virtual environment by changing the colors of their homepages as well as their own representation with avatars and profile pictures of their choosing. In this way, users affirm their active presence and engagement within a virtual space. Video gaming also diversified entertainment and opportunities to engage in activities by eliminating the need for space, equipment, or even other players, further laying the groundwork for this expectation of control. Gaming moved activities from traditional venues like sporting arenas into traditionally nongaming spaces; card games could be played at work, football games could be played in the library, and users could embark on complex adventures through fantastical worlds without ever leaving their home. With video games, individuals could now access emotionally activating content that responded to their individual actions on demand regardless of spatial or temporal restrictions—a standard expectation in the 21st century media environment. Magnetic tape brought our favorite content to us and video gaming did the same with our favorite activities. In the wake of the widespread adoption of video gaming, we have come to expect intuitive technologies that are considerate of our knowledge level, both regarding the featured information and the interface. We expect new technology to make us feel proficient—even as novice users. The fields of human computer interaction (HCI) and user experience (UX) design have proliferated in the early 21st century to ensure most users can engage with digital interfaces with minimal conscious effort. In doing so, designers foster feelings of self-efficacy that subsequently ensure further interaction with technology. We are introduced to the features of every new app and rewarded when we successfully complete an action (“You’ve got it!”). These scaffolding and training module approaches were introduced via video gaming, but have since become the norm across computer programs. Interfaces that are not intuitive or have a high learning curve can cause users to quickly become frustrated and discard the technology. We love feeling like winners and we are drawn to technologies that make us feel like we are already experts, if only because we are rewarded for simply following instructions.

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In the same way video gaming and gamification elevated and emphasized small wins, they also limited the impact of users’ failures. This fostered a desire among users that technology should reward participation and quickly eradicate evidence of mistakes or losses. Through technology, American users have become accustomed to insulating themselves from failure, even though failing is important to growing and developing as an individual. Consider the potentials of social media: users can block users that are overly critical of their posts, delete posts if they are not well received, or even delete their entire account and restart. Each of these options eliminates any evidence that we were not successful. Social media have allowed the curation of one’s virtual presence to ensure that it is ref lective of wins, even small ones, while scrubbing it of failures. This approach to life was normalized by technology in the wake of video gaming, which featured these opportunities in safe virtual worlds. We love video gaming because it allowed us to turn anything into a game and turn a game into anything. It samples and remixes the real world while insulating us from it, and we can play with simulated aspects of reality without being beholden to all its complications. We love the opportunity to play god, to attain expertise on our own time, and share our success while hiding our losses. With video games, even death is not the end; when we die, we simply start over with no real-world long-term consequences, the ultimate example of a safe space, one that responds to our mistakes with patience, consideration, and infinite chances.

Notes 1. Dewey established a set of conditions that make an experience educational: (1) it is based on children’s interests and grows out of existing knowledge and experience; (2) it supports children’s development; (3) it helps children develop new skills; (4) it adds to children’s understanding of the world; and (5) it prepares children to live more fully. 2. The popularity of simulations and multimedia learning tools (MMLTs) across areas including medicine and military have encouraged a parallel conversation regarding psychology and interface design. It is important to note that video games and simulations (i.e., computer programs that replicate real-world scenarios) are related but are not synonymous. Like games, simulations are governed by a series of rules and regulations and users can either succeed or fail at the task being simulated, which is psychologically comparable to winning and losing. However, simulations do not have the rhetorical “gaming” aspect involved, despite the fact that they can be used as games. 3. Providing that we had the skill to do so. In my Super Mario Brothers, Mario never saves Princess Peach. He always dies. He’s never even seen Bowser.

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Huizinga, J. (1950). Homo ludens: A study of the play-element in culture. Boston, MA: Beacon. Jackson, L. A., Witt, E. A., Games, A. I., Fitzgerald, H. E., Von Eye, A., & Zhao, Y. (2012). Information technology use and creativity: Findings from the children and technology project. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(2), 370–376. Juul, J. (2013). The art of failure: An essay on the pain of playing video games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kent, S. L. (2010). The ultimate history of video games: Volume two: From Pong to Pokemon and beyond . . . the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world. New York: Three Rivers Press. Klimmt, C., Hartmann, T., & Frey, A. (2007). Effectance and control as determinants of video game enjoyment. Cyberpsychology & Behaviors, 10(6), 845–858. Leary, M. R., Tambor, E. S., Terdal, S. K., & Downs, D. L. (1995). Self-esteem as an interpersonal monitor: The sociometer hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(3), 518–530. McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world. New York: Penguin. Montessori, M. (2013). The Montessori method. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Nicholson, S. (2015). A RECIPE for meaningful gamification. In Gamification in education and business (pp. 1–20). New York: Springer. Plunkett, L. (2015, November 2). The story of solitaire, one of the world’s biggest video games. Kotaku. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from https://kotaku.com/ the-story-of-solitaire-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-video-5672324 Przybylski, A. K., Deci, E. L., Rigby, S., & Ryan, R. M. (2014). Competence-impeding electronic games and players’ aggressive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(3), 441–499. Ratan, R., Santa Cruz, M., & Vorderer, P. (2007). Multitasking, presence, and selfpresence on the Wii. Proceedings of the 10th annual international workshop on presence. Barcelona. Ritterfeld, U., Cody, M., & Vorderer, P. (2009). Serious games: Mechanisms and effects. New York: Routledge. Rogers, E. M., & Larsen, J. K. (1984). Silicon Valley fever: Growth of high-technology culture. New York: Basic Books. Rogers, R., Dillman Carpentier, F. R., & Barnard, L. (2016). Media enjoyment as a function of control over characters. Entertainment Computing, 12, 29–39. Russoniello, C. V., O’Brien, K., & Parks, J. M. (2009). The effectiveness of casual video games in improving mood and decreasing stress. Journal of CyberTherapy and Rehabilitation, 2(1), 53–66. Salminen, M., & Ravaja, N. (2008). Increased oscillatory theta activation evoked by violent digital game events. Neuroscience Letters, 435(1), 69–72. Schrader, C., & Nett, U. (2018). The perception of control as a predictor of emotional trends during gameplay. Learning and Instruction, 54, 62–72. Sherry, J. L. (2001). The effects of violent video games on aggression: A meta-analysis. Human Communication Research, 27(3), 409–431. Suits, B. (1988). Tricky triad: Games, play, and sport. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 15(1), 1–9. Trepte, S., & Reinecke, L. (2010). Avatar creation and video game enjoyment: Effects of life-satisfaction, game competitiveness, and identification with the avatar. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 22(4), 171–184.

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Turkay, S., & Kinzer, C. K. (2014). The effects of avatar-based customization on player identification. International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, 6(1), 1–25. Vasalou, A., Joinson, A. N., & Pitt, J. (2007). Constructing my online self: Avatars that increase self-focused attention. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 445–448). Retrieved June 26, 2020 from https://dl.acm.org/ doi/pdf/10.1145/1240624.1240696 Vygotsky, L. (1967). Play and its role in the mental development of the child. Soviet Psychology, 5(3), 6–18. Wegner, D. M., Sparrow, B., & Winerman, L. (2004). Vicarious agency: Experiencing control over the movements of others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(6), 838. Wolfendale, J. (2007). My avatar, my self: Virtual harm and attachment. Ethics and Information Technology, 9(2), 111–119. Zalla, T., Koechlin, E., Pietrini, P., Basso, G., Aquino, P., Sirigu, A., & Grafman, J. (2000). Differential amygdala responses to winning and losing: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study in humans. European Journal of Neuroscience, 12(5), 1764–1770. Zucker-Sharff, A. (2011, September 8). Story vs. Narrative vs. Plot. Hack Text. Retrieved January 5, 2020 fromhttp://hacktext.com/2011/09/story-vs-narrative-vs-plot-1205/

9 DIAL-UP ISPs

My mother was always an early adopter of computers. By 1988, I had already programmed in BASIC on an IBM PCjr and was a regular user of the IBM PC Convertible. In 1990, we signed up for an account with Prodigy, an online service that provided internet access at home through a dial-up modem. It was not the accessible, graphically rich version of the internet that we have become accustomed to in the 21st century. Instead, Prodigy—similar to other internet service providers (ISPs) in the late 20th century like America Online (AOL)— was a particular kind of platform. It curated a limited virtual space where users could access limited functions, including sending email, playing games, and interacting with others online via chatrooms and bulletin boards. I know now that this was only a fraction of what the internet had to offer but it was still more information and opportunities than I had ever experienced before, perpetually available in my home, and literally at my fingertips. I would come home from school and dial up, getting excited over the screeching modem as it connected. Luckily, no one needed the phone until my mother came home a few hours later. If you had a question, you could log on and find an answer at any time. One Christmas, my grandfather and I were in a heated argument over how many candles were in a menorah, the sacred candelabrum lit on each of the eight nights of Chanukah. I argued that there were nine candles—one in the center and eight surrounding it. My grandfather argued that there were seven. On television, we saw some menorahs with nine candles and others with seven candles, making it impossible to determine who was right. I knew there were eight nights of Chanukah and I refused to give in. Later that night, my stepfather logged into Prodigy and found the right answer: nine candles. He approached my grandfather and told him that I was right. My grandfather promptly cussed

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him out for not minding his business. In my grandfather’s defense, the Temple menorah featured on the Israeli Coat of Arms has seven candles, but that wasn’t the current argument. But the internet was more than a source of information; it was a source of social connections. The following year, when I was in fifth grade, I started messaging a boy who told me he was in sixth grade. We chatted about music, movies, and other pre-adolescent stuff that I would talk to my real-life friends about. Talking with him was pleasant and friendly—a far cry from the antagonistic interactions I had with neighborhood boys. I told him that my family and I were planning on going to Cancun for spring break. Coincidently, he told me he would be there too and staying in another hotel about a mile away. He was excited to meet me and asked me to come to his hotel, but I said he should come to my hotel (he was in sixth grade after all). He agreed. I sat waiting in my hotel’s lobby at the appointed time, but he never showed. When I got back to the States, I tried messaging him on Prodigy, but he never replied. I was sad and didn’t really understand what happened to our friendship. It wasn’t until decades later and scores of news stories, PSAs, and fictionalized procedural dramas about criminal activity on the internet did I realize the potential danger. Although child abduction via the internet is rare (Wolak, Finkelhor, Mitchell, & Ybarra, 2010)—I learned that the internet is just as complicated as its human users. It is simultaneously an infinite utopia of information on demand and an anonymous haven for humanity’s worst. Although this spectrum of humanity has always been present, the internet brought it into American homes.

America (Is) Online As is often repeated, the internet represents the most seismic shift to the media environment since the advent of the printing press. Technically speaking, the internet is a global interconnected network of computers that allows users across geographical distances to connect and share information digitally. Since its development in 1969 by the United States Department of Defense as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the internet has changed life globally by connecting the world in ways that were inconceivable with other technologies. Today, the internet is largely understood to be an infinite source of information where anyone can connect with anyone else, but in the late 20th century—when less than 15% of American homes had a personal computer (PC) (Newburger, 2001)—were dominated by a series of dial-up internet service providers (ISPs), platforms that offered non-military and non-academic users limited access to the internet, using an interconnected virtual space that was mediated and moderated by the ISP. In the 1980s, it was promised that personal computers (PCs) would expand opportunities, but many who purchased them found the device and the limited

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number of programs difficult to use (Freiberger & Swaine, 2000; Turkel, 1982). In this limited market, dial-up ISPs like Compuserve (1979) and Prodigy (1984) offered early adopters a variety of services, including games, news, educational references, and commercial services like banking, shopping, and travel. All of this changed in 1991 with the introduction of AOL, which quickly eclipsed its predecessors, jumping to 3 million subscribers in its first four years (Nollinger, 1995) thanks to a systematic marketing campaign (see Figure 9.1), an infectious catch phrase (“You’ve Got Mail”), and massive increase in news coverage regarding the internet. The popularity of AOL and the promise of the internet helped drive tech-related purchases such that 51% of American households had PCs and 41.5% had access to the internet by the end of the century (Newburger, 2001). By making information and institutions anonymously accessible, the internet could usher in a new social era, tearing down physical and socially constructed

AOL 7.0 Promotional Disc (2001): AOL would send disc after disc of free hours for the platform to encourage subscriptions. I received dozens of these discs over the years, but the 7.0 version came in a lovely tin case that was great for holding multiple CDs.

FIGURE 9.1

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barriers, connecting individuals around the world in real time, and delivering the world’s knowledge to users regardless of their circumstances. Although only a few decades old, this unprecedented access has become so deeply entrenched in our social norms that it seems almost hard to remember when immediate on-demand access to the world was not available—like a partner with whom we cannot imagine being without despite a relatively brief courtship. And, like a partner, we rely on the internet for everything and the internet consistently delivers, responding our actions as well as our desires, needs, and demands. Today over 80% of American households have internet access (Smith A., 2017), and 28% of Americans are online “almost constantly” (Perrin & Kumar, 2019). The word “internet” was virtually nonexistent in New York Times articles before 1992. The technological promises of the Clinton/Gore campaign ( Broad, 1992) and the internet-based get out the vote efforts that year (Smith E., 2016) generated a spike in this topic, resulting in 101 articles in 1993, 408 in 1994, and more than 1,000 in 1995. News articles positioned the internet as a tool for niche marketing that allowed users to connect with others interested in similar topics, primarily around cultural consumption (e.g., “sports, music, gaming or sexual interests”; Gustafson, 2004, p. 161). These stories also suggested that the internet was a tool for e-commerce that would change the way Americans purchase goods and services (Gustafson, 2004). The internet was conceptualized simultaneously (and often paradoxically) as a state-sponsored war project, a toy for teenagers, an information superhighway, a virtual reality, a technology for sale and for selling, a major player in global capitalism, as well as a leading framework for comprehending both globalization and the nation’s future in it. (Schulte, 2013, p. 1) Schulte’s introductory quote encapsulates the complex and often contradictory representations of the internet in the public mind even before it was widely adopted. However, this potential, as well as the role of the internet in the daily life of Americans, is perpetually in f lux. Just as scholars and pundits begin to grasp its impact, new hardware and software emerge, changing our fundamental understanding of this technology. Therefore, we must return to the early days of consumer market access and dial-up ISPs in the 1990s in order to understand the role of the internet in the American psyche. Because the internet was frequently discussed independent of dial-up ISPs, their role in framing American expectations and practices are often understated or invisible. Dial-up ISPs were not a neutral conduit for internet access—they strictly controlled user experiences, and in superimposing a user-friendly interface for the internet, the choices made by these mediums encouraged certain behaviors and discouraged others while rhetorically emphasizing the infinite capabilities of the internet. Although we could select content, presentation order, and pace, keywords,

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homepages, and feeds were all carefully constructed, thus encouraging the illusion of freedom in a controlled space. By the end of the century, users were engaging in a wide variety of activities online: 86% of internet users had sent an email, 57% had explored an interest or hobby, 38% had played a game, 36% had searched for information for educational purposes, and 25% had used a chatroom or online forum (Shah, Kwak, & Holbert, 2001). Interestingly, less than 20% of users had engaged in transactions,1 demonstrating that making purchases or conducting business online was not yet commonplace. E-commerce experienced a major turning point in 1995, when the National Science Foundation (NSF) lifted its ban on commercial enterprise on the internet, resulting in the launch of amazon. com, ebay.com, and ticketmaster.com.2 However, dial-up ISPs did not supplant broadcast media and durable technologies; although it was possible to access current events and entertainment online in the 1990s, dial-up ISPs could not yet compare because—as with networked gaming—high-speed connectivity was not widely available. Whereas current access to the internet is defined by high speed mobile access, access in the late 20th century was restricted to hardwired computers with dial-up speeds between 56 and 144 kilobytes per second (kbps). For comparison, 4G downloads in 2019 operated about 275 times faster at 40mbps. Although Napster and discussions of filesharing dominated the public discourse regarding the internet at the end of the century, college students were one of the few groups to have uninterrupted access to dedicated T1 lines, or telephone lines optimized for digital transmissions. This digital divide tempered—and continues to temper—the grand promises of the internet. Across social categories like income, education, race, ability, language, and geographic location, traditionally marginalized groups were (and still are) less likely to have quality access to the internet. Many of the mediums featured in this book were largely accessible to the majority of Americans within a short period of time, but internet accessibility continues to suffer from longstanding social disparities. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge and consider that conversations about the internet are explicitly derived from privileged experiences (myself included). For many who were not alive or online in the 1990s, it may be difficult to conceptualize these earlier versions of the internet. The past 15 years have been dominated by dynamic interactivity and user-generated content, commonly known as Web 2.0, but dial-up ISPs were not Web 2.0. Whereas Web 2.0 allows nearly anyone to create, post, and share a wide variety of media formats, early internet content in the dial-up era was sanctioned by gatekeepers who could afford to create and maintain content in these spaces, including corporate brands and legacy media outlets. In the Web 2.0 era, individuals could like, comment, and interact with other users (mostly) freely. By comparison, dial-up ISPs provided a “walled garden” where use was curtailed and interpersonal connections were largely limited to bulletin boards and chatrooms sanctioned

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by the service provider. Today, streaming content like Netf lix and YouTube generates more than 25% of global streaming traffic (Marvin, 2018), but dial-up ISPs were dominated by text-based interactions and highly pixelated graphics (see Figure 9.2). Advances in web technology toward the mid- to late-1990s allowed for more streaming content and higher resolution photos, but this content was largely provided by media industry outlets, and shared files had to be downloaded to one’s hard drive before they could be used. Despite these limitations, dial-up ISPs translated the world’s information, social connections, goods, and services into a format that was directly available to users on demand. In the 21st century, the internet has supported a wide range of initiatives, from toppling dictators to bringing back canceled television shows, but dial-up ISPs in the late 20th century established how we use the internet and what we expect from this unprecedented technology. The opportunities and usage patterns common to dial-up ISPs impacted culture and psychosocial expectations, which continue to impact internet use today. Whereas earlier mediums like recorded music, radio, television, and magnetic tape made audio and video content available in the home, the internet from its earliest iteration made users feel like the world was available in the home by providing information and expertise, social connection and communities, and goods and services on demand. This chapter will address how these potentials changed American communication expectations and began a shift toward the on-demand culture evident in the early 21st century.

Accessing Information and Expertise on Demand The psychological need for information and its subsequent gratification was described in Section 2—by the time the internet became a household word, Americans were accustomed to domestic availability of information and entertainment thanks to radio and television. However, the internet was more than a simple stream of timely content; it was a virtual library where users had immediate access to almost everything that had been recorded by mankind, including literature, poetry, music, art, scientific textbooks, and data. The sheer availability and diversity of information, which had previously required physical and sanctioned admittance to institutions like libraries and universities, redefined how users interacted with information. The internet allowed users to access things that may not have been immediately available in the preset schedules of newspapers, radio, or television, including specific facts and history, niche current events, or a range of esoteric topics as they arose. It was through a dial-up ISP that I settled the argument with my grandfather about how many lights were on a menorah. Due to the abundance of information and content, users were invited to place their trust in the dial-up ISPs above and beyond specific individuals by making unavailable traditional markers of expertise, similar to radio (Chapter 4)—

Prodigy Homepage: Contrary to the norms of Web 2.0, which feature an abundance of real images, video, and other photorealistic content in high fidelity, dialup ISPs were dominated by text and low-fidelity clip art and illustrations. Along with the visual representations in 20th century video gaming, digital video communication was markedly different from analog video communication (i.e., broadcast and cable television, magnetic tape), reinforcing a distinction between mediums that would deteriorate in the 21st century.

FIGURE 9.2

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fostering phrases that are familiar today like “I read it on AOL” or “I saw it on the internet.” Users could search for, share, and use information independent from the individuals and institutions who created, established, and curated information on an as-needed basis. This “ just-in-time” approach to information access and learning meant that users could access information on demand and use it to meet their needs (Riel, 1998), thus activating the capacity of learners to control their experience with media. As we have embraced this model of information access, some have argued that the internet will diminish the role of teachers and other traditional educational models (Badke, 2015; Godsey, 2015). As of yet, this has not yet been realized. The role of educators and individuals who are skilled in disseminating knowledge to others (e.g., librarians) continues to be relevant in an environment of media and information abundance. However, there is a serious concern associated with users thinking of themselves as experts, or lay expertise, especially in fields where extensive training is required. As described in Chapter 8, becoming an expert may result in greater self-determination, self-efficacy, and feelings of agency and control, and simply accessing information may enable users to feel like an expert, fostering a sense of hubris that can prevent individuals from acknowledging f laws in the information or their interpretation. Devaluing or eliminating the source of information as a mere intermediary allows the user to take on the perception of an expert and to develop a false sense of expertise by serving as the only perceptible human in the chain of information. These trends are particularly evident in the phenomenon of web health and medical information. Founded in 1996, WebMD, along with other medical information sites, changed the relationship between physicians and patients. For centuries, patients put faith about their health and well-being into the hands of doctors and medical professionals who had studied for years. They acknowledged that doctors had attained a working knowledge of the human body that lay people did not have. With the internet, this complex information became easily available and anyone could search, read, and self-diagnose their ailments, thus minimizing the role of the doctor-as-expert. Despite the fact that many of the instruments online designed to evaluate health information were not developed completely ( Jadad & Gagliardi, 1998), over half of internet users (53.5%) used the internet to locate medical information. Among these individuals, 60% rated the information as the “same as” or better than information from their doctors (Diaz et al., 2002). This disparity between objective quality and perceptions of online medical information is important when considering the psychosocial impact of the rise in user reliance on the internet for information. Simply accessing information in a given platform may lead users to unquestioningly trust said information—in a cognitively efficient strategy similar to that described in Chapter 4 on radio—which is particularly problematic if they do not possess the skills to discern high quality information from falsehoods.

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The internet fosters an artificial sense of expertise in part because knowledge and expertise can be easily acquired via internet search. This established a norm that this information and answers to questions should be easily available and independent of any physical or social restrictions, thus rhetorically democratizing information; that is to say that anyone can access information, even if they don’t have the skills to interpret it. Furthermore, in a saturated media environment where unsubstantiated information can be framed as equivalent to systematically researched information, false information can be easily perpetuated and the associated hubris limits one’s willingness to check the reliability of new information—consider the current anti-vaccination and f lat-earth trends. Instead, users rely on their emotional and psychological responses to content—similar to selective exposure—in order to determine its value. In 2006, Webster determined “truthiness” to be the word of the year (McCarthy, 2006). Originally coined by satirist Stephen Colbert, the term defines the phenomenon wherein individuals believe something to be true or false because it feels true or false. This role of one’s gut feeling when considering the veracity of facts is an outcome of one’s belief in one’s own expertise, regardless of whether they are an expert.

Accessing Social Connections and Communities on Demand In addition to accessing information, ISPs promised that the internet would help users connect with eager communities of individuals with similar interests. This was more than the interpersonal communication opportunities available with email and instant messaging; users could now search for and join collective synchronous conversations in real time through chatrooms and asynchronous conversations on bulletin boards. Connecting former strangers through similar interests fostered virtual communities, or groups of people that initiate and maintain relationships online. Gee refers to virtual communities as affinity spaces where individuals can simultaneously contribute to and consume content (Gee, 2005). This idea is different from online communities, or an online presence for groups forged off line. These virtual communities satisfied a fundamental psychosocial need for belonging and enabled new ways of interacting and achieving social inclusion. Social inclusion provides important functions that encourage individual health, including companionship, social and emotional support (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992; Schmitt & Branscombe, 2002), and a sense of identity. Furthermore, self-esteem increases with social acceptance and decreases with rejection, thereby functioning as an internalized monitor of possible social exclusion ( Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995). Therefore, belonging to a group is an alluring possibility for those who may not feel accepted by people in their immediate physical proximity. With the internet, users could interact with, rely on, and support similar others without restrictions. That is, letters,

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telegraphs, and telephones required a preexisting relationship for individuals to communicate. The potential of the internet for communication with new contacts upended previous expectations of community. Prior to the internet, individuals had to find a space to find a community; other mass mediums like recorded music, radio, and cable provided the opportunity for and illusion of community, but dial-up ISPs provided actual people on the other side of the monitor. With chatrooms and bulletin boards of ISPs, individuals could find community independent of space and move between communities until they felt like they belonged. Conversely, social exclusion—being rejected from interpersonal interactions— can result in a litany of behavioral outcomes designed to resolve the negative feelings that come with being ostracized. Excluded individuals may engage in community-building behaviors to regain control over the environment and demonstrate their worth to the excluding group, or they may withdraw completely (Williams & Sommer, 1997) and express animosity toward the individuals or group from which they were excluded (Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000). However, these virtual connections offered a unique refuge from real world rejection. Excluded individuals could turn to communities forged online in order to neutralize threats to fundamental psychosocial needs induced by real interpersonal exclusion. Like a new religion reaching out to disenfranchised individuals desperate to belong, dial-up ISPs promised acceptance. Users relied on them to resolve exclusion experienced in the real world by connecting with like-minded individuals, despite geographical distance. Although personal and group identity are woven throughout the earlier chapters, the corporate presence required for production and distribution of theatrical film, music, television, and video games ensured that these identities and subsequent content-based communities were constructed from the top down. That is, by creating content for national audiences, corporate media presented representations of groups. Alternatively, consumer market cameras and magnetic tape stand out as prominent counterexamples to this trend. Each of these mediums enabled user-generated content because of their low cost and low barriers to production and distribution, sparking user-generated communities and sociocultural phenomena like selfies and hip hop. Similarly, the capacity of ISPs to forge virtual communities on bulletin boards and chatrooms around subjects of interest marks an inf lection point in the consumer–producer–user trajectory of 20th century media. Whereas user-generated content meant creating media messages, user-generated communities could develop via dial-up ISPs, allowing for new models and processes of social networking.

Accessing Goods and Services on Demand The internet drastically changed the definition of mass media with the mass distribution of information and access to mass communities. It also gave users

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the ability to access goods and services online, and hundreds of studies have explored the bidirectional relationship between consumption and identity. The self and preferred brands are intimately linked (Trump & Brucks, 2012; Kleine III, Kleine, & Kernan, 1993; Kirmani, 2009) such that individuals use brands to distinguish themselves from others, demonstrate their values, index their lives, and make assessments about others (Chan & Prendergast, 2007; Schembri, Merrilees, & Kristiansen, 2010). Individuals develop and display their ethnic, gender, sexual, national, and class-based identities using everything from smaller items like clothing and accessories to expensive items like electronics and automobiles. Furthermore, the relationship between commodities and identity is not only restricted to tangible items. Experiential purchases like vacations and concerts are more closely aligned with the self and serve as a better indicator when making judgments about others (Carter & Gilovich, 2012). Prior to the internet, users visited stores and other retail locations to purchase goods. Catalogs and home shopping cable channels enabled purchases at home, but they were largely niche shopping venues that catered to a small percentage of the market (White, 1992). Dial-up ISPs allowed users to shop for goods and services at any time of day and without engaging with others. This was especially useful for products and services that were limited by intermediaries, like travel, banking, and stock trading, and ISP advertising actively promoted these opportunities to remind users that they were no longer beholden to the purveyor constraints. This reduced barriers to purchasing and catalyzed established connections between users and commodities. Section 2 described immediacy and domestic availability. However, if radio and television fulfilled the intangible psychological need for information, entertainment, and companionship, the internet also enabled this for real-world products. Even though less than one-fifth of users purchased goods online, the promise of e-commerce was normalized, further activating feelings of identity by allowing users to access and obtain identity markers by shopping. Although research tends to focus on items that users purchase, shopping without buying is a way to practice one’s identity. While shopping, the user contemplates potential purchases and considers how they would fit into their identity and self-presentation. Although less than 20%, of Americans engaged in transactions online by the end of the 20th century (Shah et al., 2001), users could shop for products and services, thus changing the psychological availability of commodities—users could engage with products even if no money was exchanged. In addition, services that had required intermediaries like stockbrokers or travel agencies were now immediately available to users. Only about half (56%) of Americans had bank-type credit cards in 1989, rising to 68% in 1998 (Durkin, 2000); therefore, users had to send checks or money orders in order to transact business online. Although for-profit companies were online, they were not yet interoperable with existing payment systems (Palfrey &

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Gasser, 2012). This gap would be later filled by PayPal, Venmo, and a range of new online payment intermediaries. However, the promise of acquiring a wide variety of goods and services on demand came to define the collective understanding of what the internet could offer in the late 1990s, but this goes much deeper than purchasing goods that were formerly available through real-world vendors. Users could now acquire goods and services outside of traditional venues, including via peer-to-peer (P2P) networks where goods and services could be exchanged independent of gatekeepers, further decoupling shopping from established retailers. Music files and images were the most frequently shared content, given users’ collective desires and the media’s small file size. Even though only a limited number of users were sharing these files, the rhetoric of access through dial-up established the assumption that everything was available online. The opportunity to access goods and services online continues to be one of the major potentials of the internet. It is clear that the trepidation of the late 20th century has been progressively alleviated with each younger generation. Around 67% of Millennials prefer online shopping compared to 56% of Generation X, 41% of baby boomers, and 28% of seniors (BigCommerce, 2016). Globally, online sales were estimated at $3.46 trillion in 2019, representing 16.4% of all retail sales (Young, 2019); in the United States, users spent $586 billion, up 14% from 2018 (Lipsman, 2019). The internet ensured that expectations of immediacy were no longer restricted to media content; now, the world and everything in it could be immediately accessible on the user’s schedule. For example, John Mulaney from Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update expressed frustration that Girl Scout cookies are only sold a few weeks a year: “According to the Girl Scout’s website, you cannot buy Girl Scout cookies online. Do you know what you can buy online? Everything” (Saturday Night Live, 2013).

Turning On, Dialing In, and Dropping Out Whereas much of the conversation regarding networking in the late 1990s focused on the internet itself and the potential for instantaneous connections between individuals and institutions around the world, dial-up internet service providers ensured that consumer market users could access the internet. These platforms defined the popular understanding of the internet at the end of the 20th century by creating a user-friendly conduit for this new and unprecedented resource, thus driving the purchasing of computers nationwide so that users could be connected instantaneously to information, content, communities, goods, and services. From this perspective, it is easy to see how we have come to rely on the internet and the technologies that make the internet available—they reciprocate intimacy regularly by providing a tailored version of the world that each user desires on demand and on schedule. Although scholars have investigated and described the internet-initiated changes to culture and

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communication, they often focus on specific content components like internet gaming and social media. However, a return to the sheer potential of dial-up ISPs anticipates many 21st century media use patterns, including the illusion of expertise, belonging as default, and streamlining life. If video games allowed users to develop expertise in a safe space without judgment or the potential social fallout from failing in public, dial-up ISPs allowed users to behave like experts by providing access to a wealth of information that could be deployed as needed. Instead of developing a robust knowledge of a given issue with training over time, users could experience the benefits of expertise without doing the work. Jenkins describes the ability to search and find information on an as-needed basis as an important new media literacy skill ( Jenkins, 2009). However, little research has explored the psychological implications of this effect: how does information accessibility affect users’ feelings of expertise and agency? At the same time, institutions and experts were being eliminated from the informational chain of custody as ISPs offered spaces where communities could reinforce information, true or false, thereby changing the traditional understandings of expertise (Badke, 2015); users could receive positive social feedback for behaving like an expert, regardless of the participants’ status. Users began to rely on the collective knowledge of these communities to crowdsource and validate their information, a pattern that has become even more amplified in the 21st century media environment. Although the psychological default is to belong, belonging in the real world often requires adjusting one’s attitudes or behaviors to ensure group acceptance. Virtual communities offer niche and intersectionally supportive individuals who ensure that users need not adjust or question their attitudes and behavior. For individuals who have been historically discriminated against and marginalized (e.g., queer communities of color), virtual communities provide a refuge from social ostracism. They also provide a support system that can help combat the effects of widespread social ostracism (Mehra, Merkel, & Bishop, 2004; Elias & Lemish, 2009; Braquet & Mehra, 2006). Individuals with antisocial beliefs and preferences no longer need to repress or adjust these attitudes to find acceptance in the real world. Instead, they too can connect with likeminded individuals online. Partly as a result, hate groups have consistently risen since 1999 (Potok, 2017), and discussion of the internet as a safe haven for hate groups dates back to dial-up ISPs (Mock, 2000; Gerstenfeld, Grant, & Chiang, 2003). Despite the historic differences in power dynamics, the technology of the internet has dramatically affected processes of belonging by allowing everyone to both share and be heard, establishing the expectation that users will find accepting communities in the virtual space even if they cannot find these likeminded individuals in their immediate proximity. As the diversity of users’ needs were increasingly satisfied online, categories of life that were once separate became equivalent in the mind of the user. Like the radio, which conf lated content genres by providing everything through a

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single device, the internet converged and made accessible non-media related commodities. In this way, the internet dissolved distinctions between media messages, raw information, social connections, communities, and real-world goods and services. Opinion became equated with news and facts, information was equivalent to expertise, and communities were associated with the f low of goods and services. The virtual mall that was originally reserved as a term for e-commerce now encompasses anything that one might want. In doing so, everything becomes a commodity that can be bought, sold, and monetized. Nowhere is this more evident than the monetization of Facebook and other social networking sites, where information, social connections, and a massive amount of personal information and behaviors can be tracked and sold. But nonetheless, like teenagers at a physical mall, we continue to rely on this virtual space to feed us, clothe us, connect with friends, and give us stuff to talk about. America now exists online and our lives can be lived virtually (see Figure 9.3). We can have the world delivered to wherever we are and we can bask

FIGURE 9.3 My AOL IM Icon (1997): Profile pictures are a standard component of the digital environment and Web 2.0, where online profiles are placeholders for one’s identity. This was my first (and only) profile image on AOL Instant Messenger (IM). I found it in a collection of options when I first activated AIM and fell in love with it because I thought it looked like me. Now, more than 20 years later, it still looks like me. If anything, I look more like it in 2020 than I did in 1997.

Image Credit: Nicola DiBenedetto

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in simulated spaces without real-world judgment. Dial-up ISPs transformed the massive volume of resources online into a satisfying stream of messages affecting our consciousness. Like a mind-altering substance, dial-up ISPs—and eventually social media platforms like Facebook—ensure that we are simultaneously hyper-connected and hyper-detached. Timothy Leary claimed that “the PC [read: internet] is the LSD of the 1990s,” an apparatus that simultaneously simplifies and complicates reality and feels more real than real. We fell in love with this literal “internet within the internet” that satisfied all of our needs: objective, subjective, physical, social, and even existential.

Notes 1. More specifically, 18.5% had purchased books, 10.8% had purchased music, 10.5% had conducted banking, 6.9% had purchased videos, and 5.4% had traded stocks (Shah, Kwak, & Holbert, 2001). 2. Although ticketmaster.com may not seem comparable to Amazon and eBay, the ability to purchase tickets to entertainment and sporting events drastically changed the availability and accessibility of these major cultural events. Prior to ticketmaster. com, fans would have to visit the venue box office for tickets and lines for major events were not uncommon.

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CONCLUSION Why Not?

For more than 20 years, I have dedicated myself to understanding how the evolution of media affects our collective psychology. This book ref lects how much I love media, and why I regard our relationships with media as being akin to interpersonal relationships. This book was initially inspired by my very personal feelings of being lost in my media relationships. I stayed up until midnight to record songs from the radio, spent hours looking for pictures from years past, and skipped class to play the same video game I played hundreds of times before. As an X-ennial, my media experiences straddled the largely analog 20th century and the digital 21st, providing me a distinctive lens on how to connect the dots between these two eras. Over the decades, I came to understand that our relationship to a given a medium was contingent on our past experiences with earlier media technologies. As a professor, my passion for media made me a fierce advocate for media literacy. However, I saw that in order to be “literate” about the media that we engage with, we must be able to understand the impact of our emotional relationships with media technologies. This idea extends to mediums that we consider to be “old,” because these older artifacts teach us how to relate to each other and to future media technologies. At the heart of my teaching emerged a deep desire to help students to see the things that they were implicitly encouraged not to see. In turn, daily interactions with my Gen-Z students also helped me write this book. Although our use of and reliance on media was different, they too were impacted by social norms established by the communication environment of the 20th century. More so than earlier generations, today’s youth are unabashed in their embrace of relationships with media technologies and others. They are willing and able to acknowledge what they look for in their devices, as well as recognize what their parents looked for in their devices

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of yesteryear. Although it is true that every new technology is something that we have never seen before, we consistently engage with each media technology according to strategies learned from millennia of interpersonal interactions. These trends become even more evident when we look at how they manifest across different generations. Much like interpersonal relationships, each past relationship informs (or should inform) what we want and need from future relationships. This is not the same as technological determinism; the technology has not determined our culture or our psyche. Rather, our psyches have determined the practices of technology, which then became normalized into our culture. We share selfies online for the same reasons our ancestors made cave paintings—to affirm our existence. We also ref lexively check our social media for the same reason we feel a sense of awe when they looked at these cave paintings—connecting with humans is inherently and viscerally satisfying. In this book, I have employed a media psychography that is predicated on American cultural specificity—I was concerned with the uniquely American relationships with media technology that emerged across the past 150 years, rather than arguing for cognitive universals. In looking closely at the past relationships that Americans have developed with media technologies, four key commonalities emerge that explain the way Americans currently think about media. (1) Americans want honesty.The capacity to reproduce authentic and identical content was restricted to words before the 20th century; every other message modality involved an interpretation of an individual messenger (e.g., paintings or sketches of people and events, actors on stage reenacting events, musicians playing sheet music). The advent and widespread adoption of photography, theatrical film, recorded sound, and cable television has fostered an expectation of multimodal authentic and identical replication of events, messages, and content; we expect to see and hear things as if we were present at the moment of creation or capture and embrace technologies that provide an intimate feeling of absolute presence. This is evident in the steady march toward higher fidelity; each new technology touts its superior ability to present and re-present reality compared to its predecessors. We want our media to be honest with us, to show us life as it truly is, or at least to make us feel like it is showing us life as it truly is. (2) Americans want connection.Synchronized experiences across distance were once limited to celestial activities (e.g., solar eclipse), geological phenomena (e.g., earthquake, volcanic eruption), and other massive weather incidents (e.g., storms, tornados). The wireless technologies of the late 19th century (e.g., telegraph, telephone) allowed information could be shared (almost) instantaneously, but not with a mass audience. The advent and widespread adoption of radio, television, and internet has fostered an expectation that geographically disparate groups will become aware of

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events (both fictional and non-fictional) simultaneously and that mediums should make this national and global synchronization possible. We embrace technologies that make us feel like we are participating in collective conversations, even if those conversations are had among a small minority of users. This is evident in the synchronized uses of social media and trending topics that allow users to simultaneously learn about and share their opinions on things that are happening right now. Similarly, we rely on social media for breaking news—replacing broadcast technologies like radio and television much like a partner that exposes us to communities and cultures beyond our own experiences. (3) Americans want devotion. We primarily relied on family members or other cohabitating individuals to provide entertainment or companionship before the 20th century. The widespread adoption of domestic technologies, including recorded music, radio, television, magnetic tape, at-home video gaming, and dial-up ISPs, allowed users to access content (including media and commodities) 24 hours-a-day. We expect our needs to be met anywhere, from the most public to the most private places, and we embrace technologies that provide content on demand, not only within the home but wherever we are with advances in corporeal availability—or the ability to access content on our person via smartphones and wearable technologies. This is evident with the rapid growth of e-business in the 20th century; peak online shopping hours begin at 8 pm as many shops are closing and the expanding gig economy allows users to request anything of any one at any hour. We want the world to be present and available to us at all times of day, and we embrace media technologies that are ready and willing to bring it to us on demand. (4) Americans want flexibility. For centuries, media messages were unidirectional and distribution was restricted by gatekeepers; although some earlier technologies allowed for interaction, by and large, sources constructed and distributed specific messages for which a limited number of copies were available through sanctioned channels, and users had to engage in a prescribed manner. Today, digital and social technologies have normalized user interactions, but we began the 21st century with the desire to tailor our mediated experiences because consumer market cameras, cable television, magnetic tape, video games, and ISPs made these potentials widely available in the 20th century. We expect that our media relationships are personally satisfying (independent of others’ desires), and if they are not, we expect the opportunity to generate our own content. This is evident in the rapid rise of startup news sites that purport to cover stories missing from mainstream media, historically marginalized individuals creating wildly popular YouTube content, and even user-generated responses to exclusionary advertising. We want our emotional, psychological, and physiological needs met, often without question and without delay, and

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we embrace media technologies that satisfy these increasingly diverse and dynamic demands. The American media environment changed with such speed that it can be easy to forget the systematic trajectory of our psychological responses. It is my hope that recognizing this comparatively fast progression will help users— in media industries and those who are not—anticipate our interactions with future technologies. A need for a media psychographic approach only will increase with the quantity and variety of media at our collective fingertips. There is always more content to explore through media technologies, so revisiting “old” media may seem like a waste of time. We are always searching for the next new thing that will make our lives complete. But by taking a more longitudinal view, the evolution of current usage patterns becomes clearer. I have attempted to root these social, cultural, and psychological phenomena in my own experiences to acknowledge that research is “me-search.” In social science, researchers are both the objective observer and the subject, meaning that the insights that we glean from our own experiences adds a dimension to how we understand our collective history. As described in the literature on media and identity, we use media to identify ourselves. Subsequently, media defines us. Therefore, we should not shy away from embracing the role of personal history in understanding the social structures in which the individual exists. In the fields of anthropology and sociology, scholars frequently use their own autobiographical anecdotes and experiences as an entrée into wider sociocultural trends in a form of qualitative research methodology known as autoethnography. Largely dismissed by quantitative social science disciplines, including psychology, this approach acknowledges the positionality of the researcher and foregrounds the fact that all sociocultural phenomena exist through a human lens. In my current work, I concede that my own perspective—as a woman of color born in the United States in 1981 to an immigrant single mom, raised in New York and Guyana, who studied in Cambridge and Los Angeles, and who is currently working as a professor at a prestigious media school at a private university—inevitably impacts my claims about the media in which we as a nation are immersed. I also acknowledge that the experiences of my mother, my son, and my students will inevitably be different. Autoethnography can be an empirical way to elaborate on how we come to know media as we move through history on our own paths. In turn, a media psychography approach has also informed my selection of mediums to analyze in this book. I consciously selected these nine mediums because they were fundamental to the lives of Americans in the 20th century, recognizable inf lection points in the American understanding of media, and communication technologies that changed my understanding of the world. However, there are many more media technologies that deserve a similar analysis. It is my hope that scholars might apply this methodology to neglected

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mediums such as audiobooks and spoken word albums or the remote control. Other media technologies that have been overly generalized would also benefit from a more historically and culturally nuanced analysis, including the telephone, consumer market film and video cameras, and closed circuit television. This approach is particularly useful when considering technologies like the telephone, which integrated and normalized opportunities for interpersonal communication and has since morphed into an all-purpose mass medium in less than 150 years. Finally, it is my hope that this book will inspire others to write their own media psychographies. As I tell my students, there is no singular accurate representation of life; the only good representation is a multitude of representations that illustrate its diversity. I want to read about how different technologies have impacted different generations, ethnicities, genders, and nationalities—as well as subcultural groups within these categories. Although some argue that the personal lens should be curtailed in academic scholarship, our ability to be both dependent upon and independent of our emotions is what makes us human, and what allows us to critically and effortfully engage with the world in which we find ourselves. Media technology shapes our ability to communicate, thus making this area a uniquely human endeavor. Therefore, we must consider our own media relationships and recognize that they, much like interpersonal relationships, will always need work.

GLOSSARY

affiliate station: a local, independently-owned radio or television station that contracts with a network and receives money to carry the networks programs agenda setting: news media can inf luence the public agenda, or what the public thinks about appointment viewing: users schedule appointments to engage with programming at designated times artificially created animation: images that are artificially created from drawings, paintings, or other non-photographic methods asynchronous entrainment: the capacity to repeat physical, physiological, and emotional sequences across different users at different times attention: the extent to which we allocate and direct cognitive resources to some aspects of a complex environment autobiographical memories: memories constructed from lived experiences autoethnography: a qualitative research methodology where scholars use their own autobiographical anecdotes and experiences as an entrée into wider sociocultural trends availability paradox: users have access to abundant information but choose to rely on a few sources to reduce cognitive load avant-garde: content that pushes the boundaries of current techniques regarding a given medium basic cable: channels and content that are purchased as a package from the provider and supported by advertising blockbusters: big production budgets that funded impressive sets, state-ofthe-art special effects, and larger-than-life soundtracks

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cable television: video communication delivered over coaxial cable that is hardwired to the home or venue casual games: games targeted to a wide market with simple rules and short gaming sessions central route: high-effort thinking characterized by high personal relevance, low distractions, high accountability, high repetition, high knowledge, and a high need for cognition; results in more critical engagement with messages collocated or copresent: being located or present in the same place at the same time communication: any conveyance of verbal and non-verbal messages community: a group of people living in the same place or having shared characteristics consensus medium: the medium that reinforces the consensus narrative, or the shared values and beliefs; most often the most popular medium of the time. consumer market cameras: inexpensive cameras that can be used by nonprofessional photographers with little technical expertise content analysis: a research method wherein trends in content (e.g., words, topics, demographics) are quantified to determine patterns content availability: the extent to which messages can be easily retrieved when desired cultivation: information gleaned from broadcast media is integrated into users’ norms of social reality dedicated (video gaming) machines: computers that run a single game (e.g., arcade cabinet games, dedicated handheld devices) dial-up internet service provider (ISP): offered non-military and nonacademic users limited access to the internet, using an interconnected virtual space that was mediated and moderated by the ISP digital divide: the gulf between those with ready access to computers and the internet and those without direct effects: the theory that media have immediate, consistent, and direct effects on audiences disc jockey (DJ): a person who professionally plays and mixes together recorded music to create new shared experiences, an occupation made possible through the technology of recorded music distribution: circulating content widely, including to unknown parties via sharing domestic availability: access to perpetually available content within the home earworms: the experience of having a piece of music stuck in your head; otherwise known as involuntary musical imagery

186

Glossary

echo chambers: the phenomenon where individuals are exposed to a limited number of ideas and beliefs and reinforce this limited discourse by systematically disparaging and eliminating differing thoughts and opinions elaboration likelihood model (ELM): effortful processing of messages determines their retention and internalization through distinct processes emotion: nuanced sensations that are experienced in response to specific events and involve both valence (i.e., good or bad feelings) and arousal (i.e., high or low energy) empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of others entitativity: feelings of community expert: someone with a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge or skill in a given area and who can effectively elicit a desired outcome eyeballs: a phrase used to indicate the guarantee that users would be paying attention to the advertisers’ message first-person shooter (FPS): a type of video game that involves shooting targets while the player views the action through the eyes of the character fixed content: content that is unambiguously consistent across experiences f low: programming strategies designed to retain users over extended time periods, including catering to audience interests and featuring trailers and intricate editing focal attention: information to which users direct their awareness gamification: applying gaming elements to non-gaming activities gaming consoles: computers specifically designed for gaming that can run multiple games, often through cartridges or other storage media high fidelity: reproduced content that is faithful to the original; a more honest replication of the original content and information hyperlocal: communities in relative geographic proximity without the need for immediate physical proximity identity: the combined totality of self that is constructed from symbols and signifiers that are personally relevant, including race, gender, religion, nationality, hobbies, and occupation immersion: the capacity of a medium to deliver sufficient information to the user’s senses that causes the user to feel immersed in or enveloped by the experience interactive media: communication technologies that present different content or messages according to the users’ actions; often digital internet: global interconnected network of computers that allows users across geographical distances to connect and share information digitally internet service provider (ISP): a company that provides subscribers with access to the internet interpersonal communication: communication between individuals intimacy: the feeling of closeness between individuals

Glossary

187

intimate media: communication technologies that create, replicate, and foster deeply emotional experiences on an individual level intrapersonal communication: communication within an individual just-in-time: an approach to learning and information acquisition where users can access information independent of time and space, and use it to meet their needs as needed learning: applying previously acquired information to future situations and context live broadcast: content was not staged, regardless of whether it is distributed at a later time; content was produced and distributed in real time; can refer to the real time distribution of pre-produced content long-term memory: an enduring and expansive repository in which sensory, factual, and autobiographical information is stored and can be accessed machinima: producing films using the onscreen video game characters as actors macro control: the ability to deploy media artifacts on demand, vs. micro control magnetic tape: uses a f luctuating signal to polarize magnetic film to record multimedia information marathon programming: syndicated programming provided easy content for cable networks, and marathons of reruns could be made available regardless of expected ratings mass communication: communication to many individuals media: the channels and tools used to store and transmit information or data media content: the messages that are stored and transmitted media effects: research and theories that explore how media changes the way users think and act media events: a ceremony in real space staged for televisual transmission media industry: individuals and organizations responsible for producing and distributing content media literacy: the skills that help users analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and formats media psychography: an examination of how the collective psyche impacted and has been impacted by media technologies media technologies: the objects and devices that are used to store and transmit information mediated memories: memories that we construct through media medium: any singular object or device that conveys stimuli to the senses memorable medium: assist in conveying consistent messages by presenting information in structured formats to improve memory and recollection meta-memories: the memory constructed from the media message and the memory of engaging with the message

188

Glossary

micro control: the ability to exert minute control over the content itself with features like fast-forwarding, rewinding, and pausing, vs. macro control microphysiognomy: the practice of reading personality traits from faces; according to Balázs, intricate changes in facial expression achieved through close-ups mirror neurons: brain cells in the motor cortex that respond to the movement of others mirror phase: a stage of human development where a child develops a coherent sense of self before language develops by gazing at full-bodied individuals, either itself in the mirror, caregivers, or mediated representations mise-en-scene: movement within the frame, including shots, edits, and framing mixtape: an organized collection of (mostly musical) content established a f low between artifacts, and conveyed emotions or memories that could be repeatedly played or shared with others mood: generalized attitudinal states mood management theory: users choose content to increase the likelihood that bad moods are short lived and good moods are prolonged music: melodic or amelodic auditory content that has been effortfully and intentionally created for aesthetic purposes musical autobiographies: using music to contemporaneously narrate one’s life naïve realism: the belief that our senses provide a direct awareness and authentic representation of the world and the objects within it narrative: how the events are told (vs. story) network: a broadcast process that links groups of radio or television stations that share programming produced at a central location network era: describes the technological and business practices around television from its launch in the late 1940s to the launch of cable television in late 1970s network television: free broadcast content like that of American radio niche communities: groups constructed around distinct segments of the market nickelodeons: 5¢ cinemas non-narrative film: films without an evident storyline, where individual shots or scenes may not connect with others non-verbal communication: information that is delivered independent of actual speech or written language on-demand culture: the cultural associations with having one’s mediated needs immediately gratified at the user’s whim; the sense that all media, including technology, content, the means of production, and by extension all information, should be available to users

Glossary

189

paradox of collective individualism : the actions of users yield infinite unique messages, thus ensuring that no individual experience (within or between users) is consistent, yet a collective understanding of and culture develops around these experiences regardless of their distinctiveness paradox of public intimacy: moments and emotions that were once privately experienced become available for public consumption and mass distribution yet still retain and activate close personal feelings despite their public consumption parasocial: the one-sided interactions and relationships that users develop with media figures pay per view (PPV): specific programs or telecasts purchases for an additional one-time fee peripheral route: low-effort thinking characterized by low personal relevance, high distraction, low accountability, low repetition, low knowledge, and low need for cognition photo-taking-impairment effect: users who snapped photos of artwork remembered fewer details than those instructed to not take photos photographic film: images captured from real subjects using photographic methods pluralistic ignorance: the public misperceives the opinions and behaviors of others, and the majority may even go along with something even if they rejected if they assume, incorrectly, that it is accepted by others positive psychology: research and theories regarding the maintenance and effects of positive thoughts, emotions, and attitudes premium cable: cable channels purchased for an additional subscription fee above and beyond basic cable presence: the feeling of being so involved in a media message such that the user does not experience psychological disruptions of the medium - or the method by which the message is transmitted psychophysiology: the study of the relationship between psychological and physiological phenomena pull media model: users would actively seek out and use content push media model: users could access a stream of messages by simply turning on a device puzzle games: games that focus on logical and conceptual challenges radio: a receiver that converts radio waves into consumable content, thus allowing geographically disparate audiences to engage with the same audio content simultaneously receiver: one who receives a message or media content reciprocal media: communication technologies that reciprocate, or respond to, the actions of users with corresponding actions reciprocity: both parties acknowledge and engage with each other

190

Glossary

recorded music: the storage, transmission, and replication of high-fidelity musical content independent of musicians or memory regular media: communication technologies that disseminate messages at regular specified intervals, requiring users to synchronize their behaviors in order to engage—because of this synchronized broadcasting, regular media are integrated into the everyday lives of users regularity: the quality of being stable and predictable retransmission fees: fees paid to local stations by cable providers to simulcast over-the-air content role-playing games (RPG): games in which the user assumes the role of a character in a virtual world, controlling their actions and ultimately the narrative safe space: a place where we can feel confident that we will not be exposed to discrimination, harassment, or explicit emotional or physical harm sample and remix: taking portions of preexisting content and editing it to create new content scaffolding: the supportive actions or tools that allow an individual to progress through increasingly difficult tasks selective exposure: the tendency we have to seek out and consume content that is supportive of our preexisting beliefs and positions self-categorization theory (SCT): identification with groups changes depending on social context, allowing individuals to satisfy their social needs and motivations in different situations self-efficacy: belief in one’s ability to handle tasks at hand selfie: a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam, and generally shared via social media serious games: virtual environments intended to educate or train snapshots: quick photographs that require little to no effort on the part of the photographer social cognitive theory (SCT): viewers learn how to behave from watching others social comparison theory: we determine our worth by comparing themselves to others social contact hypothesis: contact with members of a stereotyped group is the best method to combat discriminatory attitudes and prejudice social identity theory (SIT): our self-perception and feelings of satisfaction come from the groups to which we belong social TV: using social media to connect with others in real time during broadcast television events somatic markers: the emotional tags that we associate with specific content source: one who creates a message or media content spoiler alert: notifying conversation partners that one may give away the ending or a plot twist before they have engaged with specific content

Glossary

191

storage medium: devices that retain messages across time and space story: the sequence of events (vs. narrative) sympathy: the negative feelings elicited when we hear about the misfortune of others technoculture: the potentials of social media, mobile devices, and other digital media have resulted in a society that is more interconnected and actively shares content in real time technological determinism: the belief that technology drives society and culture television: a device that receives and converts radio waves into audiovisual information theatrical film: transmits messages through moving pictures with synchronized sound presented on a large screen time-shifting: recording a program at a given time to allow for viewing at a different time transmission medium: devices that transmit messages without storage unconscious optics: cognitive tendencies in users that are revealed through onscreen motion user-generated content: content produced by non-professional users uses and gratifications theory: we use media to gratify emotional and psychological needs video communication: the capacity to connect and correspond through moving images video gaming: electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a television screen or other display to elicit a specific outcome determined by the game virtual realism: an extension of naïve realism, we perceive of artificial realities that expand our ordinary world working memory: a limited and temporary repository in which sensory and linguistic information can be accessed if immediately needed water cooler conversation: discussing the previous night’s programming at work

INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italic indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. Bolded terms can also be found in the Glossary. “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” (Beastie Boys) 35, 46 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick) 29 adult contemporary radio station 69 Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) 163 adventure games 146 Aerosmith 35 affiliate station 88, 184 agenda setting 93, 184 Airtalk with Larry Mantle (radio program) 70 “All Along the Watchtower” (Hendrix) 46 Allen, Fred 72 Allen, Gracie 72 All in the Family (television program) 86 Allport, Gordon 73, 74, 75, 80 alternative rock 69 America Online (AOL) 127, 162, 164, 164, 169, 175 American Broadcasting Cos., Inc. v. Aereo, Inc. 99 American Idol (television program) 104 America’s Funniest Home Videos (television program) 138 amplitude modulation (AM) 71 Anderson, Benedict 66 Animal Crossing (computer game) 147

Animaniacs (television program) 86 anti-piracy campaigns 131 Apple II 2 appointment viewing 65, 184 art education 137 artificially created animation 24, 184 art therapy 137 asynchronous entrainment 17, 184 asynchronous synchronicity 17, 170 attention 22, 28–29, 73, 184 Atwater Kent Radio advertisement 77, 78 audience 9 –10, 74, 77– 81, 110 audio cassettes 123, 125, 133 audio content 43– 44, 109 aural environment 38– 42 autobiographical memories 18, 184 autoethnography 182, 184 availability paradox 67, 184 avant-garde 118, 184 avatars 149–150 Avengers: Endgame (film) 29 Bandura, Albert 93–94 Barnum, P.T. 28 BASIC 162 basic cable 106, 184 Beastie Boys 35–36, 46– 47 Beatles, The [aka The White Album] (The Beatles) 104

Index

“bedroom culture” 39 Bejeweled (computer game) 145 belonging 95–97, 126–127, 170–171 Benjamin, Walter 25 Benny, Jack 72, 74 Berkeley, Busby 23 Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The (film) 129 Birth of a Nation (Griffith) 23 Black Americans 11, 81 Blockbuster 125, 129, 133, 141 blockbusters 24, 29, 184 broadcast media 66– 67 broadcast radio 71 Brownie camera 52 Burns, George 72 Bush, George W. 21 Cable Communications Policy Act (CCPA) 105 cable television: community 113–117; definition of 67, 68, 105–109, 185; early years 107–108; emotional gratification 110–113; feeling seen and 117–119; high-definition television 109–110; timeline 112 Cantor, Eddie 72 Cantril, Hadley 73, 74, 75, 80 Car Talk (radio program) 69 Cassidy, Gianna 43 casual games 145, 185 cave paintings 6, 7 cell phones 3, 22 central route 73, 185 Cesana, Renzo 90 Chaplin, Charlie 23 Chronic, The (Dr. Dre) 105 classic rock 69 Clinton, George 105 Clinton, Hillary 59, 59 Clones of Dr. Funkenstein, The (Parliament) 104 CNN 69, 107–108, 116 CNN Films 116 coaxial cable 106 “cocktail party effect” 28 Colbert, Stephen 170 Cold War (documentary) 116 collaborative streaming services 140–141 collective memory 59 “collocated” viewing/listening 57–58, 72, 73, 185 Comedy Central 107, 116, 118 communication 5 –7, 9, 60, 185

193

community 46, 65, 66– 67, 72, 113–117, 124, 170–171, 174, 185 competition 154–156 Compuserve 164 connection: emotional connections 36, 44–45, 74, 90–91; internet 172–173; between music and life 37, 43; social connections 17–18, 44, 66, 77, 98, 126–128, 163, 166–167, 170–171, 173, 180–181 consensus medium 81, 185 consumer market cameras: being yourself and 58– 61; Black Americans and 11; capturing moments 54–55; definition of 52, 185; intimate media and 16; marketing of 52; ref lecting on moments 55–57; sharing moments 57–58; use of 19, 51– 61 content: audio content 43– 44, 109; commanding 140–142; controlling 134–136; creating 136–138, 157, 171; distributing 138–140, 157; possessing 134–136 content analyses 93, 185 content availability 74–75, 185 Continental, The (radio program) 90 control 124–126, 131, 134–136, 148–153 “copresent” viewing 57–58, 185 Cosby Show, The (television program) 95 Couldry, Nick 7 C-SPAN 108 cultivation theory 66, 185 Daily Show, The (television program) 116 dedicated (video gaming) machines 147, 185 developmental psychology 8, 28, 134 devotion 181 Dewey, John 153 dial-up internet service provider (ISPs) 3, 124, 126, 127, 163, 167, 171, 174, 176, 181, 185 digital divide 11, 166, 185 digital technologies 46, 58, 82 direct effects 9, 185 disc jockey (DJ) 38, 185 Disney (media corporation) 29, 112, 140 distribution 138–140, 157, 185 Ditton, Theresa 16 documentary films 31–32 Doggystyle (Snoop Dogg) 105 domestic availability 185 Doom (computer game) 148

194

Index

Duck Hunt (computer game) 152 Dungeon Majesty (television program) 118 durable media 70 earworms 37, 185 Eastman Kodak 51–52, 53 echo chambers 116, 186 Edison Phonograph advertisement 39, 40 educational games 145, 153–154 elaboration 74 elaboration likelihood model (ELM) 73, 186 emotional connections 36, 44– 45, 74, 90–91 emotional gratification 45– 47, 110–113, 167–170 emotions 42– 44, 114–115, 186 empathy 18, 186 entitativity 65, 186 ESPN 113, 118 experiential theory 24 experimental films 26 expert 155, 186 expertise 167–170 eyeballs 64, 186 Facebook 60, 175 Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore) 21–22, 32, 42 Fantasia (Disney) 29 Federal Communication Commission (FCC) 80, 105 Federal Radio Act of 1927 77 Federal Radio Commission 77 feedback 60– 61, 138 film cameras 51 fireside chats 80 first-person shooter (FPS) 146, 186 fixed content 17, 18, 32, 141, 186 fixed movement 28 f lexibility 181–182 “f low” 64, 82, 110, 186 focal attention 28–29, 54, 73, 186 “FOMO” (Fear of Missing Out) 65 Forrest Gump (Zemeckis) 46 Fox News 107 frequency modulation (FM) 71 Freud, Sigmund 25 Game Boy 146 gamification 154, 158, 186 gaming consoles 147, 186 George Lopez Show, The (television program) 47 GIFs 32

Gone With the Wind (film) 129 Great Depression 23, 71 HBO 113, 114 Hello Nasty (Beastie Boys) 35–36 Hendrix, Jimi 46 Hepp, Andreas 8 high-definition television (HDTV) 109 high-effort thinking 73 high fidelity 15–16, 18–19, 30, 37, 106, 109–110, 117, 132, 168, 186 honesty 180 Honeymooners, The (television program) 86 Hope, Bob 74 human computer interaction (HCI) 157 hyperlocal 72, 186 I Love Lucy (television program) 86 IBM PC Convertible 162 IBM PCjr 162 identity 44, 46, 65– 66, 95–97, 113–117, 170–171, 172, 186 immediate responsivity 124–125 immersion 16–17, 24, 28–29, 38– 42, 126, 186 implicit acquiescence 31–32 In Living Color (comedy television program) 141 “inattentional blindness” 28 individualism 119 industry-generated content 52, 133 information access 167–170 Instagram 141 interactive media 123, 186 internet 11–12, 124, 163–167, 176, 186 internet service provider (ISP) 186 interpersonal communication 5 intimacy 18–19, 186 intimate media: asynchronous synchronicity and 17; definition of 15–16, 187; expectations of intimacy in 18–19; mediated memories and 17–18; presence and immersion in 16–17; recorded music and 16, 36 intrapersonal communication 5, 186 “involuntary musical imagery” 37 Jaws (Williams) 46 Jenkins, Henry 126, 137, 174 Jerry Springer Show, The (television program) 86, 141 John, Elton 45 Jolson, Al 74 just-in-time 169, 187

Index

Keaton, Buster 23 Kennedy, John F. 67, 91–93, 92 Kids in the Hall (television program) 129 Kirby’s Dream Land (computer game) 145 Kubrick, Stanley 29 Labbé, Elise 43 Lacan, Jacques 56 Land Before Time, The (film) 129 L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat [Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat] (Lumiere Brothers) 25, 26 learning 30, 153–154, 169, 187 Leary, Timothy 176 Lee, Joe 70 Legend of Zelda, The (computer game) 148 Levy, Mark R. 135 Licensed to Ill (Beastie Boys) 35, 47 Lieberman, Joe 149 Limewire 140 Lion King, The (film) 29, 135 live broadcast 80– 81, 187 Lombard, Matthew 16 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 37 long-term memory 30, 187 low-effort thinking 73 Lumiere Brothers 25, 26 Lux, Joseph August 55, 61 MacDonald, Raymond 43 machinima 125, 187 macro control 135, 187 magnetic tape: adoption of 181; commanding content and 140–142; creating content 136–138; definition of 123–124, 187; distributing content 138–140; piracy with 131–133; possessing and controlling content 134–136; use of 126–127, 130–134 marathon programming 108, 187 Martinez, Angie 82 Mary Tyler Moore Show, The (television program) 95 mass communication 5, 187 mass media 8, 116 MathBlaster (computer game) 145, 154 Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (computer game) 154 McLuhan, Marshall 7, 15 media: definition of 5–6, 8, 187; relationships that Americans have developed with 180–181; relationships with 7–10

195

media archaeology 4 media content 5, 187 media effects 4, 9, 12, 91, 109, 187 Media Equation, The (Reeves and Nass) 4 media events 97, 187 media industry 6, 187 media literacy 6, 137–138, 187 media psychography 5, 180, 182, 187 media psychology 9 –10 media technologies 5, 8 –9, 187 mediated memories 17–18, 187 mediatization 8 medium 5 –7, 15, 187 memorable medium 6, 187 memories 29–31, 43– 44, 51–52, 54–55, 57, 59– 61 message modality 74 meta-memories 18, 187 micro control 135, 188 microphysiognomy 90, 188 Microsoft Mahjong (computer game) 145 Microsoft Solitaire (computer game) 145 Milgram, Stanley 54 Millennium (documentary) 116 mindful photographs 55 Minecraft (computer game) 145 Minesweeper (computer game) 145 Minow, Newton 89 mirror neurons 17, 25, 26, 188 mirror phase 56, 188 mise-en-scene 25, 188 mixtapes 1, 125, 129, 130, 133, 138, 141, 188 Molnar-Szakacs, Istvan 17 Montessori, Maria 153 mood 42, 188 mood management theory 110–111, 135, 188 Moore, Michael 21–22, 42 Mortal Kombat (computer game) 148, 150 movement 25–28, 29 MSNBC 107 MTV 104–105, 107, 108, 110, 113–116, 118 MTV logo t-shirt 115 MTV News (television program) 116 MTV Spring Break ((televisions program)108 multimedia learning tools (MMLTs) 153 Münsterberg, Hugo 25 music 37, 181, 188; see also recorded music musical autobiographies 43, 188 music sharing 140

196

Index

music therapy 43 Mystery Science Theater (television program) 107 naïve realism 30, 188, 191 Napster 140, 166 narrative 151, 188 narrative films 24 Nass, Clifford 4, 7, 73 national identity 65– 66, 95–97 National Public Radio 69–70 national radio broadcasts 80 National Science Foundation (NSF) 166 Netf lix 167 Netscape 1, 3 network 188 network era 88, 188 network television: audience 110; definition of 67, 88, 188; habitual consumption, 117; visceral availability 97–100 new media technologies 4 –5 niche communities 113, 116, 188 nickelodeons (5¢ cinemas) 23–24, 188 Night Trap (computer game) 148 Nintendo Game Boy 145 Nixon, Richard M. 91–93 “No Music. No Life.” (Tower Records slogan) 39 non-narrative films 24, 26, 188 non-narrative games 151 non-verbal communication 90, 188 on-demand culture 124, 167, 188 one-to-one communication 63 online services 171–173 online shopping 171–173 Oregon Trail (computer game) 148 Overy, Katie 17 ownership 125–126, 134–135 Oz (television program) 107 paradox of collective individualism 128, 189 paradox of public intimacy 19, 189 parasocial 35, 189 participation 126–127 participatory culture 126 Parts Unknown With Anthony Bourdain (television program) 116 pay per view (PPV) 106, 189 Pentax 35mm camera 51, 190 peripheral route 73, 189 personal computers (PCs) 162–164, 176

personalization 39 persuasive communication strategies 74 photo albums 56–57 photographic film 24, 189 photo-taking-impairment effect 55, 189 Piaget, Jean 153 pictorial information 73 piracy 131 Plants vs. Zombies (computer game) 145 Plato’s Cave 29 pluralistic ignorance 93, 189 Pokémon Go (computer game) 145 Polaroid i-Zone camera 51, 190 Pop Life (radio program) 70 portable transistor radio 70 portraiture 58 positive psychology 137, 189 possession 134–136 Postman, Neil 91 premium cable 106, 189 presence 16–17, 117–119, 189 Prince 47 Print Shop, The (computer program) 2 Prodigy 162–163, 164, 168 professionally generated content 58 psychology 5, 8 –10, 9, 25, 28, 42– 43 Psychology of Radio, The (Cantril and Allport) 73 psychophysiology 189 public programming 108 pull media 64, 189 push media 64, 189 puzzle games 145–146, 156, 189 radio: communicating contemporaneously 77– 81; content 71–74, 109; definition of 67, 71, 189; distribution and reception 71; genres and styles 71–72; habitual consumption, 117; persuading with audio 72–74; regular f low 66; rural communities and 11, 81; synchronized content 80– 81; trusting as source 74–77; use of 69–70, 77– 82; widespread adoption of 63, 70–72; worldly availability 81– 82 reality television 118 Real Sex (television program) 107 Real World, The (television program) 107, 114–116, 118, 141 receiver 7, 189 reciprocal media 123, 125–127, 189 reciprocity 123–124, 127–129, 189

Index

recorded music: adoption of 181; communities 46; definition of 19, 37–38, 190; intimate media and 36; intimate media and 16; methods used to record and access 38; precise emotional gratification on demand 45– 47; tuning aural environments 38– 42; tuning emotions 42– 44; tuning relationships 44– 45 Reeves, Byron 4, 7, 73 regularity 63, 190 regular media: accessing information 64– 65; definition of 63– 64, 190; expectations of 67– 68; “f low” and 64– 65; synchronized content and 63– 64; synchronizing schedules 65– 66 remediation 5 Remote Control (television program) 107 repetition 93–95 retransmission fees 106, 190 Rhythmus 21 (Richter) 26, 27 Richter, Hans 26, 27 “Ride of the Valkyries” (Wagner) 46 Rocky Horror Picture Show, The (film) 129 role-playing games (RPG) 145, 146, 190 Romeo & Juliet Overture (Tchaikovsky) 46 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 80 safe space 156–158, 174, 190 sample and remix 137, 190 satellite radio (XM) 71 Saturday Night Live (television program) 90 scaffolding 154, 157, 190 Scorsese, Martin 24 Second Life (computer game) 147 Second Self, The (Turkle) 126 selective exposure 114, 119, 170, 190 self-categorization theory (SCT) 44, 190 self-efficacy 124, 135, 137, 155–157, 169, 190 selfie 50, 55, 59, 59, 190 Sensitone Regenerative Radio Receiving Set advertisement 78 serious games 153–154, 190 Sesame Street (television program) 86 Sex and the City (television program) 107 Short Attention Span Theater (television program) 118 Shutterf ly 60 SimAnt (computer game) 145 smartphones 82, 181 Snapchat 60– 61

197

snapshots 55–56, 190 social cognitive theory 93–94, 190 social comparison theory 96, 190 social connections 17–18, 44, 66, 77, 98, 126–128, 163, 166–167, 170–171, 173, 180–181 social contact hypothesis 94–95, 190 social exclusion 170-171 social media 10, 31, 46, 82, 141, 158 social TV 99, 190 social value 18, 54, 57–59, 87 somatic markers 43, 190 Sony Walkman 129 Sony Walkman advertisement 132 Sopranos, The (television program) 107 Soul Man (film) 129 source 190 South Park (television program) 107 Space Invaders (computer game) 148 Spacewar! (computer game) 148 spoiler alert 66, 190 SpongeBob SquarePants (television program) 133 SportsCenter (television program) 118 Square One Television (television program) 129 Square One TV (television program) 86 Stewart, Jon 116 storage medium 6, 38, 42, 43, 63, 191 stories 138, 151, 191 subsidiary streaming services 140 Super Mario Brothers (computer game) 145, 148, 152 Survivor (television program) 104 sympathy 18, 191 synchronized content 63– 64, 80– 81, 99, 170 Take Two (radio program) 70 Taxicab Confessions (television program) 107 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich 46 technoculture 5, 191 technological determinism 10, 191 telegraph 63, 70, 180 telephone 63, 69, 70, 166, 180, 183 television: adoption of 181; belonging 95–97; content 89; definition of 88, 191; introduction of 24, 88– 89; regular f low 66; repetition 95–97; video communication 89–93, 98–100; widespread adoption of 63 television sets 87 Tetris (computer game) 145, 146, 148, 152

198

Index

theatrical film: American attendance 22–23; definition of 22–25; directing attention 28–29; implicit acquiescence and 31–32; intimate media and 16; making memories 29–31, 51; replicating movement 25–28; visual immersion 24, 28–29, 42 This Is Life With Lisa Ling (television program) 116 ticket stubs 36 TikTok 46 Timehop 60 time-shifting 131, 191 Top 40 radio 69 Tower Records 39 transistor radio 72 transmission mediums 6, 191 “truthiness” 170 Turkle, Sherry 126 Twitter 141 Ultimate History of Video Games (Kent) 148 unconscious optics 26, 191 United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell (television program) 116 user experience (UX) design 157 user-generated content 52, 58, 100, 133, 138–142, 191 uses and gratifications theory 43 VCRs 129–130, 133 verbal information 73 Vertov, Dziga 30 VHS tapes 129 Victrola XVII advertisement 40 video cassettes 123, 125, 129 video communication 89–93, 98–100, 109, 191 video games: controlling action and narrative 148–153; definition of 124;

effects of 156; learning with 153–154; losing without consequences 154–156; machinima 125; types of 145–146, 147–148; violence and 6, 148–149 video gaming: adoption of 181; belonging 126–127; control 124; core driver of 149–150; definition of 147, 191; effects of 156; immersion 126; safe space 156–158, 174 Video Music Awards 108 virtual communities 174–176 virtual realism 30, 191 visceral availability 97–100 visual communication 60– 61 visual documentation 54–55 Voodoo (D’Angelo) 105 Vygotsky, Lev 153 Wagner, Richard 46 Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (radio program) 69 Walken, Christopher 90 Wanna Be a VJ (television program) 104 War of the Worlds (Welles) 76–77, 76 water cooler conversation 66, 191 Web 2 .0 166 WebMD 169 Welles, Orson 76, 76 Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (computer game) 154 Will & Grace (television program) 95 Williams, John 46 Williams, Raymond 64, 82 Woolley, Bruce 91 working memory 29–30, 191 YouTube 46, 98, 141, 167 Zemeckis, Robert 46 Zork (computer game) 148