9pm Wednesday, 10/3, on any ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.
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Wednesday, 10/3, on any ABC, NBC, CBS,
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9pm Wednesday, 10/3, on any ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. How We Decide?. Week 4, MK120: Media, Communication, Society. FOUNDATIONS OF THE EXPLORATION Are we in control of our own decisions and behaviors ? How large a role do media play our decision making and narrative building capacities? - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Transcript of 9pm Wednesday, 10/3, on any ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.
9pm Wednesday, 10/3, on any ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.
How We Decide?
Week 4, MK120: Media, Communication, Society
FOUNDATIONS OF THE EXPLORATION
• Are we in control of our own decisions and behaviors?
• How large a role do media play our decision making and narrative building capacities?
• What are the impacts of new technology on why we do what we do?
Part IHow do we decide?
Let’s say you work for the Centers for Disease Control and there is an outbreak of a deadly disease called “The Mojave Flu” in a town of 600 people. All 600 people in the town
are expected to die if you do nothing. Let’s say you have come up
with two different programs designed to fight to the disease:
In the study, 72 percent of the subjects picked Program 1. Now consider the same
scenario worded differently:
- With Program 1: 200 people in the town will be saved
- With Program 2: There is a 1/3rd probability that 600 people will be saved, and a 2/3rds probability that no people will be saved.
- With Program 3: 400 people in the town will die
- With Program 4: There is a 1/3rd probability that nobody will die, and a 2/3rds probability that 600 people will die.In the study, 78 percent of the subjects picked Program 4, even though the net result of the second set of choices is exactly the same as the first set (Programs 1 and 3 mean the same thing, and Programs 2 and 4 mean the same thing).
Making Sense of our brains as avenues for consumer
behavior?
Human Development of Behavior
Emotion Belief
Attitude Feeling
Behavior
Behavior is based on …? InformationLanguage
StereotypesGreedSex
EnjoymentAcceptance
Systems of thoughtAUTOMATIC• Uncontrolled• Effortless• Associative• Fast• Unconscious• Skilled
REFLECTIVE• Controlled• Effortful• Deductive• Slow• Self-Aware• Rule-
Following
‘Most reason is Unconscious”
“Unconscious thought is reflexive-automatic, uncontrolled (knee reflex). Conscious thought is reflective (looking at yourself in the mirror)” 9.
98% of the thinking your brain does you are not aware of
Narratives are at the root of our human behaviors
We live almost entirely in the ‘automatic / reflexive’
state
Narratives“We live our narratives…the fact that we recognize cultural narratives and frames means that they are instantiated physically in our brains…we cannot understand other people without such cultural narratives. But more important we cannot understand ourselves—who we are, who we have been, and where we want to go—without recognizing and seeing how we fit into cultural narratives.”
Narratives we live by• Rags to Riches• American Dream• Strong Family• Overcoming Challenges• Victory• Togetherness / Love /
Friendship
PART II: How do Media facilitate
narratives for us?
“Framing is the process by which some aspects of an issue, event, or person are emphasized over others in such a way as to promote a particular causal interpretation, problem construction, or moral evaluation” (Grabe & Bucy, 98)
1. Frames pull together facts of a narrative.
2. Frames act as the “central organizing idea for making sense of relevant events and suggesting what is at issue”
3. Frames provide ideal attributes, populist traits, or losing qualities
Part ThreeDo Media Technologies Change our Behaviors?
The average attention span in 2012 - 8 secondsThe average attention span in 2000 - 12 secondsThe average attention span of a gold fish - 9 secondsPercent of teens who forget major details of close friends and relatives - 25 %Percent of people who forget their own birthdays from time to time - 7 %Average number of times per hour an office worker checks their email inbox - 30Average length watched of a single internet video - 2.7 minutes Source: Harald Weinreich, Hartmut Obendorf, Eelco
Herder, and Matthias Mayer: “Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Use,” in the ACM Transactions on
the Web, vol. 2, no. 1 (February 2008), article #5.
TEAM A: Will need to form a detailed argument in defense of Nicholas Carr’s thesis in “The Shallows,” arguing that people will be worse off because of an inability to form valuable and deep connections with things.
TEAM B: Will need to form a detailed argument against Nicholas Carr’s thesis in “The Shallows,” arguing that people will be better off because of the new opportunities they have to connect online.
“Our Brains are constantly changing in response to our experiences and our behavior, reworking their circuitry with “each sensory input, motor act, association, reward signal, action plan, or shift of awareness” (31).
BUT WAIT….
“Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surace like a guy on a Jet Ski” (7)
BUT WAIT AGAIN….
We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the division of our attention and the fragmentation of our thoughts, in return for the wealth of compelling or at least diverting information we receive. Tuning out is not an option many of us would consider (134).
“Despite being surrounded by tens of thousands of books, I don’t remember feeling the anxiety that’s symptomatic of what we today call “information overload” (12).
“It wasn’t just that I was spending so much time staring straight into a computer screen. It wasn’t just that so many of my habits and routines were changing as I became more accustomed to and dependent on the sites and services of the Net. The very way my brain worked seemed to be changing…It was then that I began worrying about my inability to pay attention to one thing for more than a couple of minutes” (16).
4 CATEGORIES OF TECHNOLOGY…
1. Physical strength, dexterity or resilience (plow, needle, fighter jet)
2. Range of senses (microscope, amplifier)
3. Serve our needs and desires (birth control, genetically modified food)
4. Intellectual technologies (map, clock)
“The net differs from most of the mass media it replaces
in an obvious and very important way: it’s bidirectional…the
interactivity of the medium has also turned it into the
world’s meetinghouse, where people gather chat,
gossip, argue, show off, and flirt on [social
networks]. (85)
1. Do new media technologies change our behavior and decision making processes?
2. What does the Shallows say about our cognitive narratives?
3. How do you personally fit narratives into certain brands?
