COM professor Jim Cummings will present his research titled “Media in the Wild: Studying Media Consumption and Psychological Responses in Natural Environments.”
Media content is increasingly consumed in combination with other information. People switch tasks extensively, both within products (e.g., between different shows or websites) and between media and external reality. As a result, various media messages and the rest of life get jumbled into a single experience that crosses many boundaries, both cognitive and commercial. This talk will review research about switching during media use, including descriptions of the frequency of switches and how psychological responses like autonomic arousal predict when switches will occur. It will also review the practical need for new methods to observe switching in natural settings as well as implications of switching for the effective design of entertainment, education and advertising.
This month’s Communication Research Colloquium Series will be held on Thursday, October 22nd at 4PM in COM 209.