Welcome to Media Matters - What's our research about?

Young people [e.g., school-aged kids and adolescents] spend about as much time engaged with media [e.g., scrolling social media, playing video games] as they do in school. What's the appeal? While it's temping to say "mindless scroll" or "zone-out-gaming", that's not our take. We see social media as a radically accessible informal learning environment where adolescents are going to seek knowledge and build community. And we see gaming as active play where gamers engage with important cultural artifacts, flex particular social and cognitive skills, simulate alternative ways of being, and even learn concepts that shape their beliefs.

The Media Matters lab takes these informal learning moments seriously. We study the design of social media and serious games so that we can deliberately craft games and content that can stimulate meaningful engagements. Our goal is to establish an evidence-based design formula and to get creating!

Reality Curated

Our social media research is rooted in the observation that, whereas #Psychologyfacts proliferate in social media, most of the content that circulates sites like Instagram and TikTok does not accurately represent the field. Further, we are finding that the content tagged with Psychology keywords is highly inaccurate as well. What are the consequences of this "misrepresentation problem?" We are currently examining relations between (in)accuracy and trust / skepticism of the field as a function of content accuracy. For more on our mapping of the Psychology-Social-Media-Landscape and the consequences therein, Click here.

Design to the Max[imal]

Our "Reality-Curated" research line shines a light on #Psychologyfacts' popularity. Despite the disheartening findings about (in)accuracies, there is some good news too: accurate psychology facts do recieve significantly more likes! Building on this, we aim to add more accurate content to the mix of what's out there to be discovered. In our "Design to the Max" research line we are experimentally examining how design principles influence what's gained from a scroll, and whether existing beliefs can change from brief content encounters. Our work shows that well designed content can change beliefs. For more on this work, click here .

Serious Games: Design & Assessment

Playful learning opportunities are imperative in childhood, but playful learning can occur at any age. This is the spirit in which the “Games for Change” social movement is situated. If play and games are for learning cultural competencies, then games can be leveraged to promote desired social-cultural changes. Following, we view serious games as culturally situated Wise Interventions.

For more on our game design and assessment research line, Click here.

Meet the team

The Media Matters lab is comprised of a vibrant and dedicated group of undergraduates. Click here for more about the people behind the process.

Teaching + Research Intersections

Working at a SLAC means that teaching comes first in the bigger picture of my workflow. To see more on how I blend teaching and research aims, click here.

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