ABSTRACT
Over the past 150 years, Americans have developed relationships with media technology. Although recent research has begun to investigate user relationships with 21st century media technologies, including mobile devices, similar analyses have not been retroactively applied to 20th century media technologies, including theatrical film, recorded music, consumer market cameras, radio, television, audiocassettes and videocassettes, video gaming, and dialup internet service providers.
Media effects research, an established area of communications—and recently psychology—focuses on media industries and content, and often emphasizes popular and emerging technologies, thereby neglecting distinctions between mediums and older technologies. Media archaeology investigates how we actively use older media in the context of newer media, but minimizes the psychological relationships that we have formed with older technologies as an intermediary process. Recent work on technocultures describes how the potentials of social media, mobile devices, and other “new” media have resulted in an interconnected society but similarly ignores the effects of earlier technocultures.
By closely investigating the relationships that American users developed with 20th century media technologies—a strategy referred to as media psychography—we can better understand psychological responses to the 21st century media environment and anticipate the relationships that Americans will have with future media.
