PBMU // Lectures
Teaser L1 | Introduction teaser
The Internet: A story of prophets…
Negroponte, N. (1995). Beingdigital (p. 230). London: Hodder and Stoughton.
● “Kids are released from limitation of geographic proximity”
● “Digital technology can be a natural force drawing people into greater world harmony"
● It’s about the fact that there are a lot of hopes for the future of media - this article is very old
though
...and pessimists
Carr, N. (2010). The shallows. What the Internet is doing to our brains.
● “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle”
● Because we’re used to shorter content, like TikTok, we lose our concentration for longer
readings. This is one of the problematic effects of media usage
Techlash
● Describes the increasing unease about the impact that companies like Google, Facebook,
and Amazon are having everyday life
● People are worried about:
○ Role of these companies in fake news, social media depression and
○ Addiction
○ Polarization of communications
○ Future without work because of automation and AI
○ Democratic process is being undermined
Post-techlash
● Future provided by movements like intentional communities and co-living and enabled by
technologies like blockchain
L1 | Moral panics and introduction
Question Mentimeter: If you had children…
● We prefer educating the brain
● The body needs to be tempered and regulated (playing video games is causing arousal)
We have seen this debate before…
● Fears (moral panics)
● “The women's petition against coffee” → Debate if people should worry about women
drinking coffee
Media: Popular (pre/Victorian) novels
● 19th century
● Today’s school readings like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, ...
● Women could suffer overexcitement from reading, waste household time
○ Hysterical women
● Corruption of young men (emulate criminal lifestyle)
○ Anxious people (women) would copy the situation in the novels and therefore cheat
on their husband
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,Movies
● The devil's camera, written in 1932 by two journalists
● "It is unimaginably tragic that at [this] time the cinemas should be revellingin squandermania,
promiscuity, crime and idleness. Our national strength is being sapped, our capacity to
triumph over adversity undermined."
○ capacity to triumph → what our brian does
Comic books
● Seduction Of The Innocent, 1954 by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham
● Comic books as cause of juvenile delinquency
● Calls for censorship and U.S congressional inquiry
What’s next? → Social robotics and VR.
You see a pattern? → Journalists, experts, public figures in order to retain power.
4 core characteristics of moral panics
1. Uncertainty
○ New behavior, no normative convention yet
○ Unknown Effects
2. Public advocates
○ Judges are from establishment (politicians, parents, older people)
○ Self-proclaimed experts
■ People that say “I know everything about video games, it is bad for your
brain” → not necessary a educational professional or someone like that
3. Normative
○ Strong moral judgments
■ good and bad: what you should and shouldn’t do
○ Fear for education, upbringing, culture, «brain»
○ High vs. low culture
■ low culture → this is for the not so smart, unregulated, unambitious people,
usually for the body (drinking beer at oktoberfest, comic books)
■ high culture → classic music, modern art, exhibitions, mostly challenging your
brain
4. Presumably vulnerable groups
○ Children, adolescents, the „youth“ (early adopters)
○ Women
○ Working class
What is the scientific answer?
3 core answers from science (always good to remember!)
1. Prevalence
a. How many people were involved or affected (how big is the problem really?)
b. How often do symptoms occur?
2. Causality
a. Media use→ X?
b. X → media use?
c. Other factors affecting X?
3. Effectsize
a. How strong is media use <> X effect?
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,3 stages in research
If a new medium is on the rise in society...
1. Crime & time –related research: Is it (the effect) there?
a. Prevalence (how big is the problem?)
b. Simple effects (e.g., exposure effect and reporting of effect sizes)
c. This is often research about the negative effects of the new medium (time: are
people spending too much time with the medium. Crime: are people getting more
aggressive from this new medium?
2. Complex causal analyses and theory-building: When and how does it work?
a. Moderation analyses → Who? → Risk-groups
b. Mediation analyses → Why? → Process
3. Cumulated evidence: Can we be sure?
a. Literature reviews
b. Meta-analyses
→ Problem with science: this process of conducting research will take years before we actually
know the true effects of new media. Oftentimes it is not as relevant anymore.
Biased researchers?
Ferguson (2008, p. 31): « Moral panic wheel »
→ The fears of moral panics also trigger research. Therefore we can state that researchers are
biased. The moral panics set the scientific agenda (this is due to the fact that there will be more
funding for research on topics that are lively in society).
The wheel of moral panic:
● Starts with social beliefs, which leads to:
○ Research Called for and Produced in line with Societal Expectations and
○ Media Reports on Potential Adverse Effects
● Which starts the cycle (wheel) of moral panic
○ Existance of research promotes fear, research supportive of fear accepted
uncritically, research critical of fear is ignored
○ Leads to fear supportive, research reported in media
○ Leads to politicians promote fear for political gain
○ Which on its turn leads to media reports on potential adverse effects (end/start circle)
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, Science‘s role in maintaining the panic
Orben (2020): The Sisyphean Cycle of Technology Panics
● Another cycle of panics starts again with every new
technology. Existing research is mostly not used to
classify and understand this new technology. Therefore
research is mostly reinventing the wheel.
Take home message
Established groups often morally panic if confronted with new
media (because they don’t have control over it, and are anxious
to lose their control). But then again new media tech companies
are currently criticized also for very valid reasons. Only science
producing systematic, objective, empirical evidence can show if
the voiced fears are valid or invalid. That’s why we need the PBMU class!
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