As an undergraduate at Bangalore University, Shyam Sundar studied engineering by day and worked as a journalist by night. In the process, he became fascinated with people’s response to media and applied an interdisciplinary approach to his study of the affordances of technologies. His eclectic interests led him to earn a Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University.
Today, Shyam co-directs the Media Effects Research Lab and is a Distinguished Professor at Penn State. Shyam teaches courses in the psychology of communication technology, media theory, and research methodology. He holds joint faculty appointments in the departments of film-video and media studies, advertising, architecture, and communication arts and sciences.
Beyond the classroom, Shyam is a prolific and internationally recognized researcher. In an analysis of articles published in prestigious journals with the first Internet-related research, Shyam had the most publications on Internet communications, marketing, and advertising between 1994 and 2003.
We caught up with Shyam in February 2018 to discuss how people are adapting to a parade of changing technologies. We asked him why most people are “cognitive misers,” and what to expect from a new wave of immersive communication modes that connect our digital and physical worlds. (Interview posted: March 19, 2018)
PIL: In what ways has the research on media effects changed since 2000? What have scholars discovered by examining the concept of interactivity as it applies to Web communication?
Shyam: Around the turn of last century, media-effects researchers began to take seriously the effects of medium. Until then, the vast majority of studies ignored medium features and focused on the effects of messages—how different kinds of messages or message elements affected individuals. For example, the social and psychological effects of television violence, the beneficial effects of health messages, the persuasive effects of political campaign messages, and so on. But, the internet, in the form of the World Wide Web, ushered in a new mass medium and changed the nature of media effects by introducing a key concept, namely INTERACTIVITY.
To be sure, interactive communications existed before, but mostly in the realm of interpersonal communications and closed online groups. The Web brought the concept to the domain of mass communication and irreversibly complicated the process of mediated communications by altering our long-held conceptions of three sacred elements of all mass communications—Source, Medium and Message. In my work, I classify the nature of interactivity based on these three elements: While message interactivity pertains to the
common notion of exchanging messages via back and forth interactions in a threaded, interdependent manner, medium (or modality) interactivity refers to the ways in which we are now able to alter the presentation of content by manipulating the interface with our clicking, dragging, sliding, swiping, zooming and so on. Source interactivity is the degree to which the technology allows users to become sources of communication in their own right.
The last category of interactivity is particularly relevant for examining the rise and influence of user-generated content, especially in social media. By becoming sources, ordinary users now have access to media channels that were previously the domain of an elite few. This has resulted in an explosion of crowd-sourced information online, with both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, it has provided tremendous agency to individuals and helped them mobilize public action for social good. On the negative side, it has made it easier for misinformation and disinformation to enjoy wide circulation. The recent phenomenon of fake news is in fact a direct result of the source-interactivity afforded by modern media.
So, interactivity has fundamentally changed the nature and scope of media effects. We no longer think of media as just messages, but as technologies of communication. We no longer think of message recipients as “audiences,” but as “users.” The assumption of a passive consumer of media is long gone. Today’s consumer is active, indeed proactive.
PIL:In an interview several years ago, you discussed the “bandwagon heuristic.” What are these mental shortcuts that make most of us “cognitive misers”? As educators and librarians, how does the bandwagon heuristic come into play when some students cull the results of a Google search? How can we work with students to make these kinds of mental shortcuts more reliable?
Shyam: The bandwagon heuristic is a mental shortcut that we all use to make our own decisions, when provided evidence that the vast majority of others favor or oppose something. For example, on an e-commerce site, we see that a product is rated very high by other consumers, so we apply the rule of thumb that says, “if it’s good for so many other people, then it’s good for me, too.” Thanks to the ready metrics supplied by almost all online sites, we are increasingly relying on this heuristic to make a wide variety of decisions, from which products to buy, which hotel to stay in, which news story to read, whom to follow on Twitter, which Facebook post to like, and so on. It saves us the trouble of doing independent research by ourselves and thereby conserves our cognitive energy for other things. However, reliance on the bandwagon heuristic can also result in herd behavior and lead to large cascading of misinformation. In a more recent interview, I talk about how bandwagon cues play a role in promoting the widespread sharing of fake news. When we come across a story that has a lot of retweets or from an account that has a lot of followers, we are less likely to question its credibility and more likely to forward it to our networks, often without reading it. We are seduced by the “social proof” conveyed by bandwagon metrics and do not pause to personally evaluate the veracity of the story.
When applied to the context of information search, the bandwagon heuristic can have similar effects on efficiency and cascades. When looking up academic work on a topic, the number of citations received by an article can serve as a bandwagon cue. While this can help the searcher quickly identify the most influential works on a topic and thereby cope with information overload, it can also restrict his/her searching in ways that prevent new or unconventional works from being considered. So, the best advice to students is to ignore the cues that are external to the content and pay attention to the relevance of each search result for the project at hand.
Bandwagon heuristic is just one among many cognitive shortcuts that we apply based on cues provided to us by interfaces of modern online media. For example, cues signaling that a bot was responsible for the content can trigger the “machine heuristic” (if a machine chose this story, then it must be free from ideological bias), which may not always be appropriate to apply. The modality of presentation can trigger the “realism heuristic” (seeing is believing), leading us to trust video content more than text content. In this way, technological affordances related to modality, agency, interactivity and navigability can trigger heuristics that shape user perceptions of online media content.
PIL: How is FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) affecting our use of information and technology? How does FOMO impact how we follow the news online or keep up with friends on Facebook? Are there bandwagon heuristics people can use to deal with information overload in these information domains?
Shyam: FOMO comes from the twin desire to keep up with the news of the day and not be left out of the loop. Therefore, FOMO will be stronger for a story that a lot of others know about, compared to one that only a few know. Bandwagon metrics suggesting number of likes or retweets will therefore be quite influential in persuading users to click or ignore an item during their online browsing. In the current age of information overload, it is inevitable that users make such choices. And, studies show that their general tendency is to follow the bandwagon.
Media use is driven by the need to obtain certain gratifications. Scholars have long identified a number of gratifications, ranging from learning to escapism to relaxation. When it comes to seeking information from media, an important gratification is surveillance. When we look for news online or keep an eye on certain events via social media, it is the modern equivalent of what our ancestors did when they looked over their shoulders and kept an eye out for predators. FOMO is both the cause and the effect of such surveillance gratification seeking in online media. As more information floods our media, there are more stories with high bandwagon metrics, which compels us to click on more stories, thereby driving up the metrics even higher as well as bringing FOMO to others in your social networks. In this way, FOMO can be contagious because of the networked nature of our online information consumption.
PIL: What do you see as the next big development in engagement? How might current trends with immersive, interactive communication change how we experience something total unfamiliar to us? How might augmented reality change how we experience breaking news in the near future?
Shyam: The concept of user engagement has become richer in recent years. Aside from users physically engaging the interface, their assessment of its intuitiveness, natural mapping and ease of use is critical for fostering cognitive absorption with the content conveyed via the interface. A consequence of this absorption is what we call “digital outreach,” which involves behavioral actions such as bookmarking and sharing with others.
Augmented reality (AR) enhances our physical interaction with the medium, by providing us information in both virtual environment and real life. Unlike virtual reality (VR), which transports us into a different world, AR overlays virtual objects onto the real world. Given this, it is more logical for AR, rather than VR, to help us experience breaking news events in context. I see a future where our smartphones are showing us live news events, with journalists augmenting the scenes with background and commentary. Journalistic annotations will be akin to Pokemon Go characters popping in and out of our screens.
PIL: Earlier this year, BBC released a qualitative audience research study on VR and concluded: “audiences love having adrenaline-fuelled experiences…but the novelty can dissipate fast; content with a clear narrative that thinks about the audiences’ experience is crucial.” Do you agree? What did your latest research discover about VR reported news stories and their perceived credibility? What do your findings suggest about markers for authority and credibility in journalism?
Shyam: It has always been true that strong narratives presented simply in text can transport readers into the story world. Our research suggests that providing 360-degree video can enhance the sense of presence they feel, as if they are in the middle of the action, more effectively than text and pictures alone. Further, if they experience this video with a VR headset, we find that presence is heightened even further, but only for stories that are not as richly narrated or are less emotionally powerful. For strong narratives, VR does not add significantly to the experience of watching a 360-degree video. But, video still does better than text in inducing a sense of being there. So, a richer modality can help visualize text more richly but the interactive self-exploration afforded by VR does not seem to add to the experience of “being there,” probably because the authorial treatment of the narrative is already quite compelling.
It should be noted that 360-degree video and VR headset are not always great for credibility. They can seem quite gimmicky. Our data show that inducing a sense of being there can promote story sharing with others, but it negatively affects trust in the news organization. We attribute this to the “bells and whistles” heuristic (all flash and no substance).
On the other hand, if VR can trigger the realism heuristic, making the news events seem more real, that seems to boost credibility by increasing user perceptions of expertise and trust in the news organization. So, while “being there” can enhance one’s user experience, it is the “realism” aspect of VR-induced presence that lends credibility to journalistic narratives.
S. Shyam Sundar is the founder of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at Penn State, a leading facility of its kind in the United States. He recently served as the editor of Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. He has also served on the editorial boards of 18 journals, including Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Human Communication Research, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media.
Shyam’s research focuses on digital media and the effects of interactivity, navigability, multi-modality and agency on online users’ thoughts, emotions, and actions. His research has been supported by, among others, the National Science Foundation, Korea Science and Engineering Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Services.
Smart Talks are informal conversations with leading thinkers about new media, information-seeking behavior, and the use of technology for teaching and learning in the digital age. The interviews are an occasional series produced by Project Information Literacy (PIL). PIL is an ongoing and national research study about how students find and use information for courses and for use in their everyday lives and as lifelong learners. Smart Talk interviews are open access and licensed by Creative Commons.