Psychological prerequisites and effects of using multimedia content in the mass media

Abstract

IntroductionMultimedia technologies have increased during the last decade. They have expanded their reach tremendously and have entered our everyday lives. Currently, such spheres as tourism, learning, computing and business are widely using multimedia in various projects. However, the entertainment sphere is now the main user of multimedia. Gaming and cinema industries are relying greatly on multimedia effects and exploring the new possibilities of virtual reality. Some scholars see this trend as a consequence of multimedia having a strong emotional charge and affecting the potential user with various expressive means (Shlykova, 2004).However, multimedia technologies can be used for more than just entertainment purposes. The use of multimedia content in the mass media proves this point. Today, various media outlets turn to multimedia genres to convey various meanings and present complex matters in an easy, compelling way. The various psychological effects multimedia might have on the audience have not been thoroughly studied and remain a grey area in research. Therefore, in this theoretical article, we will try to outline the general psychological effects that multimedia products might have on the users and give a theoretical explanation of these effects. We will try to prove that multimedia works have a greater potential than being only entertainment tools, as their nature is closely connected with some specific features of human perception. The article will also provide an overview of the existing psychological research in the sphere of multimedia. The main focus of the paper, however, is the use of multimedia in various media outlets.Current psychological research trends in the sphere of multimediaThe general lack of research in some aspects of multimedia psychology does not indicate that psychologists have completely ignored the phenomenon. During the last few decades, when multimedia became a wide-spread technology, psychological studies have focused mainly on how multimedia systems may be used to acquire better educational outcomes and help learning. A pioneer in this sphere is the California University professor Richard Mayer, who developed the so-called cognitive theory of multimedia learning, which is based on three key points:* Human beings have two main channels for processing information (auditory and visual)* Each of these channels has a limited carrying capacity* The learning process is an active process of filtering, selecting, organizing and integrating information. (Mayer, 2001)Based on experiments, Mayer proves that humans memorize information better if it is coded not only in words but also in visual images. Additionally, he distinguished another regularity, which he called the principle of modality, which states that the efficiency of information assimilation is greater if data are delivered as a combination of graphic images and verbal narrative, compared to being coded as graphic images and print text.Mayer's studies explain why multimedia is considered to be an effective tool in the education sphere. He argues that multimedia products stimulate an integral processing of verbal and iconic information in the working memory of humans. The integral processing requires that graphic and verbal information is delivered to the working memory simultaneously (Mayer, 2001).Mayer's legacy is used and developed by many contemporary scholars. Various studies have been performed in the sphere of educational psychology. Some of them try to build on the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (Bartlett & Strough, 2003; Bower, 2004; Koeber, 2005; Windell, Wiebe & others, 2006; Mitchem, Koury, Fitzgerald & others, 2009; Eysink, Jong, Berthold & others, 2009; Chen & Catrambone, 2014), and others are exploring the way people with various learning problems and diseases can benefit from multimedia (Wissick, 1996; Hagiwara & Smith Myles, 1999; Tjus, Heimann & Nelson, 2001; Elder-Hinshaw, Manset-Williamson, Nelson & others, 2006; Morrow, D'andrea, Stine-Morrowo Kennedy, Deshler& Wills Lloyd, 2015)During the last decade, multimedia systems have become more complex and sophisticated, which forced many scholars to develop methods to construct efficient multimedia products. …