Karen E. Dill (Ed.),The Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology

Reviewed by: Cathrine V. Jansson-Boyd, Department of Psychology, Anglia Ruskin University, USA

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The aim of the Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology is to provide enough breadth and depth to appeal to a wide audience, including post graduate psychology students, researchers and scholars, as well as practitioners in related fields. The handbook consists of 30 chapters that are divided into six different sections (2–8 chapters in each). Apart from the first and the last chapter (both written by Karen Dill), all chapters are written by different authors, including some well-known researchers such as Anderson, Huesmann, Gentile, and Donnerstein (to mention a few), that have undeniably contributed extensively to the area of media psychology.

In the first part we are introduced to the fact that the very nature of the media has changed drastically in the last few decades. Society has gone rapidly from the use of newspapers and television to an active engagement with social media such as Twitter and Facebook. This is followed by the second part, which focusses on History and Methods. In this section the reader is presented with arguments for why media psychology should be treated as a separate field, how it has evolved as a subject through the journal Media Psychology, as well as the importance of understanding that media literacy should be an important educational objective, to mention a few topics.

The third part of the book is labelled ‘Issues and media types’. This section covers what are perhaps some of the most famous areas of media psychology topics, such as media violence and aggression, how children’s media use can be positive, media based persuasion, as well as racially and gender based media aspects. These particular chapters could also prove useful as recommended reading on some social psychology based courses that feature related topics.

In the fourth part, ‘Interactive and emerging technologies’, there are seven chapters, of which four focus on video games. The other three look at social influence in virtual environments, the risks of children using the Internet, and technology addictions.

The fifth part of the book is titled ‘Meta issues in media psychology’. This section includes reflective materials on current and future research in media psychology, and also includes some cross-cultural perspectives on research as well as a political narrative of children’s media research.

The final part, focussing on ‘Conclusions and future directions’, is both unusual and interesting. It includes a content analysis of the handbook itself. The author of chapter 29, Neal, provides two types of analysis. The first one is a manual content analysis based on the table of contents, and the second is a computer-assisted content analysis for each of the content chapters of the book. As the editor puts it: ‘the goal of this chapter is to provide a smart automation summary of the content areas of our field’ (p. 7).

What the contributors to this handbook all do rather well is present two-sided arguments for many media related issues that are commonly presented through a particular narrative. Examples include the influence of video games on aggressive behaviour, and benefits of media exposure to children. Furthermore, all the chapters are clearly written and structured, something that is of great benefit if a lecturer wishes to include this book as recommended reading for taught modules.

The handbook provides the reader with interdisciplinary perspectives, as well as avoiding presenting an all-American perspective of the field, something that is undeniably key to the book’s success. On the whole, it broadly covers what is deemed to be the most popular areas of research and does present critical evaluation of the topics included as well as providing future directions for research.

Heavily featured in the book are different aspects of video gaming. The editor justifies this in her introduction by saying that video games are one of the most popular forms of media and should therefore be extensively covered. To a certain extent I do agree with this; however, one cannot help but wonder that some of the material incorporated may have been better dedicated to Internet related topics. The reason for this (also covered in the introduction) is that the editor did not wish to overlap too much with the Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology. However, for those who do not wish to purchase two handbooks, it would have been beneficial if more aspects of the Internet had been included in this book. Nevertheless, the Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology is a great idea for the very reason that it brings together an area that is rather fragmented (as stated by Tuma in Chapter 4). It provides a cohesive overview that could be used by both researchers and lecturers as the underpinnings for their work, and in particular I can imagine that it may help academics mould courses and modules alike. This is a book that should be of interest to many; researcher, students and lay people alike. After all, as so aptly put in the introductory chapter, ‘it is a fact of no small importance that media use is by far the most common way human beings spend our free time in the modern world’ (p. 3).

In sum, the Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology does exactly what a handbook should do. It provides a good overview of the discipline of media psychology and gives guidelines on how it ought to evolve as a subject area. Anybody interested in having a good in-depth understanding of how humans interact with the media should at least take a look at this handbook, if not read the whole book.