University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The extended organism: A framework for examining strategic media skill in a digital ecology

Hamilton, Kristy Ann

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/108517

Description

Title
The extended organism: A framework for examining strategic media skill in a digital ecology
Author(s)
Hamilton, Kristy Ann
Issue Date
2020-07-17
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Yao, Mike Z
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Yao, Mike Z
Committee Member(s)
  • Wise, Kevin R
  • Duff, Brittany RL
  • Benjamin, Aaron S
Department of Study
Inst of Communications Rsch
Discipline
Communications and Media
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
  • strategic media skill
  • digital media
  • memory
  • cognition
  • human-computer interaction
  • experimental psychology
Abstract
This dissertation presents an extended organism framework that is directly applicable to the study of strategic media skill. The framework posits that it can be helpful in understanding the human cognizer’s adaptiveness and success of memory in a digital ecology to consider the characteristics of digital memory—the body of rote knowledge and various features of digital technology—as part of the human-technology extended organism, rather than an external environment on which the cognizer acts. It proposes three major subprocesses of strategic media skill: strategic encoding, metacognition, and identifying technological biases. This paper applies the framework to the case of offloading cognition to external devices to demonstrate its applicability. The extended organism framework, as it stands now, provides a conceptual-theoretical lens for predicting and explaining findings about strategic media skill, especially from an effects tradition, and for asking questions about the cognitive processing underlying strategic media skill. Using this perspective and these approaches to empirical investigations, researchers should be able to better understand the successes and failures of memory and cognition in a digital ecology, currently characterized by near-constant access to external information via dynamic and changing digital media devices. The ability to do this will allow media users to know the cognitive consequences associated with different actions and strategies and to make better decisions about when and how to use digital media to accomplish their goals.
Graduation Semester
2020-08
Type of Resource
Thesis
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/108517
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2020 Kristy Hamilton

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