Robert Lewis

My interest in media entertainment centers around a desire to understand what makes it appealing and the causes and consequences of its widespread use. Media entertainment deserves particular attention today due to its ever-increasing geographic presence and the enormous portion of time it consumes as an activity. Of all daily activities, consuming media entertainment comes only behind work and sleep[1]. Moreover, it represents a major economic activity around the world[2]. One of the most central problems for me is to understand the psychology of media appeal. Beyond the "intended effect" of media's ability to entertain, though, my research seeks to generally address social processes relevant to the production and reception of entertainment media, and the consequences of those processes at the individual and cultural level. In this way, I seek to know how people respond to media psychologically from childhood through old age, as well as how the presence of media shapes the structure of our cultural systems.