Contemporary Issues in Social Psychology

We have discussed the integral role that media plays in sharing and shaping social representations. The media has a constructive hand in how we receive messages, and these are taken up into social representations, which ultimately become part of our social realities. Organ donation demonstrates that social representations shift over time, and the media can have an influential hand in how representations come to look.

Big Data works on the principle that the more you know about anything or any situation, the more reliably you can gain new insights and make predictions about what will happen in the future. Here we explore how big data, such as social media profiles and google trends, can be analysed to understand human behaviour.

We can think of systems of control as drawing on notions of the observed and those doing the observation. The docile body, interested in self-improvement and self-governance is crucial in how powerful structures and norms are maintained and reinforced. Social media represents a form of Omniopticon, wherein the many watch the many-a form of governance. We can see how social media regulates the body & replicates existing structures of power

Who Posts Selfies? What motivates selfie-taking? Is there a relationship between selfies and Photography Techniques? Is the placement of the main facial features consistent with known principles of photographic composition?

Critical Social Psychology is a key driving force within this block We understand the body as i) embodied, ii) a discursive product The body is social We can think of social media as a further space to build/represent/maintain/advance the social norms, expectations, and practices around the body

Psychology has had difficulties in accounting for social behaviour. The power of context has been undervalued. But what gives social situations power? When do people choose one group over another? When is one group ID salient over another? What happens when two groups are similar?

We explore various uses of a selfie including: Selfie as a tool for self exploration, Selfie as a tool for expression of mood / identity, Selfie as a tool for escapism and Selfie as a tool for asserting agency.

This document details how we can use big data, such as social media usage and profiles to predict the mental health of those that use it. This document details research that has tried to predict mental health issues such as depression from social media profiles and how we can use google search trends to make predictions about location-specific trends.

This document is a qualitative, philosophical take on how people can resist social constructs around the ideal body type. It also examines adverts that highlight the ideal body type and how they have changed throughout history. Furthermore, this uses a Foucauldian ideology when examining bodies within a cultural space.