Behaviour Change & Technology

The Internet, or rather the “Web 2.0″ or the “social web”, is the single most important communication invention of our time. Still, considering its seminal importance in all aspects of our lives, it is very important to consider its unintended effects and consequences. While there are many new books coming out now that do just that, from “The Net Delusion” to “The Shallows” to “The Information”, you may find it surprising that an academic, writing pre-1970, discussed the effects of the Internet ad nauseam, basically paving the way for Internet media analysis later down the line. Here are some of McLuhan’s basic ideas:

1. “The medium is the message.”

This is perhaps one of the best known of McLuhan’s sayings, one that catapulted him to fame after the publication of his book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”. What McLuhan essentially means here is that the “content” of a message is the least important thing to analyze, even though it is the most apparent. When thinking of the Internet, something that McLuhan conceptualized as “the global village,” we should look at how messages are transmitted in order to gauge how they affect our perceptions and behaviors.

2. “Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.”

This is an especially salient quote when we are talking about the Web as it exists today. While online schools are still in their infancy, the learning potential of the Internet is already being exploited through educational games for children, OpenCourseWare initiatives, and more.

3. “As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of ‘do it yourself.”

Can any one phrase apply to the Internet of the 21st century better than “do it yourself?” McLuhan suggested in many of his books that media could be grouped into two types—”hot” and “cold,” one engaging different faculties and the other being more passive. McLuhan believed that we would cycle through the different types, one dominating the other, and he thought we were heading toward a highly interactive form of media, a very “do-it-yourself” type.

4. “In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness.”

While this is a very vaguely worded assertion, and many people thought that, during the time that McLuhan was cranking out his ideas, he was stark raving mad. However, considering the recent publication of the popular general science book, “The Information: A Theory, A History, A Flood” by writer James Gleick, much of what McLuhan prophesized, especially this sentence, is only now becoming true.

Of course, McLuhan wrote about media very conceptually, and the way in which he approaches his theories are often convoluted and difficult to follow. But McLuhan spent a long career teaching composition and rhetoric at the university level, and, as such, he perhaps values more than anyone framing ideas into persuasive arguments.

For those of us who are interested in education and technology from a research perspective, McLuhan’s ideas can be easily applied in the classroom, especially one that is increasingly media-saturated. According to a New York Times article, Generation Y spends about 8 hours a day consuming media, which represents an unprecedented period of time. As such, talking about any form of media, but especially the Internet, will be relevant to all students in the 21st century.

This perhaps explains why McLuhan’s work has seen a resurgence in popularity, especially among younger academics and professionals. As noted in a Wired Magazine article:

“… in recent years, the explosion of new media – particularly the Web – has caused new anxieties. Or to put a more McLuhanesque spin on it, the advent of new digital media has brought the conditions of the old technologies into sharper relief, and made us suddenly conscious of our media environment. In the confusion of the digital revolution, McLuhan is relevant again.”

Author Bio:
This guest post is contributed by Leslie Johnson, who writes about health, green living, parenting related articles at masters in health administration.

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Exposure is the basic premise that must be satisfied for an intervention to induce behaviour change. Generally, exposure to Internet-interventions is low. Thus, we need to develop exposure theories and strategies that are linked to effectiveness. Rik Crutzen et al. (2011) reviewed strategies that facilitate exposure to Internet-delivered health behavior change interventions among adolescents and young adults (age 12-25), where they examined what strategies that are used to facilitate exposure, on which theories these strategies are based, and what potential effects these strategies have.

Methods and Strategies

It is clear from the article that nine out of 17 studies reviewed utilized either targeted (i.e. specified audience) or tailored (i.e. personal) communication.  Nine interventions utilized support facilities (e.g. discussion boards, peer support or professional support), five utilized interactive content, some utilized use of reminders and incentives, and a few interventions were embedded in a social context (e.g. implemented in school).

All in all, it is clear that we have only begun to utilize the inherent possbilities in this rich medium called the Internet. As seen from the results, only six different strategies were used in the studies that were reviewed. Although a lot of variation can be found within each strategy and many strategies can be combined, we have yet to utilize the medium to its full extent with regard to designing health and behaviour change interventions.

Theory and Empirical Data

It appears that a wide variety of theories were applied to design the interventions. The basis for the selection of strategies was social learning theory, self-regulation theory, social norms, the transtheoretical model, information-motivation-behavioural skills model, and different theories of social support.

As Crutzen et al. (2011) point out, these theories are descriptive in nature where the aim is to describe behaviours or behaviour change. None of these theories are actually prescriptive. That is, inform the intervention designer exactly about how to design the intervention in order to induce behaviour change.

Of course, it is not difficult to imagine and design e.g. exercises, tasks, games, etc. that are based on these theories and that intend on inducing behaviour change, but it is not given that it will work in practice.

Furthermore, none of the interventions applied any specific theories of exposure facilitation or theories of dissemination and implementation which makes it even more difficult to study and improve exposure in future interventions.

Effectiveness of Strategies

It seems that support strategies are rarely used by participants. This effect may reflect that adolescents and young adults are rarely confronted with negative consequences of the target behaviours which Internet-interventions are designed for, resulting in low involvement and low motivation to comply.

Providing interactive content may thus be a great way of enforcing involvement in one’s behaviour change process. The results from the article showed that providing content in a more interactive way resulted in higher exposure.

Asking and answering questions, interactive quizzes and games, listening to audio, watching videos, etc. breaks the monotony of reading and requires a different kind of cognitive processing of content which may result in greater involvement. 

Also, the use of reminders seems to increase exposure. Text messages, email reminders, proactive IVRs (interactive voice response), etc. may increase exposure by “pulling in” users and making interventions more attractive. However, the use of incentives to make people use the intervention may be feasible for studies, but would increase costs extremely in real-life.

Thus, finding new ways of providing incentives is important. It could for instance be to apply gaming principles to make interventions self-rewarding, but it may also be a matter of finding an appropriate business model and commercialize interventions.

Conclusion

The authors of the article concluded that there seems to be a few strategies that can be used to facilitate exposure more successfully. However, they were not able to link specific strategies to effectiveness. So far, I think the Internet is a rich medium which we believe has not been fully utilized in Internet-delivered interventions and that research on Internet-delivered interventions has yet to improve beyond conducting mere studies of program effectiveness. More experimental evidence is needed, more optimization and process research is needed, and exposure/dissemination/implementation research that is linked to effectiveness data.

Reference

Crutzen, R., de Nooijer, J., Brouwer, W., Oenema, A., Brug, J. & de Vries, N. K. (2011). Strategies to factilitate exposure to Internet-delivered health behavior change interventions aimed at adolescents or young adults: A systematic review. Health Education & Behaviour, 38,  49-62.

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