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Theoretical Article

The Media Psychology of Boredom and Mobile Media Use

Theoretical and Methodological Innovations

Published Online:March 31, 2022https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000340

Abstract

Abstract. Boredom is a prevalent and relevant, yet understudied, negative emotion in the field of media psychology. This paper proposes novel theoretical foundations to study boredom as an emotion and its related regulation strategies in the context of mobile media. Due to their pervasive nature, mobile media allow for boredom regulation via passive and (inter)active exposure to a wide variety of media contents. It is still unclear how and through which processes mobile media provide successful boredom regulation. This paper first describes the existing scarce and mostly older literature on boredom from the field of media psychology and links this to recent insights from general psychology with as its core the meaning and attentional components (MAC) model (Westgate & Wilson, 2018). It then integrates media psychology predictions for mobile media into the MAC model and identifies gaps and opportunities to be tackled in future media psychology studies, by also taking into account the broader boredom findings from within general psychology, for example, those focusing on the meaning component. Finally, the paper provides a summary of the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms giving rise to boredom and proposes methodological innovations for studying the research questions that are still left unanswered. The aim is to inspire future media psychology research on boredom as a highly relevant emotional state and how boredom regulation through mobile media use for can be both a challenge and an opportunity for individuals’ well-being.

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