The meaning is the message: an inquiry into new media, cognition, and reflective imagination

Do new media affect cognition and, more specifically the cognitive process of reflective imagination, the process which underlies the artistic experience? This thesis first gives a historical overview and points out how highly regarded media studies scholars predict in a utopian or dystopian tradition major effects of new media technologies on innate cognitive processes. But are these assumptions at all possible from a contemporary cognitive science perspective? Drawing on the research of, among others, Antonio Damasio and Merlin Donald, The Meaning Is the Message: An Inquiry into New Media, Cognition, and Reflective Imagination critically analyses these assumptions and studies cases on film and digital media.