Singularity Watch: Dr. Joshua L. Cohen on Media Psychology, Storytelling, and Technology
In Season 1, Episode 8 of Singularity Watch, Dr. Joshua L. Cohen discussed media psychology, self-storytelling, virtual reality, privacy, and the changing relationship between people and media technologies.
A conversation about media psychology
Singularity Watch Season 1, Episode 8, titled "Media Psychology with Dr. Josh Cohen," featured Dr. Joshua L. Cohen as its guest. Dr. Cohen is a media psychologist, clinically trained researcher, author/editor, educator, and storytelling/filmmaking coach.
The conversation took place during the pandemic period, with 2020 as the then-current year. References in the episode to collaborators, technology partners, and platforms reflect 2020 and 2021 and are not current partnerships or affiliations.
Singularity Watch, Season 1, Episode 8 — "Media Psychology with Dr. Josh Cohen."
It opened with a basic but expansive question: what is psychology, and what do psychologists actually do? From there it moved toward media psychology as a distinct field concerned with the relationship between human experience and media technologies.
That relationship is broader than media consumption. It includes the ways people produce, interpret, distribute, and live alongside images, video, virtual environments, platforms, and other forms of communication. Dr. Cohen placed self-storytelling within that larger field: people do not simply receive stories from media; they also use media to organize identity, communicate experience, and consider how they are seen.
What the episode covered
The episode considered the therapeutic relationship as a mechanism that a device cannot replace. It also examined virtual reality and connection, including the question of how immersive tools might be made more accessible through browser-level experiences and lower-cost forms of participation.
That emphasis on access matters. Immersive technology is often discussed as though specialized hardware, high-speed connectivity, and substantial financial resources were available to everyone. A media-psychological perspective asks who can enter an environment, who is excluded, what forms of support exist, and how design decisions shape participation.
A further subject was the prospect of filmmaking inside virtual environments. That possibility changes the production context without removing the responsibilities that accompany storytelling. A virtual environment can alter scale, perspective, embodiment, and interaction, but it does not by itself make a creative process therapeutic or ethically sound.
The medium itself is not the therapist.
That distinction sits at the center of Dr. Cohen's named framework and body of scholarly work, FILM/VIDEO-BASED THERAPY™, documented across his Routledge volumes. It appears here as context for understanding his media-psychology perspective.
We can make filmmaking more therapeutic without turning filmmaking into therapy. That distinction leaves room to examine the psychological and ethical dimensions of creative work while preserving the importance of relationship, consent, safety, context, and professional boundaries.
The conversation also addressed peer mentorship and workforce development, which broaden the discussion beyond individual media use. Technology can affect how people learn, collaborate, enter professional fields, and contribute knowledge from lived or community experience.
For filmmakers and digital storytellers, the episode raises questions that remain open rather than supplying a universal method:
- How does a chosen medium shape the story that can be told?
- What does an immersive environment make visible, and what might it conceal?
- What forms of access are assumed by a production?
- When does a creative project invite psychological interpretation without claiming to provide treatment?
Where the episode ends and reflection begins
One question runs beneath the conversation without being resolved by it. Environments that persist over time, and the records they keep of behavior and interaction, raise issues the discussion only gestures toward. What is gathered? Who can access it? How is consent understood when a space is networked or privately owned, and what should remain outside the system? These questions are reflections prompted by the episode, rather than conclusions established within it, and they belong to a larger conversation about privacy in immersive technology that is still developing.
Why the episode matters
The appearance shows the range of questions that media psychology can hold at once: storytelling, identity, technology, privacy, accessibility, virtual reality, professional education, and the role of relationships in meaning-making.
It also clarifies why media psychology should not be reduced to the use of a particular device. The field concerns the interaction between people and media technologies, and that interaction changes as technologies change.
For the filmmaker, this leads to a grounded invitation: your story matters, not because every story produces a predetermined outcome, but because the act of making raises questions about perspective, responsibility, audience, and meaning.
A series on Dr. Cohen's live events
This is the first in a series revisiting Dr. Cohen's live events and public appearances.
Readers can explore the Singularity Watch live events page for the event record, and find the episode through the link above.
Dr. Cohen's current coaching, consulting, and educational services are nonclinical and do not constitute psychotherapy, psychological treatment, or a substitute for care from a licensed mental-health professional.
Original source: An Immersive Psychology: Dr. Joshua Cohen, Singularity Watch S01 E08