Rob Potter
Professor and Director of the Institute for Communication Research
Contact Information
Research and Creative Interests
- Audio
- Music
- Psychophysiology
- Social Neuroscience
- Emotion
- Media Industries
- Advertising
- Radio
- Biometrics
- Research Methods
Biography
Potter’s research focuses on the impact of auditory elements on information processing of media, psychophysiological measures as indicators of cognitive and emotional responses to media, and the concept of advertising clutter and its influence on information processing. His work has been published in Media Psychology, Communication Research, Communication Monographs, and Journal of Advertising, among others.
Potter recently co-edited the International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods.
Potter’s first book Psychophysiological Measurement and Meaning: Cognitive and Emotional Responses to Media (with Paul Bolls) was published in 2012 by Routledge.
He is past Chair of the Information Systems Division of the International Communication Association and serves on the editorial board of Communication Research, Media Psychology, Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, and Communication Methods and Measures. More than a decade of experience in the radio industry as a promotions director, research director, and program director, guides both his teaching and research.
Dr. Potter is the Director of the Institute for Communication Research at The Media School.
When I think about where my interest in sound and in communicating with sound began, I can conjure up different snapshots from my childhood and remember being a boy, maybe five or six, listening to a ballgame on a handheld radio in my bed after my parents thought I’d gone to sleep. I had it under my pillow and that whole deal.
Another memory, you fast-forward about a decade when the first “Star Wars” movie first appeared in theaters. I loved that movie, and I also remember getting a present — a cassette tape that been sold as part of the “Star Wars” merchandising — and on two sides of that cassette were just little bits of dialogue and sound effects and music from the movie. I could actually relive in my mind that whole story, and I listened to that thing over and over and over, eventually wore it out I’ll bet.
Now, eventually I landed in the radio industry, where I used my voice and music and other production elements to try and grab people’s attention in just the same way, but I was just going on intuition then — what seemed like it would work and I would try it. Now, as a researcher, my job is to really try to investigate and empirically demonstrate what it is about sound that captures attention. What is it about sound that moves people emotionally?
At The Media School, we have all the tools to do it. We have the people and the equipment and the curious environment that allow me to really measure not only what people say about how sound or any type of media really makes them feel, but also to measure how it makes their body react. What makes your heartbeat change as you pay more attention to a certain part of a movie? What is it about a song that you loved as a kid that makes you smile and makes your palms sweat? Those are actually things we can get at here, and we actually have lots of fun doing it at The Media School.
Select Journal Articles
Audio in Media:
- Potter, R.F., Sites, J., Jamison-Koenig, E., Zheng, X. (accepted).The Impact of Cognitive Load on the Cardiac Orienting Response to Auditory Structural Features during Natural Radio Listening Situations. Journal of Cognition. https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.43
- Lee, S. & Potter, R.F. (in press). The impact of emotional words on listeners’ cognitive and emotional responses in the context of advertising. Communication Research. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0093650218765523.
- Rodero, E., Potter, R.F., Prieto, P., (2017) Pitch Range Variations Improves Cognitive Processing of Audio Messages. Human Communication Research (43): 397-413. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hcre.12109/full
- Potter, R.F., Jamison-Koenig, E., Lynch, T, & Sites, J. (accepted). Effect of Vocal Tonal Difference on Automatic Attention to Voice Changes in Audio Messages. Communication Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650215623835
- Potter, R.F., Lynch, T., Krause, A. (2015) I’ve heard that before: Habituation of the Orienting Response Follows Repeated Presentation of Audio Structural Features in Radio. Communication Monographs (82), pp. 359-378. DOI: 10.1080/03637751.2015.1019529
- Potter, R. F., Lang, A., & Bolls, P. D. (2008). Identifying structural features of audio: Orienting responses during radio messages and their impact on recognition. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 20(4), 168-177. DOI: 10.1027/1864-1105.20.4.168
- Potter, R.F. & Choi, J. (2006). The Effects of Auditory Structural Complexity on Attitudes, Attention, Arousal & Memory. Media Psychology. 8 (4), 395-419. DOI: 10.1207/s1532785xmep0804_4
Advertising Research:
- Lee, S. & Potter, R.F. (in press). The impact of emotional words on listeners’ cognitive and emotional responses in the context of advertising. Communication Research. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0093650218765523.
- Read, G., van Driel, I., & Potter, R.F. (2018) Bias level matters: Advertisements featuring same-sex couples affect physiological but not self-reported responses. Journal of Advertising 47, p. 182-197. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2018.1452653
- Bellman, S.; Potter, R.F., Treleaven-Hassard, S.; Robinson, J.A.; Varan, D (2011). The Effectiveness of Branded Mobile Phone Apps. Journal of Interactive Marketing 25 191-200. DOI: 10.1016/j.intmar.2011.06.001
- Potter, R. F. (2009). Double the Units: How Increasing the Number of Advertisements while Keeping the Overall Duration of Commercial Breaks Constant Affects Radio Listeners. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 53 (4), 584-598. DOI: 10.1080/08838150903332991
- Potter, R.F., Callison, C., Chambers, T., Edison, A. (2008). Radio’s Clutter Conundrum: Better Memory for Ads, Worse Attitudes Toward Stations. International Journal of Media Management (10), 139-147. DOI: 10.1080/14241270802426667