Today Noshir Contractor presented a talk on Metatheoretical perspectives on satellite television and development in India: What we learned – and did not learn – from SITE to inform digital media in contemporary India at the Vikram Sarabhai Birth Centenary Tribute.

Abstract:
In 1988, along with Arvind Singhal and Ev Rogers, I co-authored an article titled Metatheoretical perspectives on satellite television and development in India in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. In that article, we analyzed the role and impact of satellite television from four metatheoretical viewpoints: the utopian view that technology is intrinsically good for humankind, the dystopian view that technology is an unmitigated curse, the neutral view that technology per se has no intrinsic effects on society, and the contingency view that the potentially desirable and undesirable impacts of technology are differentially determined by the context in which the technology is introduced at a particular time.

Despite ending last week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2021 Annual Meeting, the scientific discussions during the meeting have a more lasting impact. Check out a recap of Professor Contractor’s talk on team problem-solving in space that’s featured in Northwestern Now. Click here to read more.

Last Thursday (02/11), Professors Noshir Contractor, Dorothy Carter, and Alexandra Whitmire presented at the 2021 AAAS Annual Meeting Scientific Session during the Understanding and Enabling Human Travel to the Moon and Mars panel organized and moderated by Professor Leslie DeChurch. Apart from the presentation, there was a Q&A during the session, with experts from the field, including Suzanne Bell from DePaul University, Jack Stuster from Ancapa Sciences, and Nick Kansas from the University of California, San Francisco.

If you miss the presentation, feel free to check the recording of the session in our videos gallery or by clicking here.

The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) is back this year with its annual convention. This year, all of the pre-conference hosted are virtual (a list of all pre-conference can be found here) and our lab director Noshir Contractor was invited to be one of the speakers in the Bringing Intragroup Processes Back to Social Psychologypreconference. This pre-conference includes numerous speakers from various disciplines (i.e. social psychology, management, computer sciences) who studies social interactions within a group (in particular intragroup processes). As the last speaker of the day, Professor Contractor shared his insights on repairing interactions and/or relationships, with a talk titled Teaming in the Time of COVID-19: What Astronaut crews can teach us about “re-pairing” our relationships.

Today Noshir Contractor, Dorothy Carter and Sandra Whitmire attended the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2021 Annual Meeting press briefing and discussed topics surrounding science of teams in long distance space exploration. This briefing was conducted prior to their Scientific Session tomorrow on Understanding and Enabling Human Travel to the Moon and Mars, which will be live at 1PM EST.

Session Information:

NASA is preparing to send the first woman and the next man to land on the Moon and then on to Mars. These efforts are leveraging advances in science and engineering to design the complex technology that will take humans on these missions. Yet the one element that scientists cannot design are the humans these rockets will carry. Over the past 6 decades, researchers have made remarkable progress in understanding how humans respond physiologically to, and can mitigate, the extreme conditions in space such as radiation and weightlessness. However, it is only in the past decade that we have begun to understand how humans respond psychosocially to, and can mitigate, the effects of isolated, confined, and extreme environments for long durations. Further, unlike previous space missions, deep space exploration teams will face the ultimate communication barrier: light speed. Delays of up to 22 minutes for a signal to travel from Mars to Earth means messaging “Houston we have a problem” during an emergency is not an option. Hence teams exploring deep space will need to act with an unprecedented level of autonomy while coordinating with “teams of teams” back on earth. This session brings together an interdisciplinary panel of experts all deeply engaged in conducting the science that is helping NASA understand, anticipate and mitigate the effects of deep space exploration on teamwork and its performance on upcoming missions.

Speakers: Tom Williams, Noshir Contractor, and Dorothy Carter

Moderator: Leslie DeChurch

Respondent: Suzanne Bell, Jack Stuster, and Nick Kanas

Other Resources:

For more info on the press briefing, click here.

Last Thursday (Feb 4, 2021) marks the end of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshop Annual Conference. We had a great time sharing some insights from our NASA projects and taking part in the Q&A Sessions. Great work Noshir Contractor, Leslie Cardone DeChurch, Alina Lungeanu and team — and thank you for all of your hard work!

If you miss any of our presentations, please head over to our Videos section to watch the recorded presentations.