HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Soc. Psychol.
Sec. Intergroup Relations and Group Processes
This article is part of the Research TopicApplications of Mindfulness in Media and Communication StudiesView all 21 articles
Framing the Mind: Media, Metaphors, and Mindfulness
Provisionally accepted
- Independent researcher, Leesburg, United States
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Mindfulness has been studied in media and communication research as an individual capacity for regulating attention, managing distraction, and critically engaging with content. This perspective paper introduces an alternative approach, one that recognizes that mindfulness is strongly influenced by environments, including media environments. Drawing on the Environmental Model of Mindfulness, this paper examines how dominant metaphors of mind, especially container-based metaphors prevalent in and propagated by digital media, may unintentionally make mindfulness harder to achieve. Building on this insight, an expanded role for media literacy is proposed, one that includes awareness of the effects of language and metaphor on the capability for present-moment awareness. This perspective opens new avenues for research and design by illuminating how media environments can support, or unintentionally suppress, mindfulness.
Keywords: cultural psychology, Environmental Model of Mindfulness, Media and communication studies, Media literacy, metaphor, mindfulness, Self-construal
Received: 01 May 2025; Accepted: 12 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Meaden. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: James Meaden
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