Stephen Brock Schafer

Stephen Schafer’s interest is on communications research relating to media influence on cultural transformation. He has been developing a theoretical analog between cognitive models and video game structure. The analog is based on a multidimensional common denominator—narrative-metaphorical linguistic structure—that operates as an affective transducer between conscious and unconscious cognitive dimensions. Accordingly, a genre of drama-based video games (DBG) may be used as a research instrument to access robust data relative to unconscious cognitive states. Schafer is Principal Lecturer and Past Chairman of the Humanities & Social Sciences Department at Digipen Institute of Technology where he has taught since 2000. In addition to teaching at several colleges and universities, he has twenty-five years of experience that includes senior management in both the public and private sectors, social and environmental activism, marketing, and journalism. The unusual breadth and depth of his practical experience supports his research on the media dynamics of cultural evolution. Conference presentations and professional affiliations include such events as PAX 2009, GDC Austin 2008 & 2009, Toward a Science of Consciousness 2008 & 2009, Social Approaches to Consciousness, Game Education Summit (GES) North America 2009, GES North America 2010, and GES Europe 2010. He was invited to co-organize an international invitational workshop on Meaningful Media at the Asia Festival 2009, is a Senior Fellow of the Video Games & Human Values Initiative, an invited member of The Society of Industry Leaders, a member of the Immersive Education Initiative (MediaGrid), The C. G. Jung Foundation, and others. He teaches an array of classes that emphasize mythology, symbolism, and Jungian psychological dynamics of dream interpretation in order to train game-story writers to apply the principles to interactive narrative.

Publications

Handbook of Research on Global Media’s Preternatural Influence on Global Technological Singularity, Culture, and Government
Handbook of Research on Global Media’s Preternatural Influence on Global Technological Singularity, Culture, and Government
Stephen Brock Schafer, Alex Bennet. © 2022. 522 pages.
Trends of the last few years, including global health crises, political division, and the ongoing threat to social-environmental survival, have been continually obscured by...
Exploring the Collective Unconscious in the Age of Digital Media
Exploring the Collective Unconscious in the Age of Digital Media
Stephen Brock Schafer. © 2016. 316 pages.
For decades we have witnessed the emergence of a media age of illusion that is based on the principles of physics—the multidimensionality, immateriality, and non-locality of the...