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Summary Entertainment Communication Notes for Exam
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I made these notes over the course and refined them for the exam. I studied from these and got a pretty high grade (>8) so hope these are helpful for you :)
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WEEK 1What is entertainment? its boundaries are not that easily defined. It is much easier
to recognize entertainment than to provide a concise definition. (e.g., Marvel
blockbusters are definitely entertainment. And so is the latest instalment of Call of
Duty, or a breakout performance on the voice.)
Entertainment means providing amusement, diversion or enjoyment.
It comes from Latin (–inter- among, and -tenere- to hold or to keep.)
So literally, entertainment means that what holds you there, what keeps you in the
moment. So anything that holds and keeps your attention could be considered
entertaining and therefore entertainment.
And for some, it may be a video of perseverance landing on Mars. Whereas others
get excited by a live stream of a rare cactus blooming in Cambridge University
gardens. Or this explanation of the improvements to the retro encabulator,
Information can be entertaining, at least to some people, and some items on the
news are perhaps more entertaining than others.
And it's not just journalism, that applies entertainment mechanics to grab and hold
the attention of its viewers. The line between politics and entertainment has been
blurry since Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, or when Donald turned
the world's most important public office into a reality TV show about himself.
The mix between politics and entertainment is not limited to the USA.
Volodynyr Zalinski starred in the Ukrainian sitcom, 'servant of the people', in which
he played the President of Ukraine and then he became the actual President of
Ukraine in April 2019. Considering this mix between news, politics and
entertainment, it becomes almost impossible to determine when entertainment
begins or where it ends.
Several communication scientists have tried to define entertainment and according
to Peter Vorderer:
it's a complex, dynamic and multifaceted experience that one goes through while
being exposed to this type of media, As in: entertainment is entertainment because it
is entertaining.
And although this definition may sound somewhat tautological, this experiential
definition of entertainment is generally accepted.
Entertainment should not be understood as much as a product or a feature of such a
product, but rather as our response to it.
the term enjoyment was placed at the heart of the entertainment experience.
• But what do we enjoy?
• What keeps you interested?
• What keeps you engaged?
,For entertainment, there is no representative telling us that something is boring and
therefore not entertainment. For both entertainment and art, the attributes of the
experience dominate consumers quality judgments. Unlike entertainment,
artworks are considered 'credence goods'.
= These are goods whose quality consumers do not judge by their consumption
experience alone, but rather by accepting, as a matter of faith or credence, in a
particular expertise of certain certified authorities.
For entertainment it's different, because you decide when something is entertaining
and therefore entertainment, or boring and therefore not entertainment. And if media
doesn't entertain you, what did you do then?
Similar to the problem of defining when something starts to be entertaining is the
problem of defining when it stops to be entertaining.
For instance, this quick three-point turn in the face of an oncoming tsunami is
exciting and funny. But what if I told you that 12 thousand people lost their lives in
this tsunami? This may also be a good time to introduce a trigger warning.
When does entertainment become so obscene, so repugnant, so disgusting that it
should no longer be considered entertainment? Looking at these boundaries of
entertainment brings us back to our original question, What is entertainment? And so
far the definitions have been insufficient.
They basically described entertainment as something that is enjoyable to
someone. Which can still be basically anything. But perhaps a definition from
scholars in a different field than communication can help narrow down this concept.
This definition comes from two scholars in the field of economics, and it describes
entertainment as any market offering whose main purpose is to offer pleasure to
consumers versus offering primarily a functional utility.
So what this definition does is narrow the focus on market offerings, as in products
created for financial gain. And more importantly perhaps, its main purpose should
be to offer pleasure and not something else. (So for instance, advertising can be
entertaining as it surely offers pleasure to potential consumers. But the main purpose
of advertising is not to provide pleasure, but to encourage you to buy the product.)
LECTURE 2-3
Theoretical models, in general, are often used as conceptual representations of the
system of ideas and processes that help us identify and understand underlying
patterns. Models provide a simplified representation of a complex issue. So when
creating a model, there's always a trade-off between making it too complex
by adding all possible exceptions to the general rule and making it comprehensible
and applicable.
The media entertainment model has its bases on these 3 comm models:
probably the first communication model:
,Harold Lasswell's linear model of communication that he developed in 1948 =
1948 it is a process model explaining how messages through the media can affect
specific audiences.
Lasswell model needs to take into account the choices made by people (uses-and-
grats theory).Specifically, people choose entertainment products that fit their needs
and their desires.
• How is the effect achieved?
Patti Valkenburg and Jochen Peter's model = the differential susceptibility to
media effects models (or DSMM)
• Places the audience first
• Audiences influence their choice for certain media
• Response is added as a result of entertainment experience
• Downwards = limited to children
One of the very few models that examined the use and effects of media
entertainment specifically, is by Vorderer, Klimmt and Ritterfeld.
• it places enjoyment at the heart of the entertainment experience.
• Their manifestations of enjoyment = response states, (as we just saw in the
DSMM) which then have an effect (with some arbitrary effects by the
way) that influence the user and their motives, but apparently also the media
prerequisites.
• Messy and complex model
• It represents a circular process
So these three models formed the basis for the media entertainment model.
• Entertainment products consist of two concepts: a label and the design.
• Users consists also of two concepts, preference and response.
• It is a circular process model in which somewhere in your early infancy you
start using and experiencing media and entertainment, likely at first selected
by your parents, and over time, your knowledge, your attitudes, your beliefs
about entertainment are formed.
• Your preference for entertainment at a certain point determines to a large
degree which entertainment media are selected, and we take media here in
the broadest sense.
• You select it based on its identifiable characteristics such as the medium, the
title, the genre, the brand. We call these identifier's the label.
• Each entertainment product can have all sorts of design elements and these
design elements provide users with an experience.
Entertainment products are experience goods, meaning that this experience
dominates our quality judgments.
• Notice that response is not the same as effect. In this model we do not look at
media effects unless they change your preference towards entertainment
products.
, There are four overlapping identifiable characteristics that can be used to
categorize groups of entertainment users.
• Similar demographics
• Social characteristics
• Personality traits and emotional state (more stable aspects)
• Current mood and state (temporal aspects)
• Experience of previous
The most prevalent set of preferences within a society is what we call Popular
Culture.
The core of any culture is a set of attitudes, values, and beliefs that is shared by a
group of people. Group culture provide you the norms and attitudes for their
behaviour.
And popular culture, or pop culture = the set of practices, beliefs, and values
around entertainment that is dominant in a society at any point in time. Popular
Culture reflects our current entertainment culture. It is the constantly evolving domain
of entertainment that is created in mass quantities for an enormous audience.
Popular culture products are generally recognized by everyone, and they are
extremely influential, not just economically, but culturally and on a global scale.
The cultural congruence between an entertainment product and the audience
influences how much our consumers will select and like the product.
For instance, in Bollywood movies, movies that are made in India, it is perfectly
normal for the actors to break out in song and dance every 15 minutes or so, which
is generally not appreciated in any non-musical Hollywood move.
Then there's also the temporal aspect of cultural influence, the zeitgeist = the
defining mood of a particular period in history, as shown by the ideas and beliefs of
that time. (pandemic and rise of Subscription for streaming Platform)
Cancel culture = what we consider inappropriate is deemed inappropriate
for anyone, and that can be products that were very popular a few years ago.
ENTERTAINMENT USERS AND SELECTION
Selection motivations that help explain why people select entertainment. (link with
users)
• Escapism - describes the tendency to seek distraction and relief from
unpleasant realities through entertainment, especially fictional entertainment
provides a form of transient mental retreat for users who feel uncomfortable in
their actual lives or just a sense of emptiness or boredom when there's
nothing better to do.
• The mood management theory - states that our selection of entertainment
often serves to regulate our mood state. It is based on the hedonic premise
that pleasure and amusement are the highest good and the aim of human life.
According to the mood management theory, we are motivated to experience
pleasure and avoid pain. Therefore, we tend to select entertainment in order
to maximize or maintain a good mood or diminish or alleviate a bad mood.
One of the main critiques of the mood management theory is that it seems to
apply only to the selection of light-hearted entertainment and it fails to explain
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