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Entertainment Communication: Readings and Lectures Summary
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Readings and Lectures Summary 2nd Semester (2018/19)
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Entertainment Communication - EXAM - May 27, 2019Lecture 1 - THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY
Exam tip: blockbuster strategy, long-tail strategy, natural monopoly
What is entertainment?
- Entertainment: the action of providing or being provided with amusement or enjoyment
- Opposite of entertainment: boredom
- Entertainment keeps you amongst people/what is entertaining
- Entertainment has been understood not so much as a product (movie, game, tv show) or as a feature
of such product (action, comedy) but rather as a response to it
- Complex, dynamic, multi-faceted experience one goes through while exposed to media
- At the heart of entertainment experiences lies enjoyment, a product of numerous interactions
between conditions on both the user’s and the media’s side
- Entertainment can be artistic
- Popular entertainment defines our culture; pop culture generally recognized as constantly evolving
set of practices, beliefs, and values that are dominant in a society at a given point in time
- Entertainment media is one of the most powerful vehicles to accentuate or challenge traditional
values and norms in (non) stereotypical portrayals of characters who either represent the dominant
culture or of those who don’t ascribe to its values
Vorderer, Klimmt, & Ritterfeld (2004) - Model of enjoyment
- Person needs to meet certain prerequisites to feel enjoyment during exposure to media message:
suspension of disbelief, empathy, parasocial interactions, transportation, interest
- Full immersion into the experience/ story (in a state of a flow)
- Also, different motives for media use important for the feeling of enjoyment: escapism (escaping from
daily life into a ‘better world), mood management (regulating current mood via media), achievement/
competition (competition in video games for the feeling of achievement)
- Also, prerequisites for media: technology, design, aesthetics, content
- Diverse manifestations of enjoyment (not all necessarily positive), manifestations may vary according
to different types of media products
- Comedies: serenity, exhilaration, laughter
- Horror/Thriller movies: suspense, thrill, relief
- Sad movies: sadness, melancholy, thoughtfulness, tenderness
- Sensory delight as another product of enjoyment
- Video games: achievement, control, self-efficiency
- Media enjoyment effects on users: excitation transfer (physiological
reaction that makes people build tension, produces euphoria and
relief when tension is released), catharsis (own feelings are purified
and purged through media), learning (Bandura’s social learning theory)
,Oliver & Bartsch (2010) - Entertainment gratifications beyond hedonism
- In addition to gratifications such as mood management and sensation seeking: more varied spectrum
of gratifying movie experiences
- Media enjoyment (fun and suspense; surprisingly suspense was unrelated to enjoyment), media
appreciation (moving/thought-provoking); both related to favorable movie evaluation
The entertainment industry
- Mass media companies that control the distribution and manufacture of mass media entertainment
with the intention of selling or otherwise profiting from creative works or services
- Industry consists of a group of sub-industries devoted to entertainment (e.g. film industry, game
industry, music industry)
- Experiential nature of entertainment makes entertainment products relatively expensive to produce
but very cheap to reproduce
- US entertainment industry represents one third of the global market, revenue of approx. 771 billion
dollars, TV and Video revenue biggest, make a lot from ad revenue too
- The Walt Disney Company as entertainment industry leader with 60 billion dollars revenue
- Has its own products; owns right to abc products; owns Pixar, Miramax (sold 2010), Lucasfilm,
Marvel, 21st Century Fox; created Hulu
The entertainment industry influence
- Lasswell’s linear model of communication (1948)
- Effect decides if message was perceived correctly by audience
- Rather circular model, not linear
- Possible extra step between ‘Medium’ and ‘Receiver’: How? ‘Design’
Differential susceptibility to media effects model (Valkenburg & Peter, 2013)
- 3 factors predict children’s media use: disposition (cognitive
abilities, education, mood etc.), developmental level (age),
social environment (friends, family, society)
- These factors can also influence the effects that media may
have on knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior
- Media effects are transactional, effects of media use also
influence media use, spiral theory
Entertainment industry cycle
(1) Decision about medium and concepts leads to product
- Medium: technology (cinema, tv, computer etc.), interactivity (lean back interactivity (movies, casual),
lean forward interactivity (video games, concentration)), connectivity (social connections forged or
maintained through mediated communications system e.g. different experiences watching movie
alone and with someone)
- Concept: title, type, genre, subject, theme
, (2) Product is then marketed (= promoting and selling products in order
to create, keep, and satisfy consumers) to users
- Consumer demand is ascertained by focusing on specific groups of
people that are willing and able to buy the product, complex as there
are many characteristics: demographics (gender, age, income,
education, location, ethnicity), disposition (psychosocial traits, attitudes, values, cognitive
capabilities, beliefs, mood, previous experience), social (family, friends, peers, society)
- Marketing depends on those characteristics e.g. Localization: process of translating a product onto
different languages or adapting product for a specific country/region by adding screen time for
specific characters, cutting scenes, placing different advertisements
- Other marketing strategies: blockbuster strategy, long tail strategy
- Blockbuster strategy: powerful content producers make huge investments to acquire, develop, and
market a small number of concepts with a strong hit potential; expensive to produce but cheap to
reproduce (disproportionately profitable); publicity and marketing costs are not proportionate to the
production budget
- Long tail strategy: selling lower volumes of many hard-to-find items instead of only selling large
volumes of few popular items; addressing niche audiences with products more closely tailored to
individual tastes, also storing movies online in a library
- Argument that tail will get longer (indefinite storage space) and fatter (products catered to
consumers preferences through recommendation algorithm), whereas head (products aimed at
mass appeal) will shrink; other argument that many products in the tail are former blockbusters and
that tail is longer but 90% of the revenue comes from top products (head)
- Audience for popular products consists of light users, whilst audience for niche products consists
of heavy users; thus hit products monopolize light users (natural monopoly) and tail-products are
needed to keep variety-seeking heavy users interested; also niche products are known by people
who are also familiar with top products
(3) Users ‘select’ what products will come next through needs and trends
- Escapism (Katz & Foulkes, 1962)
- Tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities especially by seeking
entertainment or engaging in fantasy
- Escapism through video games: may constitute a coping strategy when faced with adversity, may
provide empowerment that they are lacking
- Escapism may provide some sort of transient mental retreat for users who feel uncomfortable in
their actual lives and social worlds
- Uses and gratifications theory (Rubin, 1994)
- Entertainment selection and use is goal-directed, deliberate, motivated
- Users take the initiative when selecting entertainment to satisfy their needs
- Social and psychological factors mediate users’ choices
- Entertainment competes with other alternatives for selection and attention
- People are typically more influential than the media in the relationship (not always)
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