WEEK 1: INTRODUCTION TO ENTCOM
Readings :
Moyer-Gusé: Toward a theory of entertainment persuasion: Explaining the persuasive effects of
entertainment-education messages.
Oliver, Bartsch: Appreciation as audience response: Exploring entertainment gratifications beyond
hedonism.
Vorderer, Klimmt, Ritterfeld: Enjoyment: At the heart of media entertainment.
What is Entertainment ?
Any market offering whose main purpose is to offer pleasure to consumers, vs primary functional
utility
Complex, dynamic and multi-faced experience one geos through while being exposed to this type
of media
Has been understood not so much as a product (movie, game tv show) or as a feature of the
products (action, comedy) but as a response to it
At the heart of entertainment lies enjoyment, a product of numerous interactions between
conditions on both the user's and media's side.
Entertainment communication
Based on through theoretical and empirical analysis of the factors that define entertainment and
its products, the economics of the entertainment industry and the application of its mechanics to
achieve certain effects within special contexts/
Impact: far beyond economic value or amount of time invested in consumption. It resonates
throughout our culture, shapes our view of reality, influences our thoughts, motivations, actions
and vocabulary
It is a valuable source of knowledge for consumers about many aspects of their world, including
people, historical events, cultural and political institutions.
There is a problem of entertainment overload:
E.g. 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That amounted to 262
million hours of content in 2018.
In comparison, about 160 new smartphones, 40 new car models, and 20 new whiskeys and
cognacs are annually released in the U.S.
Lecture PART 1
Model basics for the media entertainment model:
-> Vorderer, Klimmt, Ritterfeld (2004)
enjoyment at the heart of entertainment including user and media prerequisites (may be a bit
confusing) with effects influencing the user -> a cycle of entertainments circular model
,READING - ENJOYMENT
-> Differential Susceptibility to Media effects Model - DSMM (Valkenburg & Peter, 2013)
Three factors predict media use: Disposition, Developmental level, and Social environment
These three factors also influence the effects that media may have on knowledge, beliefs,
attitudes, and behaviour.
Media effects are transactional, meaning that effects of media use also influence media use.
-> MDA Framework (Huincke, LeBlanc, Zubek, 2001)
Focused on designers of the entertainment (games) - design choices made will affect the player
Player will perceive the effect, the emotional response first that comes from certain mechanics -
reminder that designers have to implement certain mechanics in order to achieve certain
effects.
,-> Lasswel's linear model of communication (1948)
Classic model where a speaker says something to the audience through a certain medium with a
certain effect
Linear because it is one way - not possible to choose BUT it is not true !
There is a choice made by the audiences - people choose entertainment that fits their needs and
desires
There is also the effect on the audience (in influencer their further decisions, actions,
behaviours, what they like/prefer)
The design aspect is missing ! - how it is achieved?
Simpler version below
Media entertainment model !
Simplified one
Circular model
Disposition leads to a certain selection of entertainment product with certain design
characteristics which lead to specific experience and certain affects which will effect the
disposition leading to further selection of more entertainment
, All those characteristics (demographic, social, traits and states, media entertainment) define
what I view, listen to and choose in media -> my disposition - the predominant or prevailing
tendency of my mental and emotional attitude or state of mind towards entertainment product -
what forms of entertainment you like or dislike based on the personal preferences and previous
experiences.
The most prevalence of disposition within the society has the popular culture.
DISPOSITION :
the predominant or prevailing tendency of my mental and emotional attitude or state of mind towards
entertainment product - what forms of entertainment you like or dislike based on the personal
preferences and previous experiences
- popular culture
The core of any culture is a set of attitudes, values, and beliefs that is shared by a group of
people. Culture provides members of the group the norms for their behaviour (Deshpande &
Webster, 1989).
Popular culture (or pop culture) is the domain of entertainment products created in mass
quantities for a mass audience. It is generally recognized as a constantly evolving set of
practices, beliefs, and values that are dominant or ubiquitous in a society at a given point in
time.
- Cultural Differences
Although popular culture is about all the people in the world but there are some differences
within the societies.
A nation transmits the values of what is to be appreciated (and what is not) to its members, as
part of a process of continuous and lifelong socialization process.
Consumers’ entertainment choices show their personal values, ambitions beliefs, and
perceptions of the world and themselves (Schäfer & Sedlmeier, 2009).
The ‘cultural congruence’ between a movie and the audience influences how much consumers
like the movie (Song et al. 2018).
- Age Differences
Consumers have ‘impressionable years’ (Peltoniemi, 2015) during which their taste is
determined. Specifically, Holbrook and Schindler (1989) found that we like songs the most that
had been popular when we were in our early 20s (16-20 years old)
Others extended these insights by asking an international sample of 2161 consumers to name
their favourite music, books, and movies. They also found that favourites in all three product
categories mostly came from the period when consumers were between 16 and 20 years old
(Janssen et al., 2007).
