Entertainment Communication Video Lecutre Notes
Lecture 1.1 Introduction to Media Entertainment
Entertainment = ‘any market offering whose main purpose is to provide pleasure to
consumers, versus offering primarily functional utility’ (Hennig-Thurau & Houston, 2019,
p41).
Media entertainment = any mediated product created for the purpose of entertainment.
Lecture 1.2 Introduction to Media Entertainment
The classis communication science model includes the basics of mass communication in
which the speaker says something through a certain medium to someone with a certain
effect.
This model is however, outdated because we as audiences choose our media, and therefore
arrows are added that go from audience to the other factors. In the end, the effect may
change audiences desires and needs which will then influence their future choices.
A more advanced model by Valkenburg and Peter (2013) show that there are three factors
that predict media use: preference, developmental level, and social environment
Besides, response states influence how the media will affect us.
This model is however not aimed at entertainment specifically.
,The use and effects of media entertainment model by Vorder, Klimmt and Ritterfeld (2004)
places enjoyment at the heart of the entertainment experience but other emotions can be
experienced as well, which is why this model is still not the best one.
Eth
Entertainment products consist of the concepts label (characteristics like medium, title,
genre, brand) & design (design elements such as narrative, cinematography, game design
etc.). These design elements provide users with an experience that determines our
judgments/response, and this again leads to forming a preference before selecting
entertainment in the future.
Lecture 1.3 Media Entertainment Model
Preferences describe what forms of entertainment you like. Factors that determine your
preference are:
- Demographic: gender, age, income, education, location, ethnicity
- Social: culture, family, friends, peers, society
, - Trait & State: psychosocial traits, cognitive capabilities, attitudes, values, beliefs,
state, mood
- Media Entertainment: experience, knowledge
The most prevalent set of preferences within a society is called ‘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 behavior (Deshpande & Webster,
1989). In other words, the dominant set of practices, beliefs, and values around
entertainment. So cultural congruence between entertainment product and audience
influences how likely the users are to select the product.
Besides the overall culture, cultural trends or the temporal culture (zeitgeist) can indicate
the ‘right’ time for certain products to be consumed (e.g., influence of pandemic on
entertainment).
In sum, user characteristics, cultural influences and previous entertainment experience
influence your attitude, opinion, beliefs, and state of mind regarding entertainment products.
And this preference influences the process of selection.
Response (expectations of how the product will make you feel) is often also considered
when selecting entertainment. The most important selection motivation is escapism: the
tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking
entertainment or engaging in fantasy (Katz & Foulkes, 1962).
Mood management theory is another motivational explanation which describes that the use
of entertainment serves the regulation of positive mood states (Zillmann, 1984). This theory
is based on the hedonistic premise that individuals are motivated to experience pleasure and
avoid pain and thus, tend to select entertainment to maintain a good mood. However, this
theory fails to explain why people deliberately select entertainment that makes them feel
frightened such as horror movies.
Familiarity refers to a consumer perceiving a sense of connection with an entertainment
product and/or its elements and characters (Bohnenkamp et al., 2015; Green et al. 2004).
One specific form of familiarity is nostalgia: preferences for things or experience that were
more common when we were younger (Kalinina, 2016). And the reminiscence bump effect
, explains that we recall memories from our adolescent life best, because these moments are
most vivid in our brains (Jansari & Parkin, 1989).
Familiarity is also associated with the moderate-discrepancy hypothesis which means that
anything that is slightly different from what we are very familiar with tends to get our
attention more than when we encounter something that is greatly diverse or extremely
similar to what we are very familiar with (McCall & McGhee, 1977).
The Social Cognitive Theory: Children’s behavior is learned by watching what others do and
don’t do in the environment in which one grows up. By imitating the observed behavior, the
observer solidifies that behavior and is rewarded with positive reinforcement (Bandura,
1986), can also be applied as a theory explaining the selection of entertainment. This effect
increases when the proportion of the people watched is larger (Bandwagon effect).
However, some people argue that motivations and social influences are not that crucial for
media entertainment selection. LaRose (2010) argues that Media habits are a form of
automatic and non-conscious media consumption behavior that develops as people repeat
frequent media consumption behavior (e.g., listening to music when going on the bike).
Lecture 1.4 Media Entertainment Model
Entertainment products are ‘information goods’: economic offering that are valued mostly
because of the information they carry (Wang & Zhang, 2009), and also experience goods: the
information that a consumer can gain about a product’s quality via experiencing the product
is far superior to the information about its quality he/she can gain through pre-consumption
search (Nelson, 1970).
Before the experience, the entertainment product is simply a collection of objective
information available to the consumers. These objective identifiers are also known as labels.
There are 4 important identifiers of entertainment product labels:
- Medium: the means by which it is communicated
- Title: the name of an entertainment product
Four aspects of names that can help consumers draw cognitive inferences about the
brand and trigger emotional responses, which might then influence consumers’
attitudes and behaviors (Lowrey et al., 2003): phonetics, orthography, morphology,
semantics
