Summary: Lecture notes + literature
Reviewed
Lecture 1: What is entertainment?
Media use in US in 2022
In 2022, the average daily time spent with major media including television, newspapers, magazines,
radio, and digital formats of each amounted to 750 minutes (12 hours and 30 minutes), 3.5 hours of
which are spent with entertainment. www.statista.com
Why do we care about the scientific study of media entertainment?
1. People spend a significant part of their day with consuming media for entertainment
2. ME consumption has a strong influence on self, relation to others and the world.
3. There is a lot of content available for media entertainment
How to define media entertainment?
Are some media, like video games and television, more central to entertainment than others, like
books and the Internet?
No, you cannot define ME by the medium
Are specific types of content, like action movies or fantasy novels, more entertaining than others,
like documentaries and nonfiction books?
No, you cannot define ME by the content
If something made you laugh or cheer, does that mean it is more entertaining than something that
made you cry or feel afraid?
No, you cannot define entertainment by the pleasantness of felt emotions
Is entertainment constantly variable, changing based on who we are with and what we are doing,
or how we think about an experience?
Yes, the same content can be experienced differently depending on the circumstances
Do you think media entertainment has a function/ purpose in people's lives?
Depends on the media we’re talking about.
Enjoyment
According to Anne Bartsch, enjoyment is a meta-emotion. Meta-emotion is the reflection on the
experience we have during media entertainment. We experience many different positive and negative
Summary: Lecture notes + literature 1
, emotions, that we evaluate as enjoyable when we reflect on the experience. E.g. it was enjoyable to
feel sadness.
Media entertainment is…
Example exam question
Answer: C
Oliver (2009) – Entertainment
Entertainment isn’t something of the recent times, it can be traced back all the way to Ancient Greece,
or Egypt. Nowadays, nearly any content, or any format or presentation, and any medium can be seen
as a form of entertainment. Note that nowadays there is a great focus on electronic forms of
entertainment. This chapter will discuss the history of Media Entertainment all the way to now.
The two questions that we ask ourselves surrounding ME are:
What variables predict people’s entertainment selections and preferences?
What variables play and concepts play a pivotal role in the enjoyment of entertainment?
One of the most important ways that ME is assessed is through means and gratifications. Which bluntly
means, how do consumers choose their medium based on what they need and to what extent can the
media successfully address these needs. Herzog for example classified problem solving, escapism,
and emotional release as characteristics of radio soap opera listeners. Lazarsfeld found that people
like radio shows that challenges its listeners into some form of competition. Haas et al. found that
media was by far the best medium to overcoming loneliness.
Besides these general gratifications, research has also deep dived into the gratifications of the content
of the medium message. We now know that people who watch more aggressive TV show have a
natural tendency to be more aggressive themselves. While uses and gratifications has been a helpful
Summary: Lecture notes + literature 2
, measurement method for quite a while, it does come with its fair share of criticism. Namely, how good
and valid is it for someone to report his or her own motivation.
Mood management measurement has taken a different path. With mood management it is argued that
one factor influencing entertainment selection is individual’s tendencies to arrange their environment to
manage their moods or affective states. Thus, people choose their form of entertainment to uplift their
positive mood and get rid of the negative one.
Some media characteristics that help regulate these moods are:
Arousing potential – can help with overarousal (stress) as well as underarousal (boredom)
Hedonic valance – whether the message is more positive or negative
Behavioural affinity – whether the message fits the mood of the consumer
Absorbing potential – message may successfully distract the consumer
Research has matched overarousal with a greater likelihood of watching something more stimulating as
well, premenstrual-cycle women are more likely to watch comedies than those in their cycle, and
negative moods are more likely to listen to upbeat music. However, do note that there is some contrary
research available where these (sometimes surprising) effects are questioned.
After discussing entertainment predictors, we will now discuss the element of enjoyment. Note that this
doesn’t necessarily mean that it is only valid when the evoked emotion is “joy”. It can also evoke
sadness, but it evokes some sort of emotion on a metalevel that could be joy. Note that this section talk
about everything relating to what happens before, during and after consuming the entertainment.
Disposition theory suggests that viewers typically use moral considerations in forming judgements
about the “goodness” or “badness” of characters. After these dispositions have been formed, it is
argued that the consumer experiences a greater enjoyment when the “good” character experiences
positive things and the “negative” character negative things. For example, most people enjoy it when a
victim escapes from the torturer, this is the excitation transfer. They experience joy because their good
character has experienced something good. Additionally, this enjoyment is heightened by the
previously experienced anxiety surrounding the character. Note that when consumers form their
predisposition beforehand and it is contrasted later, they’re more forgiving, so it will take longer for the
consumer to see a good character become bad.
Transportation refers to engagement in a story or plot in a narrative world to such an extent that the
reader (or viewer) becomes lost in the story and is unaware of his or her immediate surroundings. The
consumer is fully emerged into the mental world.
Consumers might consume media for its hedonic purpose of pleasure, but they might do it for more
eudaimonic motivations (truth seeking). The latter looks at the cognitive stimulus of entertainment.
Note that this can play an important role in media consumption preference and enjoyment. This could
explain the individual differences based on the need for cognition, self-reflectiveness, and search for
meaning in life.
The future of ME:
The new and evolving landscape offers greater potential for selectivity
… this has as consequence greater opportunities of interactivity
Summary: Lecture notes + literature 3
, Additionally, consumers have greater mobility and are no longer bound to a tv
Eden (2017) – Entertainment effects: Enjoyment
Enjoyment is investigated through the primary gratification as well as a reward pattern that stimulates
consumption. After all, it is hard to find a media platform that doesn’t have enjoyment as central
principle. Enjoyment is most often defined as: “A pleasurable response to media use”. This paper will
define some central milestones as well as give some modern-day examples.
That we now see enjoyment as a positive thing of entertainment is something new, ancient Greece only
looked at the dangers of entertaining a crowd. It wasn’t until the 70s that researchers really became
interested in the enjoyment side of entertainment. Zillmann and his students were the first to truly dive
into this subject of enjoyment, they came up with a stream of theories:
Excitation transfer theory
One positive attribute that the consumer has attached to a character after a positive event might
transfer (linger) to the next less positive event. If a character escapes, the positive arousal will linger
for a while after (enjoyment)
Three-factor theory of empathy
This gives more information about the underlying (non-influential) cognitive processes behind
enjoyment. In this theory empathy is described as: “Any experience that is a response to (a)
information about circumstances presumed to cause acute emotions in another individual and/or (b)to
the facial and bodily expression of emotional experiences of another individual and/or (c) to another
individual’s behaviours presumed to be precipitated by acute emotional experiences that (d) is
associated with an appreciable increase in excitation, and that (e) respondents construe as feeling with
or feeling for another individual. With this definition he comnbined the past inferences about empathy,
namely, that it is reflexive (automatic), learned (conditioned), and a deliberate process.
Disposition theory/affective disposition theory
This theory was formed because they questioned why humans find it funny when something negative
or painful happens to a character on screen. They found that we for predispositions towards a
character. Then, the more intense the negative disposition toward the disparaged agent or entity, the
greater the magnitude of the humour response will be. Second, The more intense the positive
disposition toward the disparaged agent or entity, the less the magnitude of humour response will be.
This can be transferred to sporting games, we derive more enjoyment when we like the winning team
way more than we like the losing team. If something happens to a positively viewed character, we
laugh out of sympathy or in sporting teams we wish for something negative to happen to the other
team. To mend our somewhat broken moral grounds we often make up a backstory/drama in our minds
to justify this breach of moral values.
Mood management theory (+ selective exposure)
Why do we watch certain things when we’re in certain moods? This theory is based on the following
assumptions: (1) humans strive to get rid of their negative moods or at least reduce them and (2) strive
to hold on to the positive moods for as long as possible.
Summary: Lecture notes + literature 4
