MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT
Lecture 1: Introduction to Media Entertainment October
26 2020
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. Media entertainment 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?
Anne Bartsch: “enjoyment is a meta-emotion, meaning that during media entertainment we experience
many different positive and negative emotions, that we evaluate as enjoyable when we reflect on the
experience.”
Media entertainment: media content designed to be consumed for purposes of leisure (rather than
specifically for information gain, learning or persuasion).
Media entertainment: a form of playing (coping with reality). An activity that is most often characterized
by different forms or pleasure, positive and negative. It is an intrinsically motivated action that usually
leads to a temporary change in perceived reality and that is repeated quite often by people who are,
during this process, less intellectually vivid and attentive than they could be.
You cannot define ME by the medium.
You cannot define ME by the content.
You cannot define entertainment by the pleasantness of felt emotions.
Lecture 2: Media Selection: Uses and Gratification
October 28 2020
What is media entertainment?
Can be described from the perspective of the intention of design, behavior and experience.
As a behavior/ intention interaction with media for leisure
As an experience interaction is evaluated as being enjoyable
Independent of device and platform.
What is media selection?
Media selection: people don’t consume all the content that is available, they make a selection.
MS is a goal-oriented decision process through which people (consciously or subconsciously) select from
the available mediated messages or avoid certain mediated messages.
What determines media selection?
Is it something in the media?
Is it something in the user?
Human-media interaction
1
,Theories of understanding media selection behavior
User-centered theories
o Uses and Gratifications
o Mood management
o Habit models (masters)
o Cognitive decisions models (masters)
Media-centered theories
o Certain features in the (new) media attract audiences (e.g. interactivity)
Phases of media selection
1. Selection of a media driven (or non-media driven) activity.
2. Selection of a medium (e.g. TV, mobile, etc.) and a platform (e.g. Netflix).
3. Selection of a mediated message provided by the medium.
Early understanding: agency, escapism
Agency of the Audience
Do audiences passively receive mediated messages or do they active participants at all stages of the
interaction?
1950-60’s theories:
o TV in households.
o Audience is lacking agency, a passive receptor of mediated messages.
o Primary question: What are media doing to us?
Media selection, media effects
In contrast to assumptions about powerful media effects, empirical studies from the 1940’s started to
show that audience members were:
Active, not passive.
Selective, not a captive audience.
Obstinate, not gullible.
Lazarsfeld & Katz (1940): The importance of selection and use
People’s predispositions affect their media choices. People do have agencies, steady features.
People make strategic use of media to meet their needs.
Media are primarily influential via interpersonal talk mass media influence is limited.
Focus on one particular need: Escapism.
2
, “People are deprived and alienated and so they turn to the dreamlike world of the mass media for
substitute gratifications, the consequence of which is still further withdrawal from the arena of
social and political action.”
Worries about escapism
“…further withdrawal from the arena of social and political action.”
Katz & Foulkes (1962)
What exactly do we mean by consuming ‘escapist’ media? A process…
Of consuming a distracting content.
Driven by a motivation or ‘drive’.
Psychological escapism.
Comes with high levels of exposure.
Social context of exposure is important.
Dysfunctional consequences.
E.g. an adolescent goes to the movies, whatever is playing, to get away from his parents and there is a
resulting strain in the child-parent relationship.
Results
Yes, some media use is escapist, where people ‘forget about troubles’ or ‘lose themselves’.
But, there is great variation in the type of needs, and linkages cannot be taken for granted.
Escapism (or similar experiences) can be functional. Important!!
Uses and Gratifications Theory
One of the most prolific mass communication theories.
Based on a functional model: media use serves a psychological function to gratify a need.
TV/ radio era, keep this in mind!
Assumptions
1. Media selection is goal-oriented and motivated.
2. People are active participants who select media that best fulfill their need.
3. Media compete with ‘functional alternatives’ to satisfy a need.
4. People are more influential than the media in the effects process (social factors play a role in media
effects).
5. But the gratifications obtained don’t always matched the gratifications sought.
6. People are able to report what media they use, and why (conscious process).
Gratifications sought and gratifications obtained
3
, Types of needs/ motivations
There are several different typologies of needs by different authors.
o Cognitive needs: need for knowledge, information, orientation, curiosity, etc.
o Affective needs: mood management, recreation, entertainment, escapism, stress release,
etc.
o Social-interaction needs: sense of belonging, social contact, connectedness, parasocial
relationships.
o Integrative-habitual needs: need for regularity, stability, security, habits, etc.
To identify the need, you have to look at the motivation, not the behavior itself.
Uses and gratifications can compare usage of media, channels and content.
Limitations of the U&G approach
Media use is often not a conscious and rationale decision.
People are not always purposive and active; ritualized (habitual) vs. instrumental media use.
‘Typologies’ are often inductive and very specific to the particular medium, time period or study.
Studies often rely on cross-sectional surveys: no causal evidence.
Surveys typically can’t dig deep into particular message features or psychological responses.
Many studies don’t distinguish between motives, selections, uses, responses, effects.
Lecture 3: Mood Management
October 30 2020
The concepts of mood and mood regulation
Mood
Emotional experience over a more prolonged period of time.
Frame of mind (Morris, 1990).
No specific direct cause in consciousness.
Gradually developing and longer duration.
Weak intensity.
Different from emotions (affects): short, immediate, defined external, cause, strong intensity.
Effect of mood
Mood influences…
Self-image, self-efficacy
o How we think about ourselves and our capabilities
Thinking, memory
o Our thoughts and the things we remember
Decision making
o E.g. how much risk we take, how much trust we have, etc.
Future
o How we thinking about our future
4
Lecture 1: Introduction to Media Entertainment October
26 2020
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. Media entertainment 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?
Anne Bartsch: “enjoyment is a meta-emotion, meaning that during media entertainment we experience
many different positive and negative emotions, that we evaluate as enjoyable when we reflect on the
experience.”
Media entertainment: media content designed to be consumed for purposes of leisure (rather than
specifically for information gain, learning or persuasion).
Media entertainment: a form of playing (coping with reality). An activity that is most often characterized
by different forms or pleasure, positive and negative. It is an intrinsically motivated action that usually
leads to a temporary change in perceived reality and that is repeated quite often by people who are,
during this process, less intellectually vivid and attentive than they could be.
You cannot define ME by the medium.
You cannot define ME by the content.
You cannot define entertainment by the pleasantness of felt emotions.
Lecture 2: Media Selection: Uses and Gratification
October 28 2020
What is media entertainment?
Can be described from the perspective of the intention of design, behavior and experience.
As a behavior/ intention interaction with media for leisure
As an experience interaction is evaluated as being enjoyable
Independent of device and platform.
What is media selection?
Media selection: people don’t consume all the content that is available, they make a selection.
MS is a goal-oriented decision process through which people (consciously or subconsciously) select from
the available mediated messages or avoid certain mediated messages.
What determines media selection?
Is it something in the media?
Is it something in the user?
Human-media interaction
1
,Theories of understanding media selection behavior
User-centered theories
o Uses and Gratifications
o Mood management
o Habit models (masters)
o Cognitive decisions models (masters)
Media-centered theories
o Certain features in the (new) media attract audiences (e.g. interactivity)
Phases of media selection
1. Selection of a media driven (or non-media driven) activity.
2. Selection of a medium (e.g. TV, mobile, etc.) and a platform (e.g. Netflix).
3. Selection of a mediated message provided by the medium.
Early understanding: agency, escapism
Agency of the Audience
Do audiences passively receive mediated messages or do they active participants at all stages of the
interaction?
1950-60’s theories:
o TV in households.
o Audience is lacking agency, a passive receptor of mediated messages.
o Primary question: What are media doing to us?
Media selection, media effects
In contrast to assumptions about powerful media effects, empirical studies from the 1940’s started to
show that audience members were:
Active, not passive.
Selective, not a captive audience.
Obstinate, not gullible.
Lazarsfeld & Katz (1940): The importance of selection and use
People’s predispositions affect their media choices. People do have agencies, steady features.
People make strategic use of media to meet their needs.
Media are primarily influential via interpersonal talk mass media influence is limited.
Focus on one particular need: Escapism.
2
, “People are deprived and alienated and so they turn to the dreamlike world of the mass media for
substitute gratifications, the consequence of which is still further withdrawal from the arena of
social and political action.”
Worries about escapism
“…further withdrawal from the arena of social and political action.”
Katz & Foulkes (1962)
What exactly do we mean by consuming ‘escapist’ media? A process…
Of consuming a distracting content.
Driven by a motivation or ‘drive’.
Psychological escapism.
Comes with high levels of exposure.
Social context of exposure is important.
Dysfunctional consequences.
E.g. an adolescent goes to the movies, whatever is playing, to get away from his parents and there is a
resulting strain in the child-parent relationship.
Results
Yes, some media use is escapist, where people ‘forget about troubles’ or ‘lose themselves’.
But, there is great variation in the type of needs, and linkages cannot be taken for granted.
Escapism (or similar experiences) can be functional. Important!!
Uses and Gratifications Theory
One of the most prolific mass communication theories.
Based on a functional model: media use serves a psychological function to gratify a need.
TV/ radio era, keep this in mind!
Assumptions
1. Media selection is goal-oriented and motivated.
2. People are active participants who select media that best fulfill their need.
3. Media compete with ‘functional alternatives’ to satisfy a need.
4. People are more influential than the media in the effects process (social factors play a role in media
effects).
5. But the gratifications obtained don’t always matched the gratifications sought.
6. People are able to report what media they use, and why (conscious process).
Gratifications sought and gratifications obtained
3
, Types of needs/ motivations
There are several different typologies of needs by different authors.
o Cognitive needs: need for knowledge, information, orientation, curiosity, etc.
o Affective needs: mood management, recreation, entertainment, escapism, stress release,
etc.
o Social-interaction needs: sense of belonging, social contact, connectedness, parasocial
relationships.
o Integrative-habitual needs: need for regularity, stability, security, habits, etc.
To identify the need, you have to look at the motivation, not the behavior itself.
Uses and gratifications can compare usage of media, channels and content.
Limitations of the U&G approach
Media use is often not a conscious and rationale decision.
People are not always purposive and active; ritualized (habitual) vs. instrumental media use.
‘Typologies’ are often inductive and very specific to the particular medium, time period or study.
Studies often rely on cross-sectional surveys: no causal evidence.
Surveys typically can’t dig deep into particular message features or psychological responses.
Many studies don’t distinguish between motives, selections, uses, responses, effects.
Lecture 3: Mood Management
October 30 2020
The concepts of mood and mood regulation
Mood
Emotional experience over a more prolonged period of time.
Frame of mind (Morris, 1990).
No specific direct cause in consciousness.
Gradually developing and longer duration.
Weak intensity.
Different from emotions (affects): short, immediate, defined external, cause, strong intensity.
Effect of mood
Mood influences…
Self-image, self-efficacy
o How we think about ourselves and our capabilities
Thinking, memory
o Our thoughts and the things we remember
Decision making
o E.g. how much risk we take, how much trust we have, etc.
Future
o How we thinking about our future
4
