EntCom week 1

Question 1

Entertainment

Answer 1

Any mediated product created for the purpose of entertainment.

Entertainment /ɛntәˈteɪnm(ә)nt/
The action of providing or being provided with amusement or enjoyment
* Latin: Inter (among) Tenere (keep)
* The opposite of entertainment is boredom; if we are not entertained, we are
bored (Stromberg, 2009).

Defining Entertainment
* Entertainment is a complex, dynamic, and multi-faceted experience.
through while being exposed to this type of media (Vorderer, 2001).
* Entertainment has been understood not so much as a product (movie, game or
tv show) or as a feature of such a product (action, comedy) but rather as a
response to it (Zillmann & Bryant, 1994).
* At the heart of the entertainment experience lies enjoyment, a product of
numerous interactions between conditions on both the user’s and the media’s
side (Vorderer, Klimmt, & Ritterfeld, 2004)

Entertainment is ‘any market offering whose main purpose is to provide
pleasure to consumers, versus offering primarily functional utility’ (Hennig-Thurau & Houston, 2019 (p. 41).

Question 2

Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model - DSMM
(Valkenburg & Peter, 2013)

Answer 2

Three factors predict media use: Preference, Developmental level, and Social environment
* Media effects are transactional, meaning that effects of media use also influence media use
This model places audience first

Question 3

Vorderer, Klimmt, & Ritterfeld (2004) Model Media Entertainment

Answer 3

Praising the model:
the circularity of this model
Criticizing this model:
Enjoyment at the heart of the entertainment experience
⤷ downside: enjoyment is not the only outcome of entertainment experience
enjoyment should have been labeled response state
throws together user prerequisites with media prerequisites and motives

Label> design >experience> response> preferences> selection

Question 4

Circular process model

Answer 4

The user’s preference for entertainment determines which entertainment products are selected. This entertainment product can have all sorts of design elements that provide users with the experience and the user’s response to this experience will then affect his/her preference for this or similar types of entertainment

Question 5

Lasswell’s linear model of communication (1948)

Answer 5

who? (speaker) >what? (message) > channel (medium)> whom? (audience) > The Effect

With the updated model we choose

Question 6

Preference

Answer 6

Describes your mental and emotional attitude, your opinion, your beliefs, your state of mind regarding entertainment products
Relevant influences/predictors - preference
demographic [gender, age, income, education, location, ethnicity]
social [culture, family, friends, peers, society]
trait and state [psychosocial traits; cognitive capabilities; attitudes, values, beliefs; state, mood]
media entertainment [experience, knowledge]

Question 7

Popular culture

Answer 7

The core of any culture is a set of attitudes, values, and beliefs that is shaped by a group of people. Culture provides members of the group with norms for their behavior.
Popular culture (or pop culture) is the domain of entertainment products created in mass quantities for a mass audience.
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.

Question 8

Culture Congruence

Answer 8

A nation transmits the values of what is to be appreciated (and what is not) to its members, as part of a continuous and often lifelong socialization process
consumers’ entertainment choices show their personal values, ambitions beliefs, and perceptions of the world and themselves
the ‘culture congruence’ between a movie and the audience influences how much consumers like the movie

Question 9

Preference Zeitgeist

Answer 9

cultural trends can make consumers “ripe” for a product
→ the fit of any entertainment product’s genres and themes with people’s interests and desires may be high or low during certain periods
history provides examples that entertainment can become an embodiment of a certain cultural zeitgeist, capturing and reflecting the lifestyle of a certain period
entertainment products are more attractive in bleaker economic times, despite consumers having less money at their disposal

Question 10

Motivational explanations

Answer 10

Specific preferences lead to selection, as explained by the following set of theories:

Question 11

Escapism

Answer 11

The tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy
escapism attempts to explicate how media, particularly narratives presented through media may provide some sort of transient mental retreat for users who feel uncomfortable in their actual lives and social worlds
this escapism motivation can relate to a person’s immediate social environment, his/her general work and life situation or simply the sense of emptiness that is perceived when there is nothing to do

Question 12

Mood management theory

Answer 12

→ describes that the use of entertainment serves to regulate positive mood states
based on the hedonistic premise that individuals are motivated to experience pleasure and avoid pain, individuals tend to select entertainment in order to maximize or maintain a good mood, and/or diminish or alleviate a bad mood
empirical evidence for mood management exists for music consumption, as well as TV viewing patterns, and for movie preferences

Hedonism → light-hearted entertainment

Question 13

Familiarity

Answer 13

→ refers to a consumer perceiving a sense of connection with an entertainment product and/or its elements and characters
nostalgia involves preferences for things or experiences that were more common when one was younger
the reminiscence bump effect: we recall early-life memories most readily. We like songs, movies and television programs that were popular when we were between 16 and 24
the modern-discrepancy hypothesis: 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 and we are very familiar with

Question 14

Social Cognitive Theory

Answer 14

Children’s behavior is learned by watching what others do and will not do in the environment in which one grows up. By imitating the observed behavior (e.g., family or friends), the observer solidifies that behavior and is rewarded with positive reinforcement (Bandura, 1986)

Question 15

The Bandwagon Effect

Answer 15

A phenomenon whereby the probability of individual adoption increases with respect to the proportion of those who have already done so
Asch (1951) indicate the power of social conformity and normative social influence; the willingness to conform to public opinion to attain social acceptance and/or avoid social exclusion

Question 16

Media Habits

Answer 16

Is a form of automatic and non-conscious media consumption behavior that develops as people repeat frequent media consumption behavior
entertainment media expands and reinforces associations among consumption behaviors and cultural symbols
through these rich networks of associations, infrequent media consumption behaviors (e.g., playing holiday music) may also become habitual

Question 17

Media Addiction

Answer 17

defined as excessive, obsessive and compulsive media use that cannot be controlled despite the negative consequences
↳ interpersonal or emotional
obsessions are thoughts a person cannot stop from having
compulsions are behaviors a person cannot stop inaction

Question 17

Medium

Answer 17

Any means through which sensory impressions are conveyed to an audience
often a combination of technology and medium

Question 17

Media products are intangible

Answer 17

↳ ‘information goods’ - economic offerings that are valued mostly because of the information they carry
because the attributes of the experience dominate consumers’ quality judgments for these products, they are also referred to as ‘experience goods’
⤹
For experience goods such as entertainment products, 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 or she can gain through pre-consumption search

Before experiencing the entertainment product, the label is simply a collection of objective information to identify an entertainment product
Important identifier’s of entertainment product labels:
medium - the means by which it is communicated
title - the name of an entertainment product
category/genre - describes a certain category of entertainment
brand - semantic network of impressions in the consumer’s mind

Question 18

Title

Answer 18

Four aspects of (brand) names can help consumers draw cognitive inferences about the brand and trigger emotional responses, which might then influence consumers’ attitudes and behaviors:
phonetics - certain sounds can trigger reactions
orthography - spelling (unconventional)
morphology - form, shape or structure (font)
semantics - meaning (use a metaphor)

Question 19

Genre

Answer 19

↳ word taken from the french term “type” or “kind”
→ contributes to the organization of the entertainment industry [categorization]
=an abstract concept that describes a certain category of entertainment of art
any genre evokes imagery in users’ semantic network of associations that is activated once they hear that an entertainment product belongs to that genre
the associations help us to make quick judgments regarding what to expect, and whether or not we might like it
genre provide us enough familiarity to generate a sense of comfort and orientation

Question 20

Brand

Answer 20

Entertainment brands can be considered as anything for which cognitive associations are held by consumers or other relevant stakeholders, and that can be managed professionally
key functions - brands:
an “awareness function”, a branch can generate immediate attention
an “image function”, the semantic network of associations surrounding a brand provide the basis for which consumers identify with a brand and differentiate the brand from other products

any built-in awareness from a positive brand association provides crucial competitive advantage, especially for new products
Because the problems consumers have being unable to evaluate the quality of an entertainment prior to experiencing it

Question 21

Association between label and design

Answer 21

Identifier’s of product provide users with indicators of its design
we expect certain entertainment products to have certain design elements
→ ‘the medium is the message’ (McLuhan)
form excludes the content, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas (Postman)
label identifier’s provide the boundaries and set guidelines for the design of the entertainment product
design = combination of interrelated structural, technological and narrative elements that form the language of entertainment
↳ provides a coherent experience to its users

Question 22

Experience

Answer 22

Describes the interaction of the consumer with the design

The experience of any form of entertainment is not possible without our willing suspensions of disbelief:

Willing Suspension of Disbelief
→ justifies the use (and enjoyment) of fantastic or non-realistic elements in fiction
suspension of disbelief is essential for engagement with any kind of fictional narrative (Schaper, 1978)

Question 23

Immersion

Answer 23

indicates the extent to which a medium is capable of delivering an inclusive, extensive and vivid illusion of depicted reality
immersion is largely objective
and independent of the user

Question 24

Presence

Answer 24

is used to describe the degree in which an individual believes to be present in a virtual environment
= the experiential counterpart of immersion
a medium or a product is considered more immersive if a user feels a stronger sense of presence

Question 25

Narrative transportation

Answer 25

= describes a situation in which viewers are so engrossed in the narrative experience, they lose track of the real world for a while
whether or not you experience transportation depends both on the characteristics of the user and the entertainment product

Question 26

Flow (in video games)

Answer 26

= a mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized, focus and full involvement and enjoyment in the process
depends on the characteristics of the entertainment medium and the user
depends on the level of difficulty of the game and the skills of the user
specifically on the skills a user keeps developing to overcome increasingly difficult challenges
→ in order to experience flow in games, the challenges should be constantly adjusted to
the increasing skills of the player
there should be a balance between the skills of the player and the difficulty of the game for him or her to experience flow
if the difficulty is continually matched to the players developing skills, a state of flow can occurs
→ players lose track of time and space and are fully involved and in an energized
state of focus and enjoyment [flow describes both a process & a resulting state]

Question 27

Response to an entertainment experience

Answer 27

↳ during and immediately following the experience
types - responses
cognitive
emotional
physiological

Cognitive responses include all conscious thoughts, beliefs and recollections
Verisimilitude = similar to truth
within fiction, not all fiction is equally believable
verisimilitude entails the notion of appropriateness
→ if something in a film is appropriate within codes or rules of a genre, it is plausible
it does not have to be realistic, but it has to be believable and internally consistent
all functional, fantastic worlds into which we are transported have laws, almost always unwritten laws
when these laws become inconsistent or when they are broken, the violating actions stands out as a disruption of the story
→ becomes a distraction
verisimilitude is related to your cognitive response because it depends on the relationship between your knowledge and what is conveyed through the narrative
verisimilitude also applies to video games

both suspension of disbelief and verisimilitude are essential for a plausible entertainment experience

Difference between suspension of disbelief and verisimilitude:
willing suspension of disbelief is an automatic process
verisimilitude is related to a positive or negative response to elements within that narrative

most common emotional response to entertainment: enjoyment