EntCom week 1 Flashcards
Media Entertainment
Entertainment
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).
Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model - DSMM
(Valkenburg & Peter, 2013)
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
Vorderer, Klimmt, & Ritterfeld (2004) Model Media Entertainment
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
Circular process model
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
Lasswell’s linear model of communication (1948)
who? (speaker) >what? (message) > channel (medium)> whom? (audience) > The Effect
With the updated model we choose
Preference
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]
Popular culture
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.
Culture Congruence
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
Preference Zeitgeist
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
Motivational explanations
Specific preferences lead to selection, as explained by the following set of theories:
Escapism
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
Mood management theory
→ 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
Familiarity
→ 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
Social Cognitive Theory
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)
The Bandwagon Effect
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
Media Habits
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
Media Addiction
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
Medium
Any means through which sensory impressions are conveyed to an audience
often a combination of technology and medium
Media products are intangible
↳ ‘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
Title
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)
Genre
↳ 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
Brand
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
Association between label and design
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
Experience
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)
