Political Communication at the Interface of Entertainment and Information. The Impact of Eudaimonic Entertainment Experiences on the Processing and Effects of Political Information

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The relationship between entertainment and political communication has been a matter of controversy for many years. Can entertaining forms of political communication be useful to reach audience groups who are less interested in politics? Or do they rather distract audiences from serious consideration of political issues? This project aims to provide a differentiated reassessment of this controversy by testing a dual-process model of the uses and effects of political information in an entertainment context. The proposed model assumes that, on the one hand, entertainment can serve hedonic functions in that it helps individuals to improve their mood and to distract themselves from negative thoughts. In this case, careful consideration of political information is unlikely, because hedonic mood management promotes a superficial, heuristic mode of information processing. On the other hand, recent evidence in entertainment research shows that entertainment consumption can also serve to satisfy eudaimonic needs such as the seeking of truth, meaning, self-development, and cognitive challenge. For example, viewers who feel moved by a movie or a TV program often experience a need to think about the content, to discuss about it with others, or to seek further information about the issue. With regard to political communication, this eudaimonic type of entertainment experience holds particular promise, because it can stimulate cognitive elaboration and communication about the content. Based on a combination of experimental studies and representative audience surveys, the project examines the model's predictions concerning the impact of eudaimonic entertainment factors (personal relevance, low absorption, moderate arousal, negative or mixed affect) on politically relevant outcome variables (cognitive elaboration, information seeking, knowledge acquisition, and political participation). The model is tested with a special focus on TV theme nights---a form of entertaining political communication that combines the advantages of fictional entertainment and fact-based information, thus providing an alternative to widely criticized hybrid formats such as "infotainment" or "politainment."