Our perceptions of reality may often rely on mass mediated images. Walter Lippmann’s classical work, Public Opinion, first published in 1922, highlighted the possibility that factual features of the world often have little relation to the perception and beliefs that people entertain about the world. Lippmann (1922) argued that the press’s depiction of events was
One of the dominant functions of modern media is entertainment (Zillmann & Vorderer 2000). Moreover, entertainment offerings presented by virtually all mass media seem designed to provide immediate gratification of the diverse hedonic needs of modern media consumers. If entertainment is the primary goal of modern media, why are so many critics concerned that those
As early as 1962, Elihu Katz and David Foulkes wondered why communication researchers had almost exclusively addressed mass media’s persuasive capacities and almost completely neglected its role as an agent of entertainment. Their surprise was caused by the simple observation that the bulk of mass media consumption at that time served entertainment needs – an
Entertainment education is defined as the “process of purposely designing and implementing a media message to both entertain and educate, in order to increase audience members’ knowledge about an educational issue, create favorable attitudes, shift social norms, and change over behavior” (Singhal & Rogers 2004, 5). Parables, fables, and morality plays have been used for