Why Do We Entertain Ourselves with Media Narratives? a Theory of Resonance Perspective on Entertainment Experiences

Annals of the International Communication Association

ISSN: 2380-8985 (Print) 2380-8977 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rica20

Why do we entertain ourselves with media narratives? A theory of resonance perspective on entertainment experiences

Peter Vorderer & Annabell Halfmann

To cite this article: Peter Vorderer & Annabell Halfmann (2019) Why do we entertain ourselves with media narratives? A theory of resonance perspective on entertainment experiences, Annals of the International Communication Association, 43:2, 79-96, DOI: 10.1080/23808985.2019.1599298 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2019.1599298

Published online: 04 Apr 2019.

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rica20 ANNALS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION 2019, VOL. 43, NO. 2, 79–96 https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2019.1599298

Why do we entertain ourselves with media narratives? A theory of resonance perspective on entertainment experiences

Peter Vorderer and Annabell Halfmann Institute for Media and Communication Studies, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Why do we entertain ourselves with media narratives? Although the most Entertainment; recent answer to this question (Oliver et al., 2018) provides a far more entertainment theory; theory complex understanding of entertainment use compared to earlier of resonance; mass theorizing, it still leaves important questions unanswered. Our primary communication; eudaimonia ambition here is to introduce a new theoretical perspective that may be used to explain entertainment experiences on the basis of the sociological theory of resonance (Rosa, 2018). This theory focusses on genuine, ‘vibrant’ connections individuals can have with others and with the world. Our thesis is that this form of connection resembles what in more recent theories of entertainment is labelled eudaimonic experiences. But while these eudaimonic experiences are often seen as complementing hedonic ones, we propose to categorically distinguish between the two with only regarding the hedonic dimension as entertaining and the eudaimonic one as ‘resonant’ relationship. From this point of view, media narratives are selected either for their impact on a user’saﬀective states or for their potential to provide a user with a resonant connection. This conceptualization not only allows to answer some of the still open questions in entertainment theory but to also include the social and historical context of entertainment use.

Introduction

It is a most intriguing fact in the intellectual history of social research that the choice was made to study the mass media as agents of persuasion rather than as agents of entertainment. (Katz & Foulkes, 1962, p. 378) As much as Katz and Foulkes (1962) statement about the discounting of media users’ entertainment interests applied to communication studies up until the 1960s, this academic field has fundamentally changed within the past 50 some years. The study of the selection, the uses, and the effects of media entertainment began in the 1970s, and has now become a well-established sub-field of our discipline. While Bryant still identified three challenges for communication studies in 2004, with ‘legitimization and advancement of entertainment theory’ (p. 392) being one of them, today there is an abundance of different conceptualizations about how and why media users entertain themselves with those narratives that are provided, for example, by television, movies, books, games, Instagram stories, or others. Some of these conceptualizations focus on a description and interpretation of various forms of media content (e.g. Brown, 2015; Klein, 2013; Livingstone, 2000; Mittell, 2003, 2006; Nelson, 2007) or of a particular situation of exposure (e.g. Acosta-Alzuru, 2010; Gray, 2006; Sturken, 2000; Tarancón, 2012) but a great number of publications are now providing a psychological explanation for processes underlying the experience of being entertained. This is not surprising as those entertainment experiences seem to have become extremely important for many individuals in

CONTACT Peter Vorderer [email protected] © 2019 International Communication Association 80 P. VORDERER AND A. HALFMANN today’s media-saturated world. The time users spend with different media outlets has increased pretty much everywhere in the world: Individuals worldwide are now estimated to spend an average of around 450 min each day using media (Zenith, 2016). No matter whether this time is spent with mass media or with social media, the motivation and the experience to entertain oneself are two of its main drivers (Karnowski & Jandura, 2014; Quinn, 2016; Shade, Kornfield, & Oliver, 2015). Our primary ambition here is not to summarize and systematize entertainment research as part of communication studies but rather to introduce a new and potentially supplemental theoretical frame which may be used to explain entertainment experiences on the basis of the current research. We would like to use this theoretical frame in order to complement already-existing answers to the question why individuals entertain themselves with narratives presented in and by the media. This frame has been developed as a social theory and within sociology by Rosa (2018) who has labelled it ‘resonance.’ We believe that this theory of resonance will allow us to advance the various conceptualizations of entertainment use and effects that have been elaborated in communication studies and media psychology over the past 30 or so years. To this end, we will first very briefly summarize the development of entertainment theory within these fields since the early propositions by Zill- mann, Bryant, Cantor, and their collaborators. We will then reflect on what contemporary communication scholars call ‘self-transcendent media experiences’ (Oliver et al., 2018) and try to identify the most important questions that this conceptualization still leaves unanswered. With the background of these explorations, we will introduce what Rosa (2016) calls resonance as a particular description of the connection individuals may have with others and with the world. This will necessarily lead us to the question whether such a connection can also be experienced when using digital media. To address this question, we will take a brief look at the field of computer-mediated communication (CMC), which has extensively discussed the role of media technology in interpersonal interactions. In our final paragraph, we will try to answer the question whether individuals’ needs, motivation, and ability to entertain themselves with narratives can be better explained by complementing or framing existing psychological theories about the uses and effects of entertainment through a macro-level theory such as Rosa’s.

History of entertainment theory

It was in the 1970s that communication and media psychology scholars started to pay closer attention to the question of why media users spend considerable time with entertainment media such as the then-dominant television. Of course, the debates about the quality of entertainment programmes (e.g. Albert, 1957; Postman, 1985; Schramm, Lyle, & Parker, 1961), about their role and function in a capitalist society, and about the effects such offerings may have on its users started much earlier and took place in various areas of academia (cf., the social theory of the Frankfurt School; Löwenthal, 1980). But the systematic study of theoretically derived hypotheses and their empirical testing was novel and innovative at the time. The research group around Zillmann in particular was interested in the underlying affective processes of media use and started in the 1970s to systematically inves- tigate why and when humour (Cantor, Bryant, & Zillmann, 1974; Zillmann & Bryant, 1974; Zillmann & Cantor, 1972; Zillmann, Bryant, & Cantor, 1974), music (Cantor & Zillmann, 1973), emotional displays on the screen (Zillmann, Mody, & Cantor, 1974), retributions executed by characters in films (Zillmann & Bryant, 1975), suspense (Zillmann, Hay, & Bryant, 1975), or displayed emotions in movies (Zillmann & Cantor, 1976) are enjoyed by the audience. The assumed excitatory and hedonic state of media users and not their cognitions, attitudes, and beliefs were seen as both a primary driver for the respective behaviour (exposure to media content) as well as an affective goal-state that users aspired to achieve. Psychological mechanisms such as ‘excitation transfer’ (Zillmann, 1996) were identified and believed to execute these processes. More comprehensive theories like ‘mood-management theory’ (Zillmann, 1988)or‘affective-disposition theory’ (Zillmann, 1996) were derived in order to determine not only the causes but also the psychological processes and the effects of ANNALS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION 81 such media use. In this respect, the theoretical and empirical work of the Zillmann-group and – in the following years also – the work of their students (e.g. Hoffner, 1995; Knobloch, 2003; Oliver & Arm- strong, 1995; Raney, 2003; Tamborini, 2003) in the United States and that of some others in Europe (e.g. Bente & Fromm, 1997; Bosshart & Macconi, 1998; Klimmt, 2006; Schramm & Wirth, 2008; Trepte, 2008; Vorderer, Wulff, & Friedrichsen, 1996) has in fact tried to explain why individuals use (particularly) electronic media rather as agents of entertainment than as agents of persuasion (for an overview, see Bryant & Vorderer, 2006; Zillmann & Vorderer, 2000). What these conceptualizations certainly have had in common is their consistent focus on media users’ hedonic motivations; that is, their desire to attain pleasure and to avoid pain (Ryan & Deci, 2001) through media use. In the following years, however, the scope of entertainment programmes and the technological possibilities to provide and to use entertaining content have changed significantly. Today, interactive media offerings like video games (Klimmt, Hartmann, & Frey, 2007; Vorderer & Bryant, 2006) and social media like Facebook (Hayes, van Stolk-Cooke, & Muench, 2015; Smock, Ellison, Lampe, & Wohn, 2011) are popular alternatives to traditional forms of media entertainment such as movies or television. And these new forms of media also provide unprecedented ways of using them. ‘Inter- active media use’ has become a buzz word (Rigby & Ryan, 2017) which refers to the fact that an individual user today is often no longer exposed to a given content but – for example when playing a video game – has become a co-creator of this content. Those users are now embedded in a social situation where both interpersonal as well as mass communication are permanently available and where, in contrast to earlier media environments, everything seems to be available, anytime and everywhere (Vorderer, Hefner, Reinecke, & Klimmt, 2018). In addition, the entertainment scholars’ perspective on the psychology of the user has also changed considerably: Beginning in the 1990s, some restrictions of the exclusively hedonic view became apparent. Oliver (1993), for example, discussed what she called the ‘paradox of the enjoyment of sad films’ (p. 315), arguing that the often-found frequent exposure to sad or dramatic content by movie-goers or by the television audience contradicts the assumption that all users are solely guided by hedonic motivations. And Vorderer and Schramm (2004) could show that music was often selected to intensify sad and melancholic moods rather than to overcome them. Also, Kno- bloch (2003) noticed that users do, instead of always optimizing their mood, rather tend to adjust it to situational demands. When these obvious challenges to existing theories like mood-management were first explicated, some scholars explained these contradictory behaviours by extending their hedonic view. Zillmann (2000), for example, suggested that users might forego immediate pleasure in order to receive greater delayed hedonic gratifications. Bartsch, Vorderer, Mangold, and Viehoff (2008) provided a different explanation, arguing that users may cognitively reappraise their own negative emotional reactions (e.g. sadness) to media stimuli with regard to goal-relevance, so that their response rather than the media content is (re-)appraised, resulting in positive ‘meta-emotions’ (e.g. being proud of being able to experience a negative emotion; see also Wirth & Schramm, 2007). All of these attempts to take apparently contradictory behaviours into account, however, were still based on the understanding that media users are first and foremost pleasure-seekers (Vorderer, Klimmt, & Ritterfeld, 2004) and thereby guided mainly by their hedonic motivations. What seemed to have become obvious in the years following the phase when entertainment research has established itself between the 1980s and 2000, is a new focus on the entertainment experience itself. Instead of conceptualizing it rather mechanically (where a specific content is mainly selected because it is thought to be able to lead to specifichedonicreac- tions), media users’ responses to entertainment content were now seen to be more and more complex, multifaceted, nuanced, maybe even contradictory at first sight, and certainly not exclusively positive (Oliver, 2008). This rather paradigmatic shift ‘from mood to meaning’ (Vorderer & Reinecke, 2015, p. 449) may be reflected best in what became known as ‘two- factor models of entertainment.’ These models have tried to complement the traditional 82 P. VORDERER AND A. HALFMANN concept of entertainment as pleasure (with its emphasis on enjoyment at the core of the entertainment experience) with a second dimension, called ‘appreciation’ (Oliver, 2008; Oliver & Bartsch, 2010; Oliver & Raney, 2011). Appreciation as this second dimension has, however, also been conceptualized in two different ways. The first approach suggests that users appreciate specific forms of entertainment that create ‘moving and thought-provoking experiences’ (Oliver & Bartsch, 2010, p. 65) and are therefore perceived by the audience as meaningful. The argument here is that media users are highly interested in searching for and pondering ‘life’s meaning, truths, and purposes’ (Oliver & Raney, 2011, p. 985). This assumption is closely related to the concept of eudaimonic happiness, which refers to individuals’ opportunity of self-realization (Waterman, 1993). In addition, appreciation differs from pleasure-seeking entertainment experiences in terms of its cognitive processing: In contrast to the former, the process of meaning-making requires higher levels of cognitive effort (Bartsch & Hart- mann, 2017). The second approach assumes that the fulfilment of three fundamental needs contributes to appreciation (Tamborini, Bowman, Eden, Grizzard, & Organ, 2010; Tamborini et al., 2011; Vorderer & Ritterfeld, 2009). This argument is based on self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), which posits that individuals are constantly seeking to satisfy their fundamental needs for autonomy, com- petence, and relatedness in their everyday lives. Vorderer (2011) argues that entertainment media are ‘just one, albeit a very prominent and easy-to-realize, tool that can and often is used to partially satisfy these needs’ (p. 61). Hence, both perspectives share the assumption that in addition to seeking pleasure, media entertainment users also aspire to search for truth and for the satisfaction of their most fundamental needs. The fact that many of the more recently developed and today highly popular TV series and stories tend to be much more complex in their causal structure compared to earlier ones (Schlütz, 2016) also supports this notion of a new, maybe more demanding or exigent interest of the audience. To sum up, in the past 50 some years, researchers have given different answers to the question why individuals entertain themselves with media narratives. Beginning with an exclusive focus on individuals’ hedonic motivation to experience pleasure, researchers widened their perspective in the following to include the desires for truth and need satisfaction (i.e. appreciation) as motivational drivers. This shift was necessary for researchers to be able to explain users’ complex and seemingly contradictory responses to entertainment content (e.g. sad films).

State-of-the-art in entertainment theory: self-transcendent media experiences

This new perspective on entertainment experiences has most recently been elaborated again by Oliver and her colleagues (2018) by focusing particularly on media content that provides its users with opportunities for ‘meaningful, contemplative, and moving experiences’ (p. 381). They define meaningful media not by genre or by specific features of the content, nor by the structure or form of this content but – again – rather by its potential to elicit specific reactions. Hence, it is the subjective and individual responses instead of the media (content) itself that determine such meaningful media experiences. There are a few similarities that these experiences seem to share. First, they appear to be elicited by intrinsic motivations, which can be best explained by self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Second, the level of cognitive or effortful processing when dealing with them seems to be rather high, which means that it corresponds more with what is known as the central route or systematic processing than the peripheral route or heuristic processing (e.g. Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Third, this kind of experience is characterized by mixed and more complex affects and emotions, such as sadness, grief, being touched, moved, poignant, bittersweet, and others. Oliver et al. (2018) point out that these responses may be seen as primarily inward-driven and inward-oriented experiences and gratifications and they claim that these experiences reflect what they call ‘self-transcendence.’ This self-transcendence pertains to ‘universality and connectedness, ANNALS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION 83 moral virtue, and spirituality’ (Oliver et al., 2018, p. 381). Its common themes are often portrayals of such moral virtue, displays of the human condition, and of purpose in life, which is why they can promote concepts that go beyond the individual and feature ‘the interconnectedness between the self, nature, or the universe’ (Oliver et al., 2018, p. 383). Hence, self-transcendence refers to subjective experiences of meaningfulness, which the authors believe is broader than spirituality or religion, and certainly more fundamental than personal benefit or ego. Instead, it may be displayed in the furtherance of some greater cause or in the service to others, both of which refer to identification beyond the personal ego. Applied to exposure to media content, self-transcendent media experiences arise

as viewers, readers, and players recognize in themselves elements of shared humanity (beyond service or sacrifice for a particular cause or community) and the potential for moral beauty, humility, courage, and hope. They provide awareness of and insight into the beauty and tragedy of the human condition; elevate receivers from their mundane concerns; and increase interconnectedness with others, with our surroundings, and with causes beyond ourselves. (Oliver et al., 2018, p. 384) Self-transcendent media experiences then seem to involve one or more of the following elements: A sense of interconnectedness as something that is larger than one’s self-interested concerns, the witnessing of exceptional acts of moral beauty or virtue, such as in acts of kindness, compassion, or love, where media users may feel elevated to understand a good that is larger and more enduring than they are themselves (which again may lead to heightened motivations for altruism), and some spirituality as a striving for and experiencing of unity with oneself, others, nature, and the transcendent. For a further understanding of these psychological processes and for their usefulness in explaining media-related behaviour, it seems helpful to clarify whether these experiences are primarily conceptualized as emotions, motivations, or values. It is also not yet clear whether and how they differ from religious experiences. In addition to these two open questions, Oliver and her colleagues (2018)themselvesexplicatetwomore,whichtheyseetobedifficult to answer given the current status of this theoretical concept: Why are the media (e.g. television) filled with hostile and banal content, if users are eager to primarily make such self-transcendent media experiences? And how much meaningful media can or will a person consume? Or more simply put: How much is ‘enough’? One further desideratum relates to the lack of social and historical context of these conceptualizations. The functioning of the human mind is here conceptualized as relatively context-free. In other words, these assumptions are solely based on some psychological understanding of individual processes, which appear within a social vacuum, independent from societal and historical developments. They are not explained by the existence of external factors, both facilitating and inhibiting, that may impact individuals socially and historically. While this may be said about most psychological explanations, in the case of media users’ dealing with entertainment this could be a more serious problem because of the significant changes that have taken place more recently – changes that apply to entertainment programming, which is used differently nowadays than it was just a few years ago, let alone in comparison to the pre-digital era (Bosshart & Macconi, 1998; Winterhoff-Spurk, 1989), but also in respect to the way audiences entertain themselves with these programmes today, for example, by using their mobile devices that provide entertainment content everywhere and anytime (Klimmt, Hefner, Reinecke, Rieger, & Vor- derer, 2018). And while the nature of human beings will certainly not change rapidly, the social circumstances, in which these individuals live, may in fact do so. Without assuming that human behaviour and individual experiences that media users can make are a direct effect of social change, it seems to be plausible to also explore theories about social dynamics in order to derive hypotheses on how these social changes will eventually also lead to individual changes, both in terms of human behaviour (media use) and of human motivation and experience (of entertaining content). 84 P. VORDERER AND A. HALFMANN

A theory of resonance Social dynamics in late-modern societies

A potentially fruitful perspective to explain such social dynamics has been developed within more recent approaches in social theory, where authors like Reckwitz (2017) or Rosa (2003, 2012, 2016, 2018) have tried to describe social processes and dynamics in late-modern societies (i.e. approxi- mately since the 1980s). According to Rosa (2005), such late-modern societies are characterized by a logic of ‘escalatory acceleration,’ which means that in order to sustain and survive, they permanently need to reproduce their institutional structures by applying a mode of growth and innovation. Individuals are subscribed to this logic ‘through the endless accumulation of economic, cultural, social and bodily capital’ (Rosa, 2018, p. 40). But this social allocation of resources is necessarily regu- lated through competition and hence, life in such late-modern societies has become extremely dyna- mised and therefore excessively challenging for individuals. Driven by the modern (and probably dominantly western) promise of freedom and happiness, these individuals are constantly bound to improve their potential and their resources by expanding their freedoms and rights, their economic means, their cultural capacities and knowledge, their social networks, their social status, and their recognition and health. The resulting ‘logic of competition’ (Rosa, 2018, p. 42) simultaneously breeds a permanent fear of losing out, as resources never seem to be sufficient for the challenges individuals are experiencing or anticipating. This struggle stands in contrasting juxtaposition to modern individuals’ attempt to improve the quality of their lives. For Rosa (2018), such quality of life is primarily determined by the relation individuals have with others and with the world: ‘In the end, we hope, we will arrive at a form of life that turns the world into a living, breathing, speaking, responsive, “enchanted” world’ (p. 45). But the ‘disenchanted world’ Max Weber (1958) had described as early as 1918 nowadays provides only few opportunities for this connection. Therefore, more and more often it lets individuals compromise with only increasing the ‘scope and horizon of the available, attainable, and accessible, and [lets them end up] collecting resources into an end in itself’ (Rosa, 2018, p. 45). Collecting (instead of experiencing) songs, pictures, or any kind of display or art in general seems to be a common practice today and to be permanently online and/or connected to others (Vorderer et al., 2018) has become the most recent and extremely popular strategy for increasing one’s range. Accordingly, researchers have addressed the question whether a high number of Facebook friends (e.g. Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007; Kim & Lee, 2011) or Twitter followers (Bakshy, Hofman, Mason, & Watts, 2011) supports media users’ social capital or ‘influence.’ Furthermore, a number of studies suggest that users tend to present themselves in social network services like Facebook in an optimized and socially desirable way (e.g. Kim & Lee, 2011; Zhao, Grasmuck, & Martin, 2008; for an overview, see Toma, 2017). It seems likely that the logic of competition described by Rosa (2018) underlies such usage patterns. According to Rosa (2018), the problem, however, is that ‘the good life’ is not at all a matter of scope and reach but still a way of qualitatively relating to the world and to others.

Resonance as answer to alienation

Rosa (2018) calls this connection ‘resonance’ and defines it as ‘a mode of relating to the world in which the subject feels touched, moved or addressed by the people, places, objects, etc. he or she encounters’ (pp. 46–47). Laughing and crying would therefore be typical expressions of resonance (Rosa, 2016, p. 136). What is necessary for resonance to occur in general are individual responses to these approaches by the world, be they physiological (e.g. goose bumps when listening to music or reading a book) or reflexive ones (e.g. contemplating one’s life when watching a movie). These experiences, Rosa (2018) argues, lead to the development of intrinsic interests in that aspect of the world, individuals are affected by. Therefore, resonance is actually a ‘dual movement of “af<-fection” (something touches the individual from the outside) and “e->motion” (they answer ANNALS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION 85 by giving a response and thus by establishing a connection)’ (Rosa, 2018, p. 47). Whether and how individuals are capable of responding to the world around them is of course dependent on their previous experiences with reaching out and responding to this specific domain of life. But as they connect, these individuals do not only transform the world but also themselves, because neither the world nor the individual will be identical to what they were before this moment of resonance. And while the specificeffects these encounters may have are beyond the control of the individual who has initiated them, a sense of ‘self-efficacy is experienced when we realize that we are capable of actually reaching out to and affecting others, that they truly listen and connect to us and answer in turn’ (Rosa, 2018, p. 47). Although resonance cannot be initiated and deliberatively controlled by the individual, there are of course prerequisites for it to occur. One is the subjects’ willingness and openness not only to be touched but also to be transformed in a way that they cannot predict. This implies subjects’ readiness to make themselves vulnerable, which is particularly unlikely in situations of conflict, fear, or stress but also in any kind of instrumental situation. Given that subjects in late-modern societies are usually following the ubiquitous logic of competition by performing rather instrumentally in order to constantly improve their potential and their resources, it becomes clear that such openness to be touched in one’s daily life has become rather the exception than the rule. In this light, the above-described various options of using media to broaden one’s range, the fear of missing out on something which many users experience when they do not engage in CMC for a certain period (Przybylski, Mur- ayama, DeHaan, & Gladwell, 2013; Reinecke et al., 2017), and ‘digital stress’ resulting from permanent connectedness (for an overview, see Hefner & Vorderer, 2017) reduce media users’ chance of experiencing resonance. Furthermore, Rosa (2016) notes that media users tend to look at their smartphone display whenever they have spare time (e.g. while standing in a queue or waiting for a bus) which, in his view, makes them unresponsive for any approaches by the individuals and the world around them (pp. 495–495). Another prerequisite for experiencing such connection to the world would be the existence of what Rosa (2018) calls ‘axes of resonance’ (p. 49), along which individuals can find the described two-way relationships. These axes, which are individually established in a subject’s ontogenetic development, are either ‘social,’ where they connect an individual to other subjects, or they are ‘material,’ where there is a relationship between the individual and specific objects, such as art or tools, which one uses. Or, finally, the axes are called ‘existential,’ when an experienced connection with abstract entities is meant, such as the connection to life in general, to one’s own existence, to religion, to nature, to the universe, to history, but also to art as such. All of this points to the specific ‘proportional relationship’ between the mind of the individual and the ‘world’ he or she is connected with: The perception and experience of this world through an individual cannot be in complete congruence with the mindset of the individual. Instead, it requires some difference and opposition, sometimes even contradiction, in order to allow and trigger self-transformation. If the mindset of the individual and the world out there were identical, the human response would simply be an echo, something behaviourists used to call a simple ‘reaction’ to a specific stimulus. At the same time, if there is too much dissonance because the perceived world is in complete disagreement with what the individual knows and is used to experience, likewise there is no possibility for appropriation. The world out there and the individual cannot at all connect and the world is only experienced as repulsive. ‘Resonance, then, is a condition between con- sonance and irrevocable dissonance’ (Rosa, 2018, p. 48). This part-incongruence between a perceiver and a perceived object could also be described as a medium level of novelty, familiarity, predictability, and surprise an object provides for an individual. And such a medium level has been identified as a core element of individuals’ appreciation of art: According to the ‘New Experimental Aesthetics’ (Berlyne, 1974; Cupchik, 1986), viewers do not enjoy objects of art that are too novel, familiar, and predictable, nor do they enjoy those that are not novel, familiar, and predictable enough. Groeben and Vorderer (1988) have applied and extended this notion to explain readers’ interest and appreciation of literary texts. According to their ‘theory of 86 P. VORDERER AND A. HALFMANN reducible uncertainty,’ it is this partly (but not complete) unfamiliarity with a text that attracts readers because it best allows them to reduce the complexity of a text through cognitive processing and understanding. This is what contributes to their enjoyment and appreciation of literary texts. Those literary texts that are too unfamiliar and novel for readers as well as those that are too familiar and well-known to them fail to attract as there is either not enough or too much complexity to be reduced through reading (Groeben & Vorderer, 1988). These elaborations aim at structural features in relationships between individuals and the world. When applied to (other) media as part of this world, in particular to computer-based digital devices, the question arises as to whether new technologies are in principle capable of enabling their users to connect in such a way with other individuals, with nature, with art, or with history. Prior theorizing and research in the field of CMC may help to answer this question because it has discussed how media technology shapes interpersonal interactions. We will therefore first discuss whether and how resonance is possible during CMC, before we subsequently turn to (mass media) narratives. Rosa (2018) is rather sceptical about this possibility. Although he concedes that smartphones are not necessarily inherently incapable of such a connection, he argues that in late modern societies with their conflagrant competitiveness there certainly is a real if not even high probability that new technologies – despite their declared promises – disconnect the individual from the world. The result of this disconnection would be an individual who cannot even feel, sense, or hear him- or herself anymore (Rosa, 2018, p. 716). What is communication studies’ answer to this question? Does the more recent theorizing both in communication studies as well as in media psychology support this claim?

Is resonance possible in computer-mediated communication?

We use the example of CMC to discuss whether resonance is also possible when using digital media for two reasons. First, experiencing a momentary connection to others appears most likely during CMC. Second, CMC research has addressed the question of how the affordances (i.e. action possibilities) of media technology influence interpersonal interactions (e.g. Fox & McEwan, 2017; Sundar & Limperos, 2013; Sutcliffe, Gonzalez, Binder, & Nevarez, 2011; Wellman et al., 2003). In the following, we therefore discuss the most obvious differences between a user who encounters and so is possibly connected to another person in a face-to-face (FTF) situation rather than a CMC situation. To this end, we follow Rosa’s(2018)definition of resonance as ‘a mode of relating to the world in which the subject feels touched, moved or addressed by the people, places, objects, etc. he or she encounters’ (p. 46–47) and specify it as a situational experience that may or may not occur while interacting with others. Further, we first split the range of possibilities of communication into mediated interpersonal communication on one hand and mass communication on the other. While we begin with mediated interpersonal communication, which will be checked first for its capability to allow resonance, we will subsequently address the possibilities of mass communication to allow users to experience resonance, since mass media still serve as the principal means of entertainment. Five rather basic differences between FTF communication and CMC immediately come to mind. First, individuals commonly use a number of different sensory channels to perceive one another during co-present interaction: The person can usually see, hear, sometimes smell, and sometimes even touch the other person. In CMC, in contrast, this person can only hear and/or see the other person (see affordance of ‘modality’; Sundar & Limperos, 2013). This difference is fundamental, and sparked the development of theories of interpersonal communication and CMC (for an overview, see Walther, 2011). Second, in a FTF situation with only two individuals involved, each of them is aware of the fact that their communication partner is devoting his or her attention exclusively to oneself. When in CMC, in contrast, the same individual never knows whether the partner is simultaneously communicating or interacting with another person. FTF communication therefore seems to be more exclusive than CMC. Teleconferencing in that sense is a hybrid of FTF and CMC as it allows control of the partner’s actions, at least to some extent. And ‘phubbing’ (Chotpitayasunondh ANNALS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION 87

& Douglas, 2016) is a combination of the two as it describes CMC with one person while actually being in a FTF situation with another person. Third, in a FTF situation, a response to a partner’s expression is usually immediate (if not, the non-immediacy is noted) while in CMC individuals can take their time to respond without the partner noticing how long (see affordance of ‘conversational control’; Fox & McEwan, 2017). Of course, the latest developed technologies for using social media provide means to become (more) aware and informed of this (non-)immediacy (through, e.g. the so-called ‘seen-function’), and these technological capabilities do in fact have an impact on the communica- tors’ affective responses (see Mai, Freudenthaler, Schneider, & Vorderer, 2015). But while thereby the distinction between FTF and CMC may diminish, the difference in experiencing it still exists. Fourth, while there are social rules for when and where FTF communications might take place and where they are seen to be more or less appropriate, CMC is possible and seems to be accepted in almost any social situation. Five, a feature that still distinguishes between FTF and CMC is the editability of a conversation: In FTF, the message is out when it’s spoken (or otherwise expressed) and can only be modified afterwards (through an explanation, an apology, an affirmation or the like), while in CMC a message can be arbitrarily checked and altered before sending it out (see affordance of ‘editability’; Fox & McEwan, 2017). What does this mean for the possibility of experiencing resonance through mediated communication? First, a connection to another person that corresponds to what Rosa (2016) calls resonance should be more easily possible (although it is never certain and cannot be planned) in a FTF situation than through CMC, because in such FTF situations the communication partner will usually be experienced more comprehensively. However, the difference between the two forms of communication is not absolute: The more additional sensory channels are added to CMC, the more such conversations may be experienced as rich and similar to a FTF communication. Furthermore, individuals may use language cues (e.g. emoticons, language styles) to cognitively reconstruct some of the missing physical cues during CMC. Social information processing theory (Walther, Van Der Heide, Ramirez, Burgoon, & Peña, 2015) presumes that ‘individuals translate their social message encoding and decoding into verbal behaviour when, as in CMC, nonverbal cues are unavailable, and that in doing so they can achieve as much impression development and relational depth as do people communicating FtF’ (p. 8). Following Walther’s(1996) hyperpersonal model, CMC even allows for stronger impressions and relational states than FTF encounters. One of the reasons for this is that individuals who engage in CMC tend to exaggerate their perceptions of the message sender. Previous research supports these assumptions, for example, by showing that CMC enables higher relationship intimacy than FTF encounters (Jiang, Bazarova, & Hancock, 2011) and that individuals tend to make gender inferences based on language styles (Spottswood, Walther, Holmstrom, & Ellison, 2013). Nevertheless, it remains unclear to what extent individuals can cognitively ‘fill in the blanks’ during CMC, and whether reconstructed physical cues have the same potential to facilitate resonance as directly perceived cues. Second, it appears that in CMC a resonant connection to another person is rather unlikely as the individual can never be certain if they are the exclusive communication partner for the other person. Such exclusivity, however, seems to be necessary to feel ‘addressed’ or ‘meant by’ this other person, which is what an individual needs in order to make a connection. Third, immediacy should impact a communication similarly, which means that in FTF situations, two partners can more easily feel that they are connected than in CMC. This is because in CMC a possible and more likely delayed response from one partner keeps the other partner from feeling connected. Instead, this partner suffers from the lack of immediate response (see Mai et al., 2015) and this naturally will impede the emergence of resonance. Fourth, in respect to the variety of different social situations, in which communication can take place, CMC should have an advantage, given that compared to FTF it can take place even if either or both of the communication partners are embedded in any of a variety of social situations. Hence, there is a greater chance for resonance to occur, if only because the communication partners are set in a particularly relaxed or personally meaningful situation, which allows them, for example, to distance themselves from daily hassles. Five, edibility of a message, which comes along as a feature of 88 P. VORDERER AND A. HALFMANN

CMC, should tend to be a hindrance rather than a facilitator of resonance. A sentence that is uttered spontaneously can certainly be offensive to the listener at times (see above) but most likely is always seen by him or her as a statement that is directed exclusively to them, and this is exactly what is – among other things – needed to experience resonance. An expression, which appears to be carefully edited by a sender, in contrast, instead looks to be aloof and less personal, and therefore should prevent resonance to emerge. Based on this certainly non-exhaustive (and still oversimplifying) contrasting juxtaposition between FTF and CMC it should become clear that new technologies and new ways to access and experience media content do not categorically prevent but make the occurrence of resonance even less likely. Media users under specific conditions may in fact feel connected to other individuals and to the world through the use of electronic media, but such a connection will certainly be more difficult to realize and therefore also scarcer. The question remains whether a resonant connection will also be more or less easily established and felt towards fictional characters and entities in (mass media) narratives. In other words: Is ‘resonance’ just another construct that helps to describe what happens when media users expose themselves to entertaining narratives?

Resonance and entertainment How do users experience media narratives?

As much potential as the theory of resonance (Rosa, 2016) may have for our proposition here, there is no doubt that it needs some specification when it is to be used to explain the psychological processes underlying media users’ exposure to entertainment content. Of course, such an application has never been the intention of Rosa or of other sociologists (e.g. Reckwitz, 2017) who are more generally interested in describing and explaining the social dynamics of late-modern societies and only casually derive further hypotheses about the motivations, processes, and the impact of media use. Communi- cation scholars, however, do have such interests and therefore have already developed theoretical models that are meant to describe and explain in more detail what media users experience when exposed to entertainment content in general and to fictional narratives in particular. Such models have often been applied to particular media systems and to various forms of content but also to different characteristics of their users. Theoretical concepts like ‘identification’ (Cohen, 2006; Klimmt, Hefner, & Vorderer, 2009; Oatley, 1994)or‘transportation’ (Green & Brock, 2000) as well as the model of ‘temporarily expanding the boundaries of the self’ (Slater, Johnson, Cohen, Comello, & Ewoldsen, 2014) may serve as distinct examples. At the core of these theoretical models usually lies the question, what exactly happens with the mind of a user when exposed to a narrative: Are readers (listeners, onlookers, etc.), for example, identifying with fictional protagonists (Cohen, 2006; Oatley, 1994) or do they instead feel transported (Green & Brock, 2000) to a situation that is portrayed in a narrative and observe the ongoing events from a close-by point of view? Do they feel empathy with the emotions of film characters (Zill- mann, 1991) or do they instead think and feel as if they were themselves these characters or avatars in a video game (Klimmt et al., 2009)? Of course, behind all of these questions lie the more fundamental ones: What is it that media users are looking for? Why do they entertain themselves with narratives provided by the media? Not surprisingly, Rosa’s(2016) own answer to why individuals populate museums and movie thea- tres and what makes them read poetry and drama refers to the possibility of trying out all kinds of different relationships with the world. They can, so he argues, for example, practice loneliness and desertion, melancholy and connectedness, but also exuberance, rage and anger, hatred or love, and they will thereby moderate and modify their individual relatedness to the world. Rosa (2016) speaks of ‘aesthetic resonance’ that serves as a testing ground for the possible adoption of different relations one might have to the world (p. 483). In this perspective, media users do not identify with protagonists or feel empathetic with them in order to manage their moods, but instead ANNALS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION 89 expose themselves to narratives because this helps them to come to terms with themselves and with their relationships with others and the world. If these relationships are vibrant in a sense that there is dual movement of ‘af<-fection’ (the media user is touched by the narrative) and ‘e->motion’ (the user responds to this and thereby establishes a connection), Rosa (2018) speaks of resonance and assumes that this is experienced by the individual as ‘beauty’ (p. 47). Beauty therefore is an expression of a resonant relationship, and individuals who momentarily experience such a relationship (can) feel happiness. However, this happiness does only relate to a very specific moment and not to the individual’s entire circumstances of life, which naturally include all kinds of different relationships with others and the world. Therefore, every experience of happiness in a situation like this is both real and simultaneously mere appearance. The very experience of resonance in a particular moment also activates a sense of alienation, since resonance is only applied to a detail, and is surrounded by a world that remains silent. This compound experience goes along with or will necessarily lead to the individual feeling of sadness and longing (for a resonant connection within this world of alienation) and often finds expression in tears (Rosa, 2016, p. 487). Following Menke (2013), Rosa (2016) states that there is no beauty without a simultaneous experience of both happiness and sadness (p. 482). Interestingly, this conceptualization of aesthetic resonance does in fact match with one of the characteristics of self-transcendent media experiences elaborated by Oliver and her colleagues (2018). According to their recent paper, a self-transcendent media experience is characterized by mixed and more complex affects and emotions, such as sadness, grief, being touched, moved, poignant, bittersweet, and others. It is also interesting to note that resonance appears here as a result of a psychological activity that is directed toward an individual’s present and future as he or she would cognitively and affectively try out, rehearse, or practice actions and experiences that may be possible in the future. But of course, resonance can also occur as a result of relating to one’s past. This would be the case if a media user follows a narrative that reminds him or her of an episode, a sensation or a feeling in one’s own history and allows him or her to experience it again. Rosa (2016) speaks of ‘biographic experiences of resonance’ and points to the fact that these episodes would of course also need to (appear to) ‘speak for themselves,’ that is, that the user needs to feel approached and ‘meant by’ them in order to categor- ize them as resonance (p. 506).

Does resonance correspond to entertainment experiences?

Based on these observations, it would seem plausible – at least at first sight – to equate the experience of resonance with what communication scholars have described as the entertainment experience. Following this line of reasoning, exposure to all sorts of fictional media content could potentially lead to experiences of resonance, that is, to a sense that the user feels momentarily connected to others and/or to the world because this world would somehow ‘speak’ to him or her. As – according to Rosa – this connectedness is what everybody is essentially longing for in the disenchanted world of late modernity, it would also become plausible why so many media users seek to expose themselves to entertainment content so often. But do entertainment users really feel connected and addressed or ‘meant’? Do they experience resonance when they watch a funny movie, follow a slapstick comedy, listen to a joke on the radio, or when they are amused by an Instagram story? We believe that a distinction has to be made here between what used to be called hedonic on the one hand and eudaimonic experiences on the other, with the term entertainment or entertaining only referring to the hedonic dimension and the term aesthetic experience to the other dimension. Of course, we do not intend to rely on or revitalize traditional distinctions between art and popular culture, between high- and low-brow or whatever labelling has been used to dichotomize not only different cultural products but also different cultural practices and users (Bourdieu, 1982; Löwenthal, 1980). Particularly in the context of reading fiction, it has been demonstrated that both hedonic and eudaimonic experiences can result from all sorts of texts, and that these texts (like other cultural 90 P. VORDERER AND A. HALFMANN products) do not determine how readers deal with them (Groeben, 1980, 1982; Groeben & Vorderer, 1988). But we do propose categorizing self-transcendent media experiences as aesthetic, and setting them in contrast to hedonic ones. This does, however, not imply that there would always be a sharp and clear-cut distinction between the two. In all likelihood, there are manifold and probably countless combinations of the two possible, probably in the form of concrete entertainment experiences that combine both hedonic and eudaimonic dimensions. But we would juxtapose the two models (of following a media narrative) and thereby help to better understand the psychological processes underlying each of them. There are three main advantages for such a distinction. First, it will allow explaining eudaimonic or self-transcendent media experiences through an application of Rosa’s theory of resonance, and that means that it would put this phenomenon into a socio-historical context. The theory of resonance has explicitly been developed to describe the human condition in late modernity. It argues historically and derives the assumed need for and the experience of resonance based on a description and analy- sis of late-modern societies not only as disenchanted but also as extremely dynamic and therefore demanding, where individuals’ needs to instrumentally pursue their own goals have become omni- present and necessary to remain a given social status. If alienation is the problem, then maybe resonance is the solution; so described Rosa (2016) his intention to elaborate this social theory. To use and to apply the theory of resonance in the context of exposure to media narratives therefore does not only help to understand why media users particularly seek aesthetic experiences in our times. It also offers an explanation as to why they do it so often and in so many different ways and why they are hardly ever be satisfied by it in the long term. Current patterns of entertainment use, such as the phenomenon of binge-watching (i.e. watching multiple episodes of a series in one sitting; Shim & Kim, 2018), may thus be explained by individuals’ needs to escape states of alienation and their simultaneous and almost desperate (though mostly unsuccessful) attempt to experience resonance. Second, the distinction between aesthetic and entertaining experiences also helps to explain why exposure to media narratives may, but often does not, have a significant or even long-lasting impact on their users. Rosa (2016, p. 478) calls the aesthetic resonance a precarious liaison between two dis- crete, sometimes contradictory, often diverging and self-transforming voices. This corresponds very well with what Oliver and her colleagues (2018) have named self-transcendent media experiences and has usually little to do with the enjoyment of watching a big-screen science-fiction movie with special effects or a lachrymose tear-jerker. What happens to a user in the latter case is what Rosa (2016) describes as only sensually overwhelming or sentimentally stirring, respectively (p. 479). He follows Plessner (1941) in describing this as an affect, which is only concerned with the viewers themselves, who merely respond to their own affects. In these cases, users are not exis- tentially approached by another voice but they are primarily motivated by their mere intention to be touched by a narrative (e.g. because access to the movie was cost-intensive and now needs to pay off). In addition, media users might experience comedies or political satire programmes (e.g. The Daily Show) as entertaining, because they make them laugh. However, laughter can be free of resonance. Rosa (2016) argues that whereas crying is an emotional reaction, laughing can be understood as intellectual reaction to cognitive stimuli and therefore does not necessarily cause the feeling of being touched. Cynically laughing about a political joke, for example, might often be rooted in an individual’s feelings of despair and alienation, rather than in a resonant experience (Rosa, 2016, p. 136, 375). Hence, such reactions represent short-term enjoyment and differ from media users’ tears of joy or sadness when experiencing aesthetic resonance. Third, the categorical juxtaposing of these two kinds of experiences and the description and elaboration of aesthetic or resonant experiences (when exposed to narratives) allows to account for what Oliver (1993) termed the paradox of the enjoyment of sad films, which might not be a paradox after all. Rosa (2016) argues that this apparently dual structure of affect can coherently be described as ‘resonance of alienation’ (‘Entfremdungsresonanz,’ translation by the authors), which frequently occurs in contexts of aesthetic resonance (p. 487): A user who is exposed to a narrative may feel sadness as he or she becomes aware of the prevailing alienation in a society that is dominated by ANNALS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION 91 the logic of ‘escalatory acceleration.’ And this is possible only because through this narrative he or she simultaneously experiences a connection to others and/or the world (resonance), which appears to be capable of overcoming this alienation, albeit only momentarily. The dual structure of affect in this aesthetic relationship (with the world) can also be described as ‘pleasurable pain’ or ‘painful pleasure’ (Rosa, 2016, p. 487; translation by authors), and it may manifest itself in a user’s shedding tears during such moments.

Conclusions

Based on these elaborations, we argue that Rosa’s(2016) theory of resonance can be very helpful for answering why individuals like to turn to narratives provided by the media. The short answer is two- fold: Media users frequently and regularly expose themselves to narratives because they either seek some easy-to-achieve, always and anywhere available mood-enhancing pleasure, which supports their hedonic motivations and interests in a number of different situations, and which otherwise (i.e. if not used excessively) has rarely any consequences that would be relevant beyond a given moment. Or – and this marks media users’ second option – they suffer from the logic of ‘escalatory acceleration’ in late modern, alienated societies, which regularly makes them long for non-instrumental connections to others and the world, for moments of resonance, where the world seems to ‘speak to them’ and where they respond and thereby are transformed. At first sight, such experiences of aesthetic resonance through media narratives are similar to what Oliver et al. (2018) have labelled ‘self-transcendent media experiences’, although the latter describe a rather specific experience while the former can be related and applied to a great number of different experiences. Based on the theory of resonance (Rosa, 2016), the still unanswered questions explicated above can now be answered as well: Aesthetic experiences that individuals experience while being exposed to media content are considered to be neither emotions nor motivations or values. They rather stand for a more complex psychological state that encompasses all of these dimensions. We believe that media users seek and select narratives in order to experience such a state of mind. These experiences are in fact structurally comparable to religious experiences, since from the perspective of the theory of resonance all of these experiences specify a (felt) connection an individual can momentarily establish with others and with the world. In the case of religious experiences, Rosa (2016) speaks of vertical resonance and reckons the connection an individual may have with God or any higher authority, respectively. When reading a book or following a narrative in a film, it is the connection with one or several of the characters and possibly also with oneself, either with the current or future self, or with an older self, which helps the user to momentarily overcome alienation. Nevertheless, the media is still filled with hostile and banal content because not everybody seeks the experience of aesthetic resonance, and certainly not all the time. In many, even in most situations, media users simply try to withstand the escalatory logic of the societies in which they are embedded. Hedonic entertainment experiences are one of several, albeit a rather prominent and easy-to-realize strategy that help individuals get along. Of course, this strategy doesn’t change the conditions under which individuals live and therefore will not be able to ultimately satisfy their needs. But it helps in the short term, although it may undermine their long-term goals. The question, however, of how much meaningful media a person can or will consume (‘how much is enough?’) cannot be answered easily. But we may assume that different individuals will satisfy their ubiquitous need for resonance in very different ways (e.g. by being in nature, through praying, while reading, with music, etc.) and according to their individual biography. And based on Rosa’s(2016) theory, we can hypothesize that both this need and this longing become stronger as the instrumen- tality of relationships in late modern societies continuously increases. At the same time and for the same reasons, individuals will do everything to (or at least try to) widen their possibilities for a ‘good life’ by instrumentally adding possible opportunities that appear to help in this respect. Rosa (2016) speaks of ‘broadening one’s range’ (2016, p. 521; translation by authors) and points to the fact that 92 P. VORDERER AND A. HALFMANN this very ambition does little to enable resonance, in fact it instead prevents it from developing in a given situation. The obvious oversupply of comedies, satire programmes, and funny online videos (e.g. media users’ interest in ‘cat videos’; Myrick, 2015) may demonstrate individuals’ strong need for resonance (Rosa, 2016, p. 135), which, however, all-to-often remains unmet. As a most obvious example of this contradiction, take the almost obsessive use of smartphones by many individuals in a wide range of different social situations. What we observe here, we believe, is perhaps a mani- festation of an almost desperate attempt of individuals who permanently seek experiences of (hori- zontal) resonance through connecting to their peers, while in fact all they are doing is investing in the functionality of a communication channel that they can only hope will eventually provide a connection to another. In sum, we believe that complementing existing psychological theories about the uses and effects of entertainment with the lens of resonance theory (Rosa, 2016) allows for a more comprehensive understanding of why individuals expose themselves to narratives. This theoretical frame adds media users’ social and historical context to such conceptualizations of entertainment. It states that in the disenchanted world of late modernity, where individuals strive for ‘vibrant’ connections with others and with the world, they may also find such connections in and through exposing themselves to media narratives. We argue that individuals select narratives for two fundamentally different purposes, that is, either for the impact those narratives can have on the users’ affective states (e.g. moods, leading to an experience of entertainment) or for their potential to allow and to enable resonant connections (i.e. aesthetic experiences). This conceptualization may be applied to a greater number of different media experiences than, for example, the concept of self-transcendent media experiences (Oliver et al., 2018). Our theoretical frame is meant to provide answers to some of the still open questions in entertainment theory and we hope that it will inspire further theoretical elaborations and empirical research on media users’ needs, motivation, and ability to entertain themselves with narratives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Annabell Halfmann http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-9709

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