Researching Entertainment Experiences

Singapore.
The next presenter in this session at ICA 2010 is CarrieLynn Reinhard, whose interest is in human sensemaking when engaging in virtual worlds. Lab-based experimental approaches to this are sometimes criticised for stressing internal over external validity, and for being unable to prove causality without the black box of the experimental setup - they rely on holding a number of variables constant in order to observe the effects of a predetermined, measurable variable in order to determine causality.

Components are the stimulus, the subjects, the overall system in which this is observed, and the measurements which are made in the observation. The process relies on the data collection framework, the data collection methods, and the data analysis methods. The experiment, however, ultimately consists of the method for organising the collection of data: the framework which determines data collection, and if understood this way can therefore be qualitative as well as quantitative.

So, from that perspective, how do people make sense of the structural features of entertainment media products when determining their actual entertainment and desire for engagement? CarrieLynn orchestrated four sessions of media engagement (with action movies, games, and virtual worlds) in which the participants' control over content and technological interfaces was manipulated. During the film session, for example, people were asked to record their responses to the movie as it was playing; during the game, they rated the characters they encountered, and they responded to a set of other questions afterwards. Interviews during and after the entertainment experience also took place.

Problems with this approach include the size of the data corpus which results, the arficiality of the lab-based experience, and the question of carryover effects from one experiment to the other; each of these needs to be addressed. However, it can provide some information about how sensemaking processes alter under different circumstances and when engaging with innovative media situations.

Technorati : ICA 2010, entertainment, games, methodology, research, television, virtual worlds
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