What shapes the cultivation effects from infotaining content? Toward a theoretical foundation for journalism studies

Abstract

Infotaining formats are gaining rapid popularity over the past decades. So far, studies often attempt either to define what infotainment is, how the technological and economic changes have given rise to the format, or what effects it exerts, but rarely consider all three aspects together. This raises the possibility that the properties of infotaining formats are under-defined, leading to a confusion about the effects from infotaining content. This article explores (1) where infotainment comes from, (2) what its constitutive properties are, and (3) why its potential cultivation effect should differ from other formats. From synthesizing these notions, an integrated model derives that combines insights from journalism studies and cultivation theory in order to explain how the technological and economic forces shape the infotaining content being produced, and its cultivating effects on the public further. Scholars from across multiple subfields can use this framework to make common theoretical and empirical progress.

Keywords

Cultivation entertainment infotainment journalistic roles news

Within the last decade or two, infotainment programs that blur the distinction between traditional news and entertainment have been increasingly emerging (Baym, 2015; Thussu, 2010). The hybrid formats seem to be alluring given that they blend a design found in entertainment with functions of political programs (Young and Tisinger, 2006). Since in our new media environment, citizens want to be informed, but in an enjoyable, ‘on the go’ (Westlund, 2012: 22) dosage, for example, on their way to work or during a lunch break, they may increasingly favor programs that are easily swallowed and digested. Given that the news production system attempts to generate formats that meet those sought gratifications to maximize their profit (Picone, 2015), the number of infotainment formats naturally increases.

The pull toward infotainment has also given rise to the academic as well as public debate whether infotainment is supplementing or substituting traditional news and how messages from infotainment could affect the citizens in their worldviews. Some scholars argue that infotainment provides a way to gain a deeper perspective on political issues (Kilby, 2018) or serves as a gateway for viewers to watch more of traditional news outlets again (Baum, 2005). Others caution that an increasing or even substituting exposure to infotainment is alarming as it is feared to lead to a downgrading of political information (Jebril et al., 2013) and to cultivate a distorted reality (Appel, 2008). For example, the audience is feared to be disinformed given that these programs have a propensity to exaggerate for amusement (Harsin, 2018). The debate is further fueled by the lack of consensus about what exact elements of news and entertainment compose infotainment. This sets the condition for a considerable amount of confusion within the literature, in particular when scholars undertake the important efforts of drawing links between theoretical models or empirical results about the effects of exposure to infotainment (Otto et al., 2017).

In light of the debate, here we address (1) what the constitutive elements of infotainment are, (2) where infotainment comes from, and (3) why its cultivation effect may differ from other formats. We show that by considering all three aspects together, it enables development in each domain separately: in particular, we propose a terminological shift from ‘infotainment’ to ‘infotaining content’ and advance the defining elements; we integrate the technological and economic advances that led to a rise of infotaining content; and we give theoretical reasoning to the blind spot why the magnitude of cultivation effects differs between programs. The integration of all three developments in the domains then allows a comprehensive framework.

We start with a short literature review which reveals that there are several promising approaches in disentangling the elements of infotaining content. By tying up the loose ends, we develop a tripartite structure of infotaining content that also takes into consideration the transition in the journalism system. After considering how the economic and technological forces have affected journalism, we then discuss the potential cultivating influence of infotaining content on the public and identify underlying mechanism for the magnitude of cultivation effects. From this overview, a model of effects from infotaining content emerges that combines insights from journalism studies and cultivation theory. Scholars from across multiple subfields can use this framework to make common theoretical and empirical progress.

‘Infotaining’ instead of ‘infotainment’

Infotainment can be defined simply as a hybridization of information and entertainment (Baym, 2015; Thussu, 2010). Taking a closer look at the specific elements constituting infotainment, there appears to be some degree of agreement that four observations are essential: First, there is the emphasis on the story’s increased potential of entertainment through metaphors, exclamatory sentences, superlatives or colloquial language, photos, highlighting conflicts, personalization, or emotionalization (e.g., Bernhard, 2012). For example, in one of the first studies approaching infotainment, Graber (1994) identified several major features of infotainment, particularly dramatic elements (such as conflictive elements and human interactions), and elements with which viewers can identify (such as arousal of empathy and personal identification or emotional scenes). Second are the visual effects like eyewitness camera movements, dramatic music, short and fast editing, slow motion, sound effects, design, and editing resources (e.g., Baym, 2015; Lozano, 2004). Third, is the perception that infotainment is more sensational, more personality-centered, less time-bound, more practical, more incident-based news that focuses more on individual cases, depicting issues in terms of individual instances or specific events and less on broader social trends, places, and issues in some general context (e.g., Jebril et al., 2013). Fourth, is its performative or market-oriented character: Hanitzsch (2007) classified infotainment in the context of market-oriented and service journalism, where information is blended with advice and guidance as well as with entertainment and relaxation. The journalistic roles then shift further toward the domain of what Hanitzsch and Vos (2016) coin ‘everyday life’, catering to the needs in the area of consumption (e.g., as marketer), identity (e.g., as friend), or emotion (e.g., as mood manager)—or alternatively to the needs of overlapping areas (e.g., as guide or connector).

Viewed from afar, the current observations on the constituting elements of infotainment can be broken down into three aspects: aesthetics, content, and news values. ‘Aesthetics’ refers to the aforementioned camera maneuvers, music, or stylistic font effects; ‘content’ highlights the subject matter that is being addressed as the new information; and ‘news values’ refers to the notion that infotainment can be considered sensational and personality-centered, a feature that is oftentimes associated with tabloid in print news (such as New York Post) or clickbait articles online (such as BuzzFeed). This tripartite structure explains why research (e.g., Hoffman and Young, 2011) has found differing effects from infotaining programs, namely The Daily Show and The Tonight Show. Even though both provide political entertainment, they vary in at least two of the three elements’ spectrum: With regard to ‘content’, The Daily Show as a satire and parody ‘tend[s] to focus more on issues and policy – much like their traditional news counterpart’ (Hoffman and Young, 2011: 165), whereas The Tonight Show as a late-night show focuses less on the hard news content but rather on punchline jokes and caricatures. Thus, the two shows fall on different ends of the ‘content’ spectrum. Moreover, with regard to the ‘news values’, The Tonight Show rather uses values on the lower end with conflict/dramatization and sensationalism in order to make the humor easily accessible to the broad audience, while The Daily Show brings together old and new political information and therefore relies to a greater extent to news values similar to hard news. These notions are supported by the authors’ empirical findings that The Tonight Show does not increase political efficacy unlike The Daily Show and traditional news. Thus, even though there may be an overlap in ‘aesthetics’, both shows differ with regard to ‘content’ and ‘news values’. Meanwhile, other infotaining shows may in addition differ in their ’aesthetics’, but overlap in the other areas.

Our trifold concept can be considered a development of Brants’ (1998) early categorization that focused on aesthetics and content. However, this also marks a development further away from the minimalist definition of infotainment as a hybridization of information and entertainment: when accounting ‘news values’ as one of the three constituting elements of infotainment, our approach defines infotainment by the degree of entertainment contributing the aesthetics, the degree of hard news contributing the content, and the degree of sensationalist news contributing the lower news values. While the initial definition was driven by the distinction between fact-based information and entertainment, that is, with fact-based hard news addressing the traditional questions in journalism, namely the who, what, when, where, and how (Graber, 1994), and entertainment attracting people with a pull toward sensationalism, personalization, emotions, and aesthetics (Shusterman, 2003) and focusing on distraction and pleasure (Brants, 1998), the novel shift in the definition introduced here puts no disjunct boundaries between hard news and entertainment. Therefore, instead of using the term ‘infotainment’ as a noun which implies the binary structure, we suggest to use the adjective ‘infotaining’ to put the emphasis on the degree of infotainment in media content, that is, elucidating which aspects make a show more or less infotaining. The subtle change from the term ‘infotainment’ to ‘infotaining content’ also accounts for its tripartite elements. We hasten to point out, however, that scholars do not have a wrong definition of infotainment when using the minimal version. The argument is rather about the lack of accounting for the current transitions in the field of journalism studies, particularly that the categories ‘information’ and ‘entertainment’ are becoming increasingly blurred themselves (Witschge et al., 2019), a trend that is further explored in the following.

Increasingly competitive media environment as driver for infotaining content

To understand the increasingly blurred concepts of hard news and entertainment which may have given rise to infotaining formats, it is helpful to take a closer look at the decline in newspaper sales and the emergence of online news: Both trends reveal a ‘news gap’ (Boczkowski and Mitchelstein, 2013) between the preferences of journalists and their audience. Traditional journalism, however, cannot afford to ignore its audience needs and expectations for too long, given that journalists depend on the audience because of both their legitimization of journalistic performance and their attention, which is monetized as journalists’ revenue (Vos et al., 2018). According to Gardner et al. (2005), this led to a situation in journalism where content that reflects commitment, for example, to serve the public need and to enable people to make decisions about their lives, is frequently marginalized, whereas content related to entertainment, commercial advantage, or higher market ratings is frequently awarded in today’s newsrooms. Since in today’s new media environment, the attractiveness of a news’ medium for advertisers can be measured in terms of click rates, the audience orientation may be an important survival strategy for media producers in an increasingly competitive environment (Peters and Broersma, 2013). For example, the increasing importance of entertaining stories for online news platforms reveals the recent developments of newsroom decisions, because these types of stories generate the largest viewership (Hofstetter and Schönhagen, 2017). Thus, infotaining content can be seen as journalism’s response to the processes of individualization, value change, and mediatization that led to the recent transformations in media industry and society (Hanusch and Hanitzsch, 2013).

Even though with these entertaining formats, journalism fulfills the audience’s sought gratifications for including companionship, arousal, relaxation, escapism, entertainment, and social interaction in their political news reporting, ironically enough these ‘alternative forms of journalism were cast as the crude “other” to proper journalism’ and increased the struggle for journalists to articulate a normative basis for these new roles (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2016: 150). However, as the competition on the news market is increasing, economic factors and the use of emotions become important journalistic tools for news, which enable journalists to enhance audience’s involvement with the news as Beckett and Deuze (2016) point out. The authors also make the important observation that even though news has always been emotional, there is a noticeable growing diversity of emotional styles, increased acceptability of journalistic involvement, and more explicit attempts for participation of the audience. Tandoc and Thomas (2015) are alarmed by the increasing audience orientation in journalism because ‘if journalism simply views itself as the conduit through which transient audience preferences are satisfied, then it is no journalism worth bearing the name’ (p. 253).

Despite the theoretical concerns, empirical findings struggle to support the assumption of increasing infotaining content in news: For example, Tandoc (2018) found no significant difference between the output of The New York Times and BuzzFeed regarding news values, topics, sources, formats, and norms. We caution, however, that one explanation for this result might rest in the underdefined nature of infotaining content, since the uncertainty of what infotaining formats actually are makes it difficult for scholars to capture infotaining content precisely.

Past debates about infotainment focused more on the normative and analytical elements of the relationship between infotaining content and political reporting, and the association between consumerist and citizen-oriented logics in news production. Only recently, some scholars have started to investigate the formerly distinct styles (e.g. Hallin and Mellado, 2018). Therefore, the trend toward audience orientation and entrepreneurial journalism should be critically observed, in particular with regard to its potential impact on how journalists understand their own profession and on their perception of how their work affects the society. Trailblazing here is the discussion by Andersson and Wiik (2013), which reveals a shift of the understanding of professionalized leadership among editors-in-chief from formerly classic journalistic skills toward a focus on economic and managerial skills. Hence, it can be questioned if journalists are aware of the effect from this new form of information-providing and reporting style on their audience.

Online news attract a mobile and connected audience

Today’s journalism is ‘interactive, interconnected, participatory, more open, more global, multi-platform, multi-linear, producing a constant stream of data, analysis, and comment’ (Beckett and Deuze, 2016: 1). These to some extent novel characteristics imply that institutionalized news outlets compete with sources from non-mainstream news – such as individuals on social media or alternative news portals – for the impact on the public agenda (Fletcher and Park, 2017). This trend is noticeable in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2018) as well as in other countries (Bengtsson and Johansson, 2020) where social media sites have started to outpace the print newspaper as a news source. On the communicator side, these emerging actors are shaped by underlying algorithms which apply predefined and programmable criteria to influence the process of channeling and redistributing information following strategic interests (Wallace, 2018); on the recipient side, the use of the news and the attitudes they form about it radically shifts (Thorson, 2008).

In this transition, the smartphone becomes an essential medium to consume news, as the exorbitant increase in readership on mobile-optimized sites reveals (Pew Research Center, 2016). Thus, today’s news is predominantly mobile and profoundly personalized (Beckett and Deuze, 2016). Emotional cues help to attract recipients’ attention and to prolong their engagement which in turn earns more traffic (Pantti, 2010). The Fög (Forschungsinstitut Öffentlichkeit und Gesellschaft (Fög) and University of Zurich, 2017) labels social media as the ‘media of emotion’ with regard to their basic functional logic and cautions that professional journalistic news media risks to lose quality and reputation if they hew too closely to this logic: many media organizations offer on social media platforms such as Facebook news in a lower quality than on their own channels. Regarding today’s media richness and audience fragmentation, however, the new, more audience-oriented forms of journalism are capable to address a public that is usually attracted toward soft news rather than hard facts (Nguyen, 2012). For example, Beckett and Deuze (2016: 3) point to the ‘curiosity gap’, which refers to appealing headlines which were formerly found in lifestyle stories that target the audience’s curiosity and adapting the language found in social media. New styles in journalism are on the rise, with still-valuable forms and norms from traditional journalism converging with audience-oriented lifestyle journalism. Because the latter addresses a large, engaged audience, it has the potential to mitigate the declining demand for journalistic output (Perreault and Stanfield, 2018).

Hence, infotaining content seems to be a promising approach to confront today’s difficulties in the field of journalism to address the shifted needs of the public. However, this development also reveals some pitfalls: For example, Zillmann and Brosius (2012) pointed out that specifically the problematic function of atypical concrete case studies in news (e.g., news stories about poisoned food) combined with vivid and emotional images of those affected can lead to a potentially distorted assessment of social relevance and personal risk.

In summary, on one hand, infotaining content became increasingly necessary for financing journalism and serving the audience need, but on the other hand, it bears the risk to marginalize information for public interest and to create a distorted reality. This being said, there are also critical voices regarding the effects of traditional hard news: For example, Beckett and Deuze (2016: 2) caution that ‘the old idea of ‘hard’ news’ that shocks, frightens, disturbs, and alarms can leave the audience feeling alienated, disempowered, helpless and, worst of all, apathetic, insensitive, and even hostile to learning about our world’. The authors’ description serves as a reminder to critically assess the distinction between hard and infotaining news: instead of valuing one format to be more relevant or more effective for the public, we suggest a more nuanced understanding of the differing effects. Hence, even though the fear of infotaining formats is considered common sense in journalism studies, next we critically explore, how and whether this can actually be legitimated, that is, what cultivating effects to expect from infotaining content.

Cultivation effects from infotaining content

One way to approach the question of how infotaining content affects our perception of the world is cultivation theory. Initially established in the context of television, cultivation theory assumes that heavy viewing of similar messages across television cultivates conceptions of reality (Gerbner, 1973). Hence, heavy viewers of infotaining content are more likely to perceive the world in ways that closely mirror reality as portrayed in the infotaining format. For example, Appel (2008) found the exposure to infotaining content to relate to the belief that the world is a scary and mean world.

The true potential of cultivation theory for explaining effects from infotaining content on the public, however, lies in its capacity to cohesively investigate the interplay of media institutions, media messages, and cultivation effects (Morgan et al., 2015). Thus, cultivation theory allows scholars to take into consideration how the economic and technological forces have changed the news production, possibly resulting in the rise of infotaining content; what the nature of the messages from the infotaining content is; and how these infotaining messages cultivate the societal conception of the world. To understand the potential magnitude of cultivation effects from infotaining content, we first summarize the findings stemming from cultivation research on news and entertainment. This then allows us to address the pending question: Are cultivation effects from infotaining content more similar to the effects from news or entertainment?

Larger cultivation effect from news than entertainment

So far, only few studies have shed light on cultivation effects from news (Potter, 2014), and then mainly focused on the mean world paradigm, that is, suggesting a correlation between television news exposure and fear of crime (e.g. Lett et al., 2004; Potter and Chang, 1990; Romer et al., 2003). However, there is an increasing interest in investigating cultivation effects from television news with regard to other paradigms such as health care or prejudices against minority groups. For example, Lee and Niederdeppe (2011) observed that local television news focuses on cancer causes while neglecting options for prevention. The scholars found that local television news exposure predicts increased fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention. Another study on television news content on minority groups showed that television news content greatly diverges with regard to tone and references to threat for minority groups and that these specific news portrayals relate to the public attitudes toward intergroup differences and perceived threats by minorities (Meeusen and Jacobs, 2017). In line with these findings, an international cultivation study by Arendt and Northup (2015) compared findings from Austria and the United States and reported that a regular exposure to stereotypical news coverage on social groups creates negative implicit and explicit attitudes.

At first glance, the stream of research that investigated television news has produced similar results compared to cultivation studies with a focus on entertainment. For example, the correlation between television news exposure and fear of crime is also traceable between fictional crime drama exposure and fear of crime (e.g., Custers et al., 2017; Kort-Butler and Sittner Hartshorn, 2011). Here, we caution, however, that even though the findings of cultivation effects from news point in the same direction as the results from entertainment programs, only a direct comparison of various programs allows an estimation on the magnitude of effect each program exerts.

A number of studies have conducted direct comparisons between news, reality-based TV shows, and fictional shows, that is, entertainment. A study by Goidel et al. (2006) on perceptions of juvenile crime produced somewhat mixed results since the perceptions of juvenile crime were associated with the exposure to television news, but not with the exposure to the reality-based crime show; meanwhile, the exposure to television news showed no association to overall crime perceptions, whereas the reality show was shown to be marginally important. A convincing explanation for these findings lies in the different focus of the two programs: Television news in comparison to reality-based crime shows ‘is more likely to cover juvenile crime as an issue of concern in local communities’ (p. 134). This conclusion emphasizes the importance of analyzing messages in programs sufficiently beforehand.

A study by Holbrook and Hill (2005) revealed that even though there were some effects of fictional crime show viewing on viewer’s attitudes, there was an abundant evidence for reality-based crime show viewing on an increased support for the death penalty, heightened fear of crime, support for police authority, endorsement of gun ownership, and the likelihood of actually owning a gun. This finding provides converging evidence of the greater magnitude of reality-based TV shows cultivation effects in comparison to fictional programs.

Grabe and Drew (2007) examined if various television programs – such as crime drama, reality-based crime shows, or news – differ in their potential to cultivate crime perceptions, fear, and behavior. Their study showed little evidence of cultivation effects associated with crime drama, but some evidence for non-fictional programs. In particular, higher exposure to network news was associated with higher estimates of non-Caucasians committing crime and criminal justice effectiveness, whereas a higher exposure to reality TV shows was associated with owning a gun.

Together, these studies ‘provide evidence that nonfiction TV might be more effective than fiction in cultivating perceptions of crime, fears, and potentially defensive behavior’ (Grabe and Drew, 2007: 152). In order to understand what potential effects infotaining content has on the public, it seems indispensable to understand why the effects should differ from other programs such as news and entertainment. In the following, we offer a novel approach to explain what theoretical antecedents underlie these differences, and how they relate to infotaining content.

Magnitude of cultivation effects depends on reality conceptions

As the literature review suggested, both hard news and entertainment might exert cultivation effects. In direct comparison, several studies provide converging evidence that the magnitude of these two programs differ, indicating that news has a larger effect than entertainment. This may be surprising since the founder of cultivation theory, George Gerbner (1977), assumed that ‘sharp distinctions between information (news) and entertainment (drama, etc.) or fiction and documentary or other genres, no longer apply [and that all programs are] “real-life” demonstrations of the same value structure [which] provide verisimilitude’ (p. 148). In order to understand what effects infotaining content might exert, next we investigate why the magnitude of effects varies drawing from two perspectives.

Media psychology: Individual perceptions of realism

From a media psychological perspective, one might argue that news differs from entertainment because of the varying underlying assumptions of ‘perceived realism’. Perceived realism explains comparisons viewers make between the perceived actual world and the observed realities in the media, thus perceived realism is ‘the extent to which viewers judge that the people and events they encounter in media are portrayed as would be expected, given the socially constructed understandings of the actual world that a given viewer brings to the media experience’ (Busselle and Bilandzic, 2012: 169). The varying magnitude of cultivation effects can therefore be explained by the fact that news and entertainment differ in their scope of perceived realism: With regard to news, perceived realism refers to how accurately events and people are being portrayed, given that the events and people that are being portrayed do in fact exist in the actual world. With regard to entertainment, the question is not how accurate the representations are but how plausible the events or people appear within the boundaries of the world created in the story (Busselle and Bilandzic, 2012). Considering the results from previous research which indicates that news in comparison to entertainment reveals stronger cultivation effects, it is convincing that ‘accuracy’ and ‘plausibility’ are then ranked in the viewers’ mind-set: ‘accuracy’ is perceived as more important than ‘plausibility’ when viewers make their judgments about the world; thus, news exert stronger cultivation effects than entertainment.

Of course, the level of ‘accuracy’ and ‘plausibility’ affects the magnitude of cultivation effects further: For example, Busselle et al. (2004) argue that the more realistic the content appears, the more engaging, arousing, and convincing it is to the viewer, which in turn amplifies the cultivation effect. Also, aesthetic differences such as camera maneuvers, slow motion, music, and sound effects affect the viewer’s perception of the degree of ‘accuracy’ and ‘plausibility’ (Grabe and Drew, 2007). Furthermore, Hall (2003) found viewers to perceive soap operas as less realistic, ‘not because the types of people they portray do not exist, but because the types of people they portray are not representative of the larger population’ (p. 632). There are several patterns that make a portrayal seem unrealistic such as an inconsistency with the viewer’s expectations based on their previous real-life experiences, their previous mediated experiences, for example, by friends or family members, or their previous experiences with a similar content (Busselle et al., 2004)

Hence, the magnitude of cultivation effects varies whether the viewer holds the content accountable in terms of ‘accuracy’ or ‘plausibility’. More precisely, when the viewer finds that the infotaining content shows a strong resemblance to elements from the news (e.g., in terms of similarity of content, aesthetics, and news values), then it is likely that they judge the infotaining content by its accuracy. The magnitude of cultivation effects then increases if the accuracy level is perceived to be high. In contrast, when in the viewer’s mind-set the infotaining content shows greater similarity to elements found in entertainment, then they hold the content accountable with regard to how plausible the fictional world is. Since ‘plausibility’ is ranked lower than ‘accuracy’, the magnitude of cultivation effects decreases.

In summary, the different effect sizes relate to the individuals’ knowledge structures and cognitive processing, that is, how accurate or plausible the viewers perceive the portrayed content. However, there is also an explanation from the sociological perspective to the question of why news and entertainment differ in their cultivation effects and what effects infotaining content might exert. In the following, we will elaborate how the two perspectives complement one another.

System theory: public’s observation of reality

Drawing on Luhmann’s (2000) system theory, the sociological perspective sheds light on the construction of social reality through mass media. The concept of ‘reality-observation level’ offers a framework to explain differing cultivation effects from news and entertainment. The reality-observation level refers to the relationship each program has with reality. ‘Programs’ are in Luhmannian terminology advertising, news, and entertainment and considered as ways to observe and describe our social reality (Luhmann, 2000). There are several ways to observe reality, but the reference to either first- or second-order reality is most important when explaining why the cultivation effects from the two programs, namely news and entertainment, may differ: The first-order reality refers to our reality, or, in Luhmannian words, it is ‘an indicator of successful tests for consistency in the system’ (Luhmann, 2000: 11); the second-order reality refers to the as-if world that is created by the programs. Accordingly, entertainment is a kind of doubling of reality, such that while watching the program for a given time, a fictional second reality arises, that is, an as-if world. News, however, refers to the first-order reality. Whether a program is hold accountable with regard to first- or second-order reality comes with certain assumptions: News is obliged to report the truth with reference to first-order reality, whereas soap operas or movies, which belong to the fictional entertainment genre, ought neither to be true nor credible, but verisimilar within this second-order reality, and reality-based TV shows, talk shows, docu soaps, or quiz shows are obliged to credibility with reference to first-order reality (Luhmann, 2000). Whether infotaining content is supposed to relate to either be true with regard to first-order reality or verisimilar to second-order reality then depends on whether the viewer finds that the infotaining content shows a strong resemblance to elements from the news or entertainment.

Although the terminology from system theory reveals some similarities to the one from media psychology, namely with regard to accuracy/truth and plausibility/verisimilitude, it is the structural coupling aspect in system theory (and not the individuals’ cognitive processes as in media psychology) that shapes the impact of the concepts further: Obligations to truth, credibility, or verisimilitude are expressions of the suspicion manipulation level through mass media. Put simply, when we acknowledge that beliefs about certain events stem from mass media, we also accept that we are presented with a general, selective reality that is created by the producers of the content (Moeller, 2006). Moreover, the mass media system is structurally coupled with other systems such as the economic or the political system which feeds to the suspicion of manipulation further, yet balances the obligations to either truth, credibility, or verisimilitude depending on the program (Luhmann, 2000; Moeller, 2006). Thus, the magnitude of cultivation effects from news and entertainment depends on the reality-observation level and accordingly the level of manipulation suspicion.

Summary: Truth and verisimilitude shape cultivation effects

Both media psychologists and sociologists address the concept of perceived reality when differentiating news from entertainment: For the former, the level of accuracy in news and plausibility in entertainment is the pivotal point; for the latter, the observed truth in news’ content and level of verisimilitude in entertainment is important. Despite these similarities, the perspectives differ in their field-related underlying assumptions: from a media psychological perspective, the reason why cultivation effects may be stronger from news lies in the individuals’ pre-existing knowledge structures and cognitive processing, whereas from a sociological perspective the observation of the reality level, and therefore the manipulation suspicion level, plays a central role.

From both perspectives, it is convincing that the magnitude of the cultivation effects from infotaining content depends on the distribution of entertaining, informative, and sensational elements. When the infotaining content shows a strong resemblance to the elements from news, then it is likely that the viewers judge it by its level of accuracy; vice versa, with a greater similarity to elements found in entertainment, the plausibility of the fictional world is evaluated. Similarly, the elements of the infotaining content shape the observation whether the content is supposed to be true with regard to first-order reality or verisimilar with regard to second-order reality. The magnitude of the expected cultivation effects from infotaining content then increases, when it shows greater similarity to elements from the news, especially when the level of accuracy is high, and the suspicion of manipulation can be put at ease.

Modeling effects from infotaining content

Cultivation effects from infotaining content and the effects of the economic and technological transitions on journalism are highly entangled topics. Initially, the ‘Cultural Indicators Project’ led by Gerbner (1973) highlighted the interplay of these components, namely the interplay of the media institutions, media messages, and cultivation effects. While an elite cohort of the cultivation literature ‘acknowledges the importance of institutional analysis in the cultivation system of explanation, they rarely cite any research in this area [and] the scholars who produced this literature have displayed little interest in linking their findings with cultivation theory’ (Potter, 2014: 1024). Strikingly, to date, no attempt was made to explain the relationship between media institutions and cultivation effects from infotaining content. Based on the existing body of research, this article proposes an integrated model of the process of effects from infotaining content that has two essential constituents to allow for a consideration of institutional transitions: the audience side and media side (see Figure 1). These two constituents shape the classic cultivation effect model further, namely that the media program, such as infotaining content, has an influence on the viewer’s knowledge and judgment about the world (i.e. first- and second-order cultivation effects).

Figure 1.

An integrated model of the process of effects from infotaining content.

On the media side, the media system is interdependent on the technological and economic systems which shape its formal focus further. In order to have content created that is profitable, the economic system uses its currency (i.e. money) as a cultural tool for social action in the economic sphere. This refers, for example, to a market orientation toward consumers (instead of citizens). The technological system enables and restrains the distribution of infotaining content, mirroring closely ongoing technological shifts toward mobility, connectivity, and participation. The formal focus of a specific infotaining content can vary between a stronger focus on aesthetics similar to those in entertainment programs, a stronger focus on content that is shared with news, or a stronger focus on lower news values as observed by the tabloid press, such as sensationalism, negativity, conflict, or personalization.

On the audience side, the model is further shaped by the suspicion manipulation level and perceived realism. The latter mediates the viewer’s knowledge about the world because the viewer compares the messages shown in infotaining content with their experiences from the real world for any inconsistencies. The representations from news are consistent if they appear to be accurate, whereas in entertainment, they are perceived as real if they are plausible. Hence, to determine whether a program is being held accountable with regard to accuracy or plausibility depends on the specific infotaining content and the degree of entertaining aesthetics, news content, and lower news values. At an even earlier stage of the model, the suspicion manipulation level moderates the effect from infotaining content on the viewer’s knowledge about the world. To minimize the suspicion manipulation level, representations in news are expected to be true with respect to first-order reality, whereas in entertainment they have to be verisimilar with regard to second-order reality. Similar to the mechanisms of perceived realism, whether infotaining content is expected to report the truth or to be verisimilar depends on whether the specific content tends more toward portraying elements from hard news, entertaining aesthetics, or sensational news. The suspicion manipulation level also hews closely to the structural coupling aspect with the technological and economic systems.

Conclusion

The concerns about infotaining content and its effects on the public are multifaceted. Our aim was to develop a framework that approaches this ‘infotainment scare’ (Brants, 1998: 315) from afar. The article first introduced a shift in the terminology from ‘infotainment’ to ‘infotaining content’ in order to account for the transitions in the media production system. This shift allows scholars to outline how great the degree of infotaining content is in their research object. More specifically, the article refined the structure of infotaining content to be as tripartite instead of binary, thus adding news values as one of the constituting elements aside from content and aesthetics. In future research on infotaining content, scholars may outline how great the degree is of entertainment contributing the aesthetics, of hard news contributing the content, and of sensationalist news contributing the lower news values.

Moreover, the article took a closer look at the potential cultivation effects from infotaining content. A literature review revealed that both news and entertainment might exert cultivation effects. In comparison, several studies have yet found differing cultivation effects; however, there was a lack of theoretical reasoning why news formats could have a greater cultivation effect than entertaining programs. As a remedy to this neglect, we offer a novel theoretical link from media psychology and system theory which revealed that news exerts a stronger cultivation effect than entertainment, because news is assumed to report ‘the’ truth and to be accurate, whereas entertainment is only judged by how plausible and verisimilar the fictional content appears.

From these theoretical deliberations, it becomes clear that the magnitude of cultivation effects from infotaining content depends on whether its elements show a stronger resemblance to elements from the news or from entertainment. Thus, it is indispensable for future studies to conduct a sufficient content analyses beforehand to evaluate its level of aesthetics, news content, and news values. The findings enable scholars to determine whether the infotaining content is closer to elements shared by news or entertainment and to steer the survey questions either in the direction of ‘how accurate’ or ‘how plausible’ the infotaining content is perceived by its viewers. We encourage scholars to continue their studies on infotaining content and to consider a conceptual foundation that integrates the media and audience side. Of course, the model introduced here will benefit from other media effect approaches aside from cultivation theory. Cultivation theory nonetheless has been shown to be helpful in disentangling potential effects from infotaining content further and serves as a starting point to incorporate other approaches in the future.

As journalists seek for peoples’ scarce attention on the news market, entertaining elements, and a stronger orientation toward social media logics in news reporting might result in an increase of infotaining elements in news coverage. It can be questioned if journalists are fully aware of the effects the change in style (of how the information is provided and reported) has on their audience. However, alternate routes to reach the audience and bridge the gap between the preferences of journalists and their audience could be a ray of hope and mitigate the declining need of journalistic output: If values and norms from traditional journalism converge with audience-oriented lifestyle journalism, and if media producers would take more responsibility in manipulating the level of suspicion and perceived realism, a large and engaged public could be acquired, without the increased skepticism engendered by current infotaining practices.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

A former version of this article was presented at the conference ‘Rethinking Theories and Concepts of Mediated Communication.’ The authors thank the participants of the conference and especially Dr. Ryan Thomas for their thoughtful remarks. The authors are also grateful to the editor of this journal and the two reviewers for their extremely valuable insights.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Elena Pelzer

Author biographies

Elena Pelzer, M.A., is a PhD student at the Department of Communication at the University of Münster, Germany. Her research interests include research methodology as well as media use and effects, in particular the role of messages and narratives in cultivation theory.

Patric Raemy received his M.A. in media and communication studies from the University of Zurich. Currently, he works as a research and teaching assistant in the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland where he also studies as a PhD student. His research interests focus on journalistic role conceptions and performance, especially the constitution of journalists’ professional identity and role performance in light of the dynamics in the journalistic field. Most recently, he worked as a visiting scholar at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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