Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The term “mood management” stands for a theory that aims to predict people's choices from media messages. The audience is confronted with an enormous diversity of media channels and messages, thus selectivity in media use is inevitable. Hence, a classic key question in communication research is what drives the choices made by media users. Mood-management theory ( Zillmann 1988 ) has been proposed by Zillmann and Bryant and was initially called the theory of affect-dependent stimulus arrangement ( Zillmann & Bryant 1985 ). The core suggestion is that media users’ moods have a strong influence on media content choices because the individual aims to manage or, more specifically, optimize his or her feeling state. This motivation then drives what media content is selected, as different messages produce different effects on mood. This proposed pattern pertains to all media channels and genre types such as →  news , music, movies, and online content (→  Internet ) – even a →  documentary film can be employed to enhance mood as the current “frame of mind.” Mood-management processes involve three dimensions on which the individual's feeling state can be described and that are also linked to mood-enhancing media choices ( Zillmann 2000 , 104): “the indicated hedonistic objective is best served by selective exposure to material that (a) is excitationally opposite to prevailing states ... log in or subscribe to read full text