Entertainment Content and Reality Perception

Abstract

Our perceptions of reality may often rely on mass mediated images. Walter Lippmann's classical work,Public Opinion, first published in 1922, highlighted the possibility that factual features of the world often have little relation to the perception and beliefs that people entertain about the world (→ Lippmann, Walter). Lippmann (1922) argued that the press's depiction of events was often spurious; the images it created were misleading, distorted, and shaped false “pictures in our heads” of the “world outside.” Although Lippmann never formulated his ideas in terms of a model or theory of reconstructed realities, his notion of the reliance of the public on the often distorted presentation of reality in the media should be acknowledged as such. Lippmann made the important distinction between the real environment and the pseudo‐environment, sketched and delivered by the mass media. However, although Lippmann had vision concerning the differences between reality and perceptions of reality, he could not anticipate the emergence of the electronic media and the ever‐growing role of the new media in shaping “the pictures in our heads.” As radio, and then television, cable, and satellite technologies, and then the Internet, appeared, the world shrank to a global village, exposed to the flow of mass‐produced news and entertainment, and the notion of a mediated world became more realistic and powerful. Consequently, a common focus of communication research has been the public's perceptions of reality as based on mass mediated contents and images (Eveland 2002) (→ Media and Perceptions of Reality). Social reality perceptions, or the “pictures in our head,” are best defined as individuals' conceptions of the world. They include perceptions of others' opinions and behavior, social indicators such as crime, wealth, careers, professions, sex roles and more (→ Reality and Media Reality).