Amsterdam, Netherlands

Communication Science: Entertainment communication

Master's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: journalism and information
Time study: 1 year
University website: www.uva.nl/en
Communication
Communication (from Latin commūnicāre, meaning "to share") is the act of conveying intended meanings from one entity or group to another through the use of mutually understood signs and semiotic rules.
Entertainment
Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience, or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have developed over thousands of years specifically for the purpose of keeping an audience's attention. Although people's attention is held by different things, because individuals have different preferences in entertainment, most forms are recognisable and familiar. Storytelling, music, drama, dance, and different kinds of performance exist in all cultures, were supported in royal courts, developed into sophisticated forms and over time became available to all citizens. The process has been accelerated in modern times by an entertainment industry that records and sells entertainment products. Entertainment evolves and can be adapted to suit any scale, ranging from an individual who chooses a private entertainment from a now enormous array of pre-recorded products; to a banquet adapted for two; to any size or type of party, with appropriate music and dance; to performances intended for thousands; and even for a global audience.
Science
Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Entertainment
The world of the distraction or diversion or perversion of humanity by technology culminates in adoration, veneration, and beatification, in the expression of properly religious sentiment. As Marx showed, alienation leads to religion. Humanity, when diverted, also becomes religious. The star system has been functioning for a long time. In the entertainment world the star becomes the idol in the primary sense, the absolute, transcendent image, a veritable Allah.
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Bluff, G. Bromiley, trans. (1990), p. 382
Entertainment
With the lights out, it's less dangerous.
Here we are now, entertain us.
I feel stupid and contagious.
Here we are now, entertain us.
Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Nevermind (1991), tr. 1.
Science
Within the short span of a human life and with man's limited powers of memory, any stock of knowledge worthy of the name is unattainable except by the greatest mental economy. Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.
Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development (1893) p. 490, Tr. Thomas J. McCormack.
Privacy Policy