Really fun collab with amazing co-authors and team members @felix-dietrich.de, @aliciagilbert.bsky.social & @leonardreinecke.bsky.social. Wrapping our heads around how to assess semantic affinity with v scarce data donations was a challenge, but thanks to computational wizard Felix, we made it work!

We found: overall, almost nothing! On Netflix, semantic affinity seems to be pretty much irrelevant for content selection when experiencing stressors. But: on a broader level, different media coping strategies were related to selecting different types of genres.

Using Netflix data donations, daily survey data, and content descriptions, we (@felix-dietrich.de @aliciagilbert.bsky.social @leonardreinecke.bsky.social) asked ourselves how ppl would avoid content that was similar to a domain they had experienced adversity in that day (semantic affinity from MMT!)

Really happy and proud to see this one finally out in the world. It was quite the effort. Huge thanks goes out to my fantastic co-author @leonardreinecke.bsky.social!

Take away: Entertainment can give impulses for meaning making processes beyond individual usage episodes, but we need to know more about time frames and accumulation of such effects – both through theory and more longitudinal studies 🤓

Key findings:
📈 Positive within-person effects of both hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment use on meaning making daily and weekly, but not over 6 months.
📉 Negative effects of escapist media use on meaning making across all time intervals.

Short-term effects of entertainment on mood/recovery have been studied for a while – but what about longer lasting effects? We propose beneficial effects of hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment on meaning making via positive emotions and vicarious experiences of adversity.

Sounds great! And yes, I had a different paper accepted, so I'll be there :)

Thank you, Sara - would love to hear your thoughts on this!