Abstract

A Study on the Uses and Gratifications and Effect of the Entertainment-Education Program:
‘Escape from Crisis No. 1'' Program of KBS 2 TV


Kim, Yu Mi.
Advisor : Prof. Choi, Yang Ho.
Department of Mass Communication
Graduate School of Chosun University


This study examines the uses and gratifications and effects of the entertainment-education programs(E-E programs). Recent years have witnessed a large increase to the number of E-E programs incorporating educational messages into entertainment programs. E-E programs are known to help the audience increase their knowledge, reduce their perceptual defense, and form a positive attitude. It is for those reasons that E-E programs have attracted the attention of communication scholars and media campaigners as a new tool for public media campaigns to promote effective and desirable social changes for more than 20 years. In fact, media campaigns using "E-E programs" have been implemented across a wide range of fields including health and hygiene in developing countries in South America, Africa and Asia since the middle 1980s.
Despite those developments, however, South Korea has witnessed poor research efforts invested into E-E programs. This study paid attention to prosocial messages of media and their positive impacts on the audience, growing out of the negative influences and effects of media in previous studies. The study concentrated on the effects of E-E programs combining educational content with entertainment content as a means of maximizing the pro-social influences of media. The study especially examines the uses and gratifications, parasocial interactions, audience involvement, and the effects process of E-E programs.
The study examined a couple of theories including the one about E-E programs and the use and gratification theory, which offers some theoretical grounds for motives for watching E-E programs. The study then examined parasocial interactions and audience involvement as the precedent variables of the effects of E-E programs. Based on the previous studies, the study''s research questions (RQ)and hypotheses(H) are as follows.

RQ 1: What are the uses and gratifications of viewing E-E programs? What factors are they comprised of?
RQ 2: What kind of influences does the uses and gratifications of E-E programs have on parasocial interactions with the characters?
H 1-1: Parasocial interactions with the characters of E-E programs will have positive influences on narrative involvement.
H 1-2: Parasocial interactions with the characters of E-E programs will have positive influences on issue involvement.
H 2-1: Narrative involvement with the content of E-E programs will have positive influences on the audience perceived entertainment for E-E programs.
H 2-2: Narrative involvement with the content of E-E programs will have positive influences on the audience perceived information for E-E programs.
H 3-1: Issue involvement with the content of E-E programs will have positive correlations with the audience perceived entertainment for E-E programs.
H 3-2: Issue involvement with the content of E-E programs will have positive correlations with the audience perceived information for E-E programs.
H 4-1: The audience perceived information for E-E programs will have positive influences on their behavioral intention.
H 4-2: The audience perceived entertainment for E-E programs will have positive influences on their behavioral intention.

In an effort to answer those research questions and test those hypotheses, the investigator conducted a survey on Crisis Escape No. 1, an E-E program on KBS-2TV. Survey was taken with middle school students over three times. The first survey session administered a questionnaire of open-ended questions to 220 middle school students to obtain preliminary uses and gratifications items of E-E programs. The second survey session administered a questionnaire of closed questions to 250 middle school students to test the factor structure and validity of gratifications items of E-E programs. The final survey session administered a questionnaire to 600 middle school students to find out the effect process of E-E programs.
There have been found four factors and 17 gratifications items of E-E programs through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The four factors of uses and gratifications items of E-E programs include "pursuit of information," "emotional/affective satisfaction," "fun" and "passing time." The factor of "emotional/affective satisfaction" was considerably differentiated from the previous gratifications for other programs. The factor consisted of four items, namely "because it is touching," "because it brings vitality," "because it helps to relieve stress," and ''because it feels like my stuff." Those results seem to reflect the viewers'' tendency of getting emotional/affective gratifications from the programs and relating to them personally beyond merely getting information from the programs and having fun watching them.
Also analyzed in the study were relations between the finally confirmed structural factors of uses and gratifications for watching E-E programs and parasocial interactions. As a result, only educational gratifications such as "pursuit of information" and "emotional/affective satisfaction" had impacts on parasocial interactions for the characters of E-E programs. On the other hand, entertainment gratifications such as fun and passing time had no impact on parasocial interactions. In addition, parasocial interactions with the characters of E-E programs influenced both narrative and issue involvement with those programs with more impacts on narrative involvement in the affective dimension than on issue involvement in the cognitive dimension.
Audience involvement turned out to be closely related to the audience''s perceptions of E-E programs. That is, both narrative and issue involvement had significant impacts on perceived entertainment and information with narrative involvement exerting stronger impacts on perceived entertainment, while issue involvement exerting stronger impacts on perceived information. Finally, perceived entertainment and information had positive impacts on behavioral intention with perceived information exerting more positive impacts on behavioral intention than perceived entertainment.
Research on the uses and gratifications of E-E programs and their effect process like the present study will offer some theoretical grounds for future research on E-E programs and provide some practical implications on how to adjust characters and program involvement for the effective development of E-E programs.

Keyword: entertainment-education program, gratifications of viewing TV programs, the use and gratification theory, parasocial interaction, audience involvement, media effect