The Search for Pleasure and Meaning on TV, Captured In-App: Eudaimonia and Hedonism Effects on TV Consumption as Self-Reported via Mobile App

ABSTRACT

The present study investigates the effects of eudaimonia and hedonism on genre preferences by connecting eudaimonia and hedonism survey measures to individuals’ self-reported TV-show viewing data over time in the mobile app TV Time. Regression models suggest that higher eudaimonia leads to more viewing of mystery, mini-series, thriller, and drama, but less viewing of family, adventure, and action shows. Higher hedonism leads to more viewing of family, romance, action, and comedy programs, but less viewing of mystery, sci-fi, mini-series, suspense, horror, crime, thriller, and drama shows. Models including hedonism and eudaimonia generally, although not always, fit the data better than demographics-only models.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Parker Lowrey of Whip Media Group and Sheila Murphy of USC Annenberg for their guidance on this manuscript and Sheana Ahlqvist of Whip Media Group for survey data collection.

Disclosure Statement

The author is an employee of Whip Media Group.

Notes

¹ The present manuscript recognizes that not all mobile app data is self-reported, with smartphones capable of logging a breadth of data (e.g., Harari et al., 2016); however, for brevity, it uses the term “app” to refer to self-report mobile apps (sometimes called “self-monitoring” apps, e.g., Carter et al., 2017) as detailed above, unless otherwise noted.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Danny D. E. Kim

Danny D. E. Kim (PhD, University of Pennsylvania) is Data Scientist at Whip Media Group and Visiting Researcher in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. His research interests include media preferences, media effects, media management, content analysis, and applications of data science techniques in media research.