Research On The Impact Of Entertainment News From The Play Theory Of Mass Communication

William Stephenson started to research the play theory on1958,Found that in allearlier research on mass communication is any consideration of its play elements and hetried to develop ideas which give the play theory of mass communication a firmtheoretical basis, among these the idea of communication-pleasure is of first important.In an ideal situation, the mass communication allows people to become absorbed insubjective.During the research on play theory, Stephenson thought to distinguish thedifferences between the Social Control and convergent selectivity, because doing so canfind a brand new way on “interested”, which was important.In the play theory of mass communication, first difference is “work”and “play”,work is a kind of “communication-pain”, someone has to do something, finish a task,ittake a normal person most of a time in one day, but it can also brings some materialgain. Play is “communication-pleasure”, it is going in a fair situation after the work,andfunny, can make people self-comfortable,but it can not bring material.The principle of social is make manifest in people values and beliefs.It gives peopletheir religious belief and political faith. Depending upon the region in which welive,each of us follows the same customs, worships the same God. and has the samebasic way of life. These a all subject to social control.The principle of convergentselectivity is very different.It concerns new or non-customary modes of behavior,fadsand fancies, which allow people to exist for themselves, free to a degree from socialcontrol. It is here that mass communication is important,and as will be shown, in afundamental way, play, is for doing work better.What can media do for the audience, researchers brought all kinds of functions, nomatter the two functions,or three functions or five functions or even eight functions, theyall from difference views or administrative levels, they are not perfect but reasonable,but in these functions all mention the entertainment or play factors.To play or make people happy, Sensational news is a real way to perform thisfunction. It can adjust people’s life,enhance their knowledge, so newspapers need it.No matter the sensational news or entertainment,they are all information products foraudience. But the entertainment news is a kind of process.Over entertainment makes a lots of negative things. But in play theory, audiencechoose to read newspaper is just for fun, but It’s not a negative fun, because playing cannot make any food clothes or other materials,and audience no longer trust everythingfrom media,they almost hesitate everything, just because over entertainment.There are four parts in this article, first analyses the play theory of masscommunication,find out how the theory make people do the convergent selectivity, thenview the entertainment news process，try to find some regularties, and connect this theoryto the American news history,make some corrects.