Shared enjoyment Online videos, social information, and hedonic entertainment experiences

Social media are extremely popular platforms that people often use to watch online video material. These platforms typically present videos together with user comments and video (dis)likes. This social information gives viewers an idea of how others evaluated and experienced videos. Extant research indicates that social information can influence the enjoyment that people experience when they watch online videos. Yet, our understanding of when and how the effect of social information on video enjoyment emerges is limited. This dissertation reports four empirical studies that investigate the role of social information by studying its characteristics, viewers’ attention to social information, the role of the source of social information, and the mechanisms underlying its effects. The findings indicate that social information plays an important role in shaping viewers’ hedonic entertainment experiences. Thus, it seems that entertainment is – at least partly – a social experience.