Formative Media Experiences A Mixed-Methods Approach From a Theory of Resonance Perspective

Time and again, people report experiences with media content that were individually meaningful, particularly lasting, and associated with far-reaching consequences. The bandwidth of such rare and memory-rooted formative media experiences, and the consequences associated with them, is wide, and the phenomenon is highly individual. The paper presents a theoretical conceptualization of such experiences based on resonance theory and its thorough empirical test in a mixed-methods approach. As the results showed, this phenomenon is individually rare, but considerably widespread: Based on a representative online sample of German-speaking people, about one-third of the population has had at least one such experience at some point in their lives. Three types of formative media experiences can be differentiated, which differ mainly with regard to the areas of life affected: formative media experiences concerning values/personality and interpersonal affairs, formative media experiences concerning leisure and profession, and formative media experiences concerning health, diet, and consumer behavior.