Anne Bartsch

Anne Bartsch

Anne Bartsch is Professor of Empirical Communication and Media Research at the University of Leipzig, a post she has held since April 2017. Her research centres on media entertainment and emotional media effects. She is co-author, with Mary Beth Oliver, of the 2010 paper on appreciation as an audience response in Human Communication Research, which this site cites in its article on why people like sad films.

Who she is

Bartsch studied media and communication studies with French and German literature at Martin Luther University Halle, where she took her master's degree in 1999 and her doctorate in 2004 with a dissertation on emotional communication. She completed her habilitation, a German postdoctoral qualification, at Halle in 2011 with a thesis on media entertainment.

Her career stations include research posts at Halle, among them a project funded by the German Research Foundation on emotional gratification in media use between 2006 and 2009, then Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen in 2010 and the University of Augsburg from 2010 to 2013. She was Professor of Communication Research at Ludwig Maximilians University Munich from 2013 to 2017 and moved to Leipzig in 2017.

Main work

Her listed specialisations are media entertainment, emotional media effects and eudaimonic entertainment experiences, meaning experiences valued for meaning and insight as well as for pleasure. She also works on entertainment and politics, the relation of fact and fiction in entertainment, and epistemic authority in the digital public sphere.

Key papers

Oliver, M. B., & Bartsch, A. (2010). Appreciation as audience response: Exploring entertainment gratifications beyond hedonism. Human Communication Research, 36(1), 53-81.

Key ideas

Oliver and Bartsch propose appreciation as a gratification that complements enjoyment. Across three studies, especially on serious, poignant and pensive films, they support a measure of appreciation alongside measures of fun and suspense and alongside moving and thought-provoking experiences, all linked to perceived enduring effects. A film can be valued without being fun. See Entertainment Appreciation.

In the article on sad films, appreciation names what a viewer may value in a film that is not fun. It sits beside the work of Julian Hanich and colleagues on being moved and the work of Mary Beth Oliver and Arthur Raney on hedonic and eudaimonic motives for entertainment.

Where she appears on this site

Bartsch appears in Why do we like sad films? The related concept is entertainment appreciation. Connected people are Mary Beth Oliver and Arthur A. Raney.

Sources

  1. Oliver, M. B., & Bartsch, A. (2010), Human Communication Research, 36(1), 53-81. Published abstract read at an institutional record.
  2. University of Leipzig, staff profile of Anne Bartsch, consulted 4 November 2026.