The media has five different needs and gratification theories which are:

Cognitive, Affective, Personal Integrative, Social Integrative, and Tension Free.

Affective needs satisfy emotions through music, books, film, TV, comics, etc. Personal Integrative needs help people measure their status in society. Social Integrative needs fills the need to communicate with friends and family to retain relationships. Examples of this are people who seek out commonalities among groups that watch the same show, play a video game, go to a convention, etc. There are numerous groups out there…even Bronies.

We then watched Henry Jenkins on Participatory Culture.

A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created). (Kulowiec, A Medium Corporation).

A quote that I took from the video that I found to be powerful was that “They don’t need us snooping over them, but they do need us watching their backs”.

We then watched a TED Talk by Mary Franklin, former Sr. Events Lead for Lucas Film, a position in which she coordinated various marketing and promotional events for the company. She had gotten this position because she is such a huge fan of Star Wars and was apart of the StarWars online fan club; which plays back into social integrative needs. She was able to help the company because being a fan, she knew what everyone wanted to see or happen.