In class this week, we discussed the Uses and Gratifications Theory and fandom. The U&G Theory is an approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. The U&G Theory is also an audience-centered approach to understanding mass communication. It assumes that the audience members are not passive consumers of media. Rather, the audience has power over their media consumption and assumes an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. Unlike the other theoretical perspectives we talked about, the U&G Theory holds that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their desires and needs to achieve gratification.

There are several needs and gratification for people. They are categorized into five needs: Cognitive: Refers to acquiring information to aid the thinking and understanding process. People use media such as documentaries and how-to videos to increase their skills or knowledge in a certain area.

Affective: Relates to emotions or feelings. People use media to arouse certain emotions within themselves, such as happiness, fear or pleasure.

Personal Integrative: Refers to promoting one’s own image, reputation or status. People with this need use media, like Facebook and YouTube, to increase their credibility or social standing or to affirm their sense of self.

Social Integrative: Refers to interacting with family and friends. People use media to connect with others.

Tension Free: Relates to diversion and stress relief. People use media to escape from reality.

To support the U&G Theory, we viewed a film called Galaxy Quest. Galaxy Quest focused on this alumni cast of a space television series having to play their roles as the real thing when an alien race needs their help. However, they also had to defend both Earth and the alien race from a reptilian creature. Galaxy Quest was incredibly huge when it came to fandom because it was powered by fans who deeply cared about the show. Galaxy Quest was the first film that put fans at the center of the action and really foretold the era we are in now, where fans are the most powerful force in entertainment.

As well as Galaxy Quest, fandom also occurs in television shows including  Family Guy. Family Guy was a television series that had been cancelled many times, but because of its fans, the show had been reborn and renewed. Fans hold such power because they are much more than consumers. They are advocates and influencers. I believe the power of the fans is the most important thing for entertainment. Fans will dedicate a lot of their time supporting and looking up to someone they admire and receive inspiration from them. The thing about fandom is that many celebrities do not give much attention to them and do not receive any credit. They do not realize that fans are everything. I do not think a person would be successful without his or her fans.

This week in class we watched Galaxy Quest and learned a lot about U&G theory. I found it very interesting to go over the key needs of gratification; Cognitive, affective, personal integration and tension free needs. This conversation that we had in class on Monday made me very reflective of my own needs, thinking about what I actually needed versus what society tells me that I need or want. Social media not only uses and expands on these needs but it convinces us of new needs that may be completely unnecessary.

A big focus of this week was fandoms, to expand and explore this idea of fandom and fans we watched Galaxy Quest. I thought that this movie was very well done and I was very intrigued when it was the fans came to the rescue at the end. I believe that this was genius writing because it was an ending that so many people and fans of anything could connect aspire and dream about helping their heroes, even if they may not be real.

People often desire another life, at least for a moment, I think that the saying “the grass is always greener on the other side” if very true and that people need to dream of different possibilities that may or may not be possible, this is one of the bog reasons that fandoms are so big, fans can put themselves into their favorite movie, television or comics and imagine what that world could be like.

There is also a group dynamic to Fandoms that is very strong, we watched a Ted talk at the beginning of the week which told the story of the women who before the internet thought that she was the only woman star was fan in the world, this shows how the internet can bring people of all sort of groups, not just fans, together and although them to connect and feel heard by similar minded people. In class, you were talking about how you met a group of people who “could finish your sentences” and how amazing that feeling is to be with a group of people that are so like-minded and understand your passion for something completely.

I too had this experience over the summer where I had an incredible oppirtunity to go to a pottery workshop in Wisconson with potters of all ages from all over the world. This was so amazing becuase even though we had such differnt expiremntces, we all got along incredibly well and understood each others passion for cermics in a way that nobody esle could. (picture on the left is me loading the Anagama kiln full of our work)

-Grace Hanlon

In class we learned about the Uses and Gratification Theory, which is a theory that takes a different approach than most other theories that we have learned about in class. This theory focuses on how we (the viewer) take an active role in choosing the media we consume, whereas other theories focus on the affect media has on the viewer.

We learned about the different needs of the viewer, as to why they choose the media that they do. These needs include, cognitive, affective, social integrative, and tension free. Out of these, I can relate to the tension free need the most. This is a need to escape reality and release tension, this need is specific to the individual. Whenever I feel overwhelmed or I can’t do anymore work, I turn on a show to escape for a little while. I find that with whatever I watch I am completely engaged and I forget about the outside world. This can be very helpful to relax, but also dangerous because I may be so caught up in the show or movie that I am unproductive. I start to binge watch…

Research was done to test the U&G Theory. This theory was tested on game/quiz shows. It was found that people love these shows because they are able to put themselves into the game and answer the questions themselves. When they get an answer correct they feel like an expert and their ego is fed. This feeling would relate to the personal integrative need, which measures status in society or your self-esteem. These shows are also popular for families to watch together. They are appropriate for kids of all ages, making it an easy choice for parents. This meets the social integrative need, which is the need to socialize with family or friends.

We watched a screening in class called Galaxy Quest that supports U&G Theory, but also fandom. Fandom is based around “fans” and how they support their specific media that they are fans of. There are different levels of fans: mild, active, and pro-active. Fans are a powerful tool in media production. It was the fans who brought back Family Guy and Futurama when it was cancelled on TV. Without fans media would lose importance, it’s the viewers that make a show or movie successful. In Galaxy Quest it was evident in the first scene how important the fans are to a movie/show. Galaxy Quest a movie within their movie. The opening scene is about the actors and their roles. They are in a large convention for the movie, where all of the fans have come dressed up and waiting for autographs. Some people are so engaged that they truly believe the movie is real and they are a part of it. This gives a prime example of the importance of fans to media. Without them the film would not be such a success.

The fans in Galaxy Quest have became so involved it is their escape from reality. They can be a part of something bigger than the real world. It opens doors to meet people who have the same interests as them. They can make new friends and socialize in ways they may not have been able to before. U&G theory is evident in many forms throughout Galaxy Quest, pointing emphasis at why the viewer chooses media, not how the media affects the viewer.

The need for graduation from media and movies has been in a great incline since the invention of television. In the 80’s people started to amass over their favorite television shows. This has created a term called fandom.

This idea of fandom is the obsession of people over a certain movie or television show this has allowed the fans to be able to put their input into their shows. This would allow the producers to know what way their viewers would approve of. This is one way we are able to fulfill their urge in order to be satisfied.

People have adapted to getting their way and what we want when we want it. We can relate this back to the book we read throughout the school year present shock. He talked about how we need to have things happen institutionally not over time we have become more reptile like. Filling their urges as soon they are able to not waiting. Social media has flooded us. We have talked about how we have to get information quickly as possible.

We watched a movie this week that really blows this idea of fandom out of the water. It also shows how important they are. The characters had to rely on the dedicated fans who believed them so much to walk them through the bowels of their ship. Knowing it better than the actors themselves. This movie was galaxy quest.

In the movie, only one person was excited about living the rest of his life. His role took over his life but the rest of his friends despite it being lesser roles and not as beloved as he was. So much to having breakdowns or nearly fighting the fans to say famous lines. He lived on the fandom being as rich as he could living on a role that he lived 20 years ago. It was the only thing that was allowing him to continue living life carefree for the most part. In the movie the fans were so strong they even got a reboot. This happened after a long complicated quest but still. Shows once they die stay dead. Reboots for television doesn’t happen. Mummy movies now are having a resurgence. This is happening because of the fan base. Some examples are Avatar the Last air bender, new Jurassic Park movies, and new terminator movies have also been flooding the market of late.

This week, we mainly watched two episodes of The Newsroom. The show give me a clear idea of how the newsroom runs and what’s the important element of a great show.

At the beginning of the show, The main character Will’s speech show a lot of problem of the media industry. For a journalist, don’t shows your own political opinion is actually importance, you won’t offended your audiences. Every move you made on the TV show won’t be ignored and the anchor’s choice will be judge be the audiences and no matter what there will be people against it. Internet troll are all over the society right now. If you have certain amount attention and fans, the internet troll will pay more attention on you and they will twist your opinion to get more attention. The speech Will made almost get his career over, his producer hopped and take most of his stuff with him afterward. But in my opinion, his speech was just telling the truth.

After the whole drama, they produced a great show. It really told us what’s the most important element of a great show. Jim, the senior producer became to be the center of that episode. He discovered the news which has potential and actively followed up. When his supervisor disagree with his thoughts, he didn’t shrink back, use his knowledge tried to get deeper news. At this point, he fortunately get some secret news from two of his informants. So the secret of success in the newsroom is that you need to have sharp observation, full of knowledge, good resources and good luck. That’s how you determine the right news. But run the show is a totally different story. It takes a whole team to create a show. The anchor Will don’t need teleprompter, the EP can pull things together really quick, and it need all kinds of assistant to create a complete show.

Through the story moving we can tell, Will is becoming a nice character on the screen, adjust the content of show for the audience rating over and over again, he forgot the original passion of making news, I think that is a problem for us right now. Unlike decades before, we only have six major companies are running the television, the competition has been brought to upper level. On one side, that’s a good sign, became people will have more motivation to create new things, but on the other side, producers will make compromise for better audience rating.

Both Monday and Wednesday in class we watched episodes of The Newsroom. Right now I am taking a journalism class so I thought I would have a little understanding of how things are ran in a news office, however it definitely was not what I thought. Though the concept of digging through events or issues to find the most newsworthy and being able to sum it up for the leading statement and typical journalism rules, It ended up being more exciting/crazy than I pictured.

The beginning of the first episode “We Just Decided To”, A panel discussion is taking place and all of the candidates are asked, “What makes America the greatest country in the world?.” Will MvAvoy has pretty much avoided every other question at this point by making a joke until they made him actually answer, to which he snapped and didn’t sugarcoat the answer. He told the truth that nobody wanted to hear. That America isn’t the greatest country in the world anymore, and how we need to do something about it. The question at this point is, How does he win back Americans after suggesting the country is not as great as public figures make it out to be.

After his burst, he had gotten a lot of negative feedback and hate, raising the stakes to come up with a perfect angle to the perfect story to cover to win everyone back.

That is when the oil spill in the Gulf happened and they told different story than everyone else and they knew things were going to be okay.

In Wednesdays episode, the focus point was on how they were losing ratings because a very high percentage of people were changing the channel within the first 10 or so minutes. The team is then forced to decide to report on what the audience wants to see vs. what they believe they need to see.

The other topic we discussed this week was how entertainment services have changed throughout the years. In 1983, 90% of American media was owned by 50 companies. That may not seem like a lot to some people but in 2011 it was proven that the same 90% was owned by just 6 out of the original 50.

These big six leave little room for competition, and numerous job opportunities for people.

In class we watched episodes from The Newsroom and got a taste of what actually goes on in newsrooms. I did not really have a vision of what occurred when news broke or there was a major story to share. Newsrooms have a hectic atmosphere, or that is what I gathered, especially from the first episode. There is a constant stream of information coming through and it must be sorted and sifted through to find the best stories.

In the first episode Will, along with two other news anchors, were being questioned by the audience. The other two anchors were upfront with their views and responses whereas Will was not. Will responded with sarcasm and jokes and was hesitant to state his opinion. But then he was asked a very interesting question “What makes America the greatest country in the world?” The other two news anchors could answer no problem, but Will hesitated. He saw a sign from someone in the crowd and that was when he snapped. Will was urged to state his opinion and when he did there was no stopping him. He was very passionate in his response and listed all of the reasons why American was NOT the greatest country in the world. Of course after this happened, there were videos posted everywhere. Will had put a large dent in his career but why? He had spoken his mind and much of it was very truthful. The public does not like the truth if it hurts. I think this was a very useful event to use in the show.

I think this show gives people a better understanding of how the news affects the viewer. This show worked to allow the viewer to make their own decisions on the information they are receiving. They wanted to leave it up to the viewer to think on their own and to have their own opinions. It is so popular in today’s age for the news to coerce you into thinking about one thing. The media is capable to blur our vision on certain events and aim our focus at something else. We are unable to realize that what we are seeing, how much of it, and how we’re told about it effects our views.

Will Mcavoy is a very important character to the show and he tests the limits of the news and pushes the limits. After watching two episodes you are hooked and want to continue watching. There is something exhilarating about the process of the newsroom.

During this week in class we focused primarily on the show The Newsroom. Before taking this class I have never watched this show until now. I liked how the show brings forth past events and does not make up any news stories for entertainment, it gives the show a real feeling to it and we can then relate to these stories and make connections about what happened. It keeps the show relevant and interesting to watch rather than some made up news story. After the first episode I saw how TV personalities can slip up and make a bad decision which will affect their ratings, even if it was just voice his opinion instead of being neutral.

By being distracted by this sign the main character finally voiced his true opinion instead of some comedic answer that makes the crowd laugh. He gets a ton of backlash and negative feedback because of what he said, even though it was true. After losing a massive amount of their audience they had to find a way to get back on top with a story that will bring in new and their lost viewers. That’s when there was an oil spill in the Gulf and everyone was scrambling to get their hands on the first scoop and deliver to the people. Thanks to the addition of two people and a newly hired intern they were able to get all the information they needed and give it to the public before anyone else. They had multiple leads that followed through and came in clutch for them.

As discussed in class it seems we have all these choices when it comes to media entertainment, but in fact we don’t. There are only six major companies that make up almost all of what we read, watch, and listen to. These six major corporations have monopolized and control this industry, which is completely different from just a couple of decades ago where there were over fifty companies. Now that the fifty went all the way down to six there is even a bigger need to create more shows and content for the people, this also means that there will be more jobs available to people because of the workload needed to put out these shows. With all of these opportunities being produced by these huge corporations we should think about supporting them rather than disliking the companies.

This week we discussed how the news is presented nowadays compared to how it was presented. The Newsroom is a great depiction of how news broadcasters used to do the news. The main objective then was to get critical information out to the public in an efficient way. In the first episode of The Newsroom, it presented problems with modern day news and also showed how news should be broadcasted. In the show, the major issue discussed was what type of content should be on the news. Whether or not they should focus on actually real problems that are faced in the world or focus on gaining more viewers and simply doing an entertainment show. Many of the characters had their own opinion on the matter.

The first episode was the pilot called “We Just Decided To”, the main point in this episode was to prove to the world that real news is still out there. The main character is named Will McAvoy who is the anchor on the Atlantis Cable News and is the leader of his news team. Will is stunned to find out his ex was his new executive producer and that almost his entire original news team was leaving him to work for someone else. Mackenzie is his new executive producer and brought her own employee whom she highly recommends to work on their team. Will tries to have Mackenzie fired but his agent will not allow that so instead Will sacrifices his own paycheck to have complete control over Mackenzie. He now has the power to fire her at the end of every week depending on how she preforms. During the episode, Mackenzie’s employee begins to receive a news alert about an oil spill but Will’s old employee conflicts with the alert saying that it’s nothing to worry about. The entire team does more research on the situation to find that it is much worse than they thought. This is brought to Wills attention and they broadcast a show that night to alert the public of what the task at hand is and how it could’ve been prevented.

We also discussed how news today is completely different from when it first started. The news sole purpose was to alert the public about important incidents that are happening around them. This idea has been altered and mis-interpreted. Nowadays, the news focuses on making sure the public only knows one perspective of certain issues. The news has the power to change peoples complete ideals just from how they present situations.

-Noah Soriano

This weeks lessons were focussed on the news as well as outlets of the news. As we are all aware, there are many different “news” stations that you can throw on each day to gather some intelligence of what may be going on around you that day. It is always great to have options but that might not be the case when those options have agendas. This idea brings us back to a past topic of agenda setting. Each news outlet will broadcast what they want you to see and think. In the two screenings of the Newsroom that we observed this week the ACN team was able to show us how ratings and some other factors can be the dictators of the news as opposed to just broadcasting ACTUAL news.

From what was shown in those two episodes, people should take a deeper look at the news that they watch and ask themselves if they are being giving all the information / all the truth. Our current president was one person who went ahead and called out the news outlets claiming “FAKE NEWS” which is important that we do. We must check the credibility of sources to be a properly informed people. The great importance of this dates wayyyyy back. If the people are not properly informed than they will be unable to make informed decisions when it comes to government, safety, health and basically everything else.

Part of this is the reason I have the lack of news following habit that I do (aka none). I know it is not optimal for myself and others in the same boat as me to not follow any news, but personally I hate when people ramble at me about things that do not effect me or those around me. For example I don’t need to know all the gossip on what the celebrities are up too, but I would like to know about all the civil wars that are going on around the world or when there going to be decision made that will change the future. WE WANT PERTINENT REAL NEWS!!!

The television series the Newsroom did a good thing in coming out to try combatting fake news. This show focuses on how they are trying to break away from the way everyone is reporting news and go back to the way news used to be reported. Back when people were able to put trust in their anchormen and the anchormen had nothing to prove so they were able to just tell what was needed to be reported on. It is too bad that today we have to fact check everything that we are told in order to gain one piece of truth. BRING BACK REAL NEWS PLEASE!!!!!

-SHANE WEBER