Uses and Gratification

Media is used by several reasons by the audience;

• Entertainment
• Information
• Personal Identity
• Social Interaction

These reasons and ideas are linked into the Blumler and Katz theory; Uses and Gratification. Entertainment is media that makes us feel emotions, information is media that tells us facts, personal identity is media that reinforces who you are or aren’t, and social interaction is media that allows you to create links with other people – for example if you see some information on the news you can then share the media with other people.

With this knowledge it will help and give me help with my music magazine because I will need to consider  ways to promote my magazine and ways to get a bigger and broader audience. My knowledge will also help with my editing skills because I will need to arrange collages and work out ways of how to produce my media creatively. Blumler and Katz’s theory will also impact me when I am producing my magazine because it will help me direct my magazine to fit the uses and gratifications. For example I could use a popular band to help with my advertising which would draw people in to reading my magazine because they personally identify with that band, however I will use as many uses and gratifications as possible to maximise my audience.

My Collage

My collage is called ‘My Media World’ and it shows the ways that I consume media through the Blumler and Katz theory. I have included images of media that I use for entertainment, such as social media apps and BBC iPlayer. For information I have included platforms of media like ITV News, The Guernsey Press and BBC Radio 2. For me, I personally connect with specific films and television shows like The Big Bang Theory and The Parent Trap, as well as listening to Ben Platt and Declan McKenna on Spotify – this is my personal identity. And finally I am able to connect to my friends and my family through social media platforms like Youtube, television shows like How I Met Your Mother and films that are produced by Marvel – social interaction. I labelled some of my images with the headings from Blumler and Katz’s theory to highlight what I use media for. 

Media Ecology

Media Ecology is made up of a lot of components, and without one component, the others would be affected negatively. They all need each other to work successfully.

Media Ecology is made up of:

• Audience
• Creators
• Distribution
• Government/ Law
• Institutions
• Money
• Social Media
• Technology

I created a mind map that showed what would happen if technology wasn’t a part of the Ecological World and how it would affect the other aspects of Media Ecology. The main aspects that would be affected would be:

• Audience – without technology there wouldn’t be an online audience to reach out to because there would be no customers; the only media available would be newspapers and cinemas etc which only branch out to a small variety of the audience
• Creators – without the invention of technology, platforms like social media, television and radio wouldn’t have been invented and therefore there would’ve been no need for creators such as actors, musicians and designers because there would have been no media for them to appear on.
• Money – technology brings profit to companies, such as Apple, which then allows them to produce and sell more products. However, without technology these companies wouldn’t have been created which would increase unemployment; this links in to how the creators would be affected.

I will use the concept of Media Ecology when producing my magazine because it will help me think about how I can reach out to the biggest audience possible by distributing my magazine in the best way. I will also consider the use of social media platforms because it is another way of reaching out to my audience, specifically the younger generation, and it can help me promote my magazine.

These are the collective ideas of how the Media Ecology links together – it represents that without one component, the Ecological world would stop.

Our Media Ecology Lego Land

Our Lego Land represented a Fire Station and it symbolized how a the media ecology would work because without one component, the whole operation would collapse.

Our example was that an old man, Steve, had a troublesome pet dinosaur who kept getting stuck up trees. Conveniently, Steve lives next to the Fire Station so whenever he needed help to get his dinosaur out of the tree he could just pop around and ask for some help from Jeff and Tim (the Firemen). Steve would then pay the government for the station’s service. This money then went into the Fire Station where the Firemen were paid which helped Jeff and Tim with their families and it also went into maintaining the Fire Station.

Without Steve’s troublesome dinosaur, no money would go into helping the Fire Station or into Jeff and Tim’s pockets; this would make the Fire Station collapse and stop operating. Similarly, without the Fire Station, Steve would never be able to get his dinosaur out of the tree. Therefore this represents Media Ecology because without one component, everything else wouldn’t work.

Within this course I am hoping to learn how the media world impacts on our day to day activity and some useful and effective ways to branch out to a large audience through media. I am also hoping to improve my producing and editing skills. In the past I have had a Youtube channel where I uploaded videos of my music. I have also created videos and films with Mr Gregson in Project Weeks which I thouroughly enjoyed and hope to learn more about filming and the different types of angles you have to use to create a successful video/film. I am on various platforms of social media like Instagram and Snapchat where I produce my own media by posting pictures and updating my profile.

In the future, I think media would be a very useful skill for my career so that I can understand what goes into advertising products and how to approach the correct and a large audience. Media will also improve my communication skills and enhance my time management skills.

I find media very interesting in the way that it affects the world in different ways and I am very excited to learn more about it!