Hey guys I’m back with another new post about the way I view things!

One of the things I wanted to talk about is the uses and gratifications of media. There are many reasons why people have uses and gratifications for media! Some of the reasons are for interpersonal reasons, to pass time, information-seeking, convenience, and entertainment purposes (Sundar, S. S., & Limperos, A. M. 2013). I have some examples of uses and gratifications relating to my roommates! I have 6 roommates, 2 girl roommates and 4 boy roommates, we all have different uses and gratifications relating to the media! The first roommate is Ricky, he is ALWAYS gaming on his computer, he often would rather skip social outing and instead play games on his computer. He does this because he likes to escape. It is also because all his friends that he has other than his roommates are online. He can be social with them all the time while they game. Taylor my other roommate is always on Netflix. She does this to relax and rewind. She can escape the world and go into the world of TV. For her it is more to escape and relax than interact with others. Then we have my roommate Kenzie, she puts on TV as background noise when she does homework. She does this because for her she likes to have noise in the background to concentrate better. It helps her focus! I than have my other roommate Taylor (yes two of my roommates have the same name). He likes to listen to Spotify a lot. He does this because his passion is rap and he can get the latest rap music easily. He does this for information seeking reasons. He likes to rap himself. Then we have Matt he likes to use Tinder to interact with other and be more social. Lastly we have Mitch he likes to FaceTime and instant message his girlfriend because they are long distance and it is a way for him to interact with her more easily. Then finally we have me. I love to watch YouTube videos about Booktubers. Booktubers are people who talk about books online. I do this for entertainment purposes and information –seeking reasons. Booktubers talk about the latest books and I love searching for the next best read!

Some reasons why people use the internet for uses and gratifications is for surveillance. An example of this is my roommate Matt’s ex-girlfriend messaged me to get surveillance on him. She added me on social media so that she could ask me questions about him. It was a way to satisfy her curiosity. This is also why paparazzi is a thing. They do surveillance on celebrities to satisfy their needs and curiosities about them.

I want to talk about modality gratifications next! Modality “refers to the different methods of presentation (e.g., audio or pictures) of media content, appealing to different aspects of the human perceptual system” (Sundar, S. S., & Limperos, A. M. 2013). There are many reasons why this is useful for instance if you are driving you can’t look at things because you must focus on the road but you can listen to things! Having media in different platforms make it so useful! Another example is if you are in the shower you can’t watch TV but you can listen to music! I also personally like to listen to audiobooks while driving because I can’t physically read but I can listen to them!

I wanted to talk a little about agency based gratifications! In the article Uses and Grats 2.0: New Gratifications for New Media the authors mention agency based gratifications. Some agency based gratifications that applied to me recently was how I bought my Halloween costume! I got my costume from Spirit Halloween and absolutely loved it! I went to go look at the reviews because I loved it so much and realized that the costume had a 5-star rating! Many other users loved it just as much as me!

I like looking at reviews about books the most. I’m like to read a lot but since there are so many books in the world and not enough time to read them all I like to look at the reviews first! I have goodreads and I’m constantly on that site! I love to look at reviews of people I know to see if they liked it and what they thought! It’s really helpful and makes me more inclined to pick it up!

In my textbook at school it talked about interpretation and audience power! It stated that “the notion that audiences not only select specific media content but also bring to it a range of intellectual competencies that profoundly shape their understandings of media” (Sullivan, J. L. 2013). I think this is interesting to think about because depending on your interpretation of a situation can change your view! For instance, my one friend had come to this party and thought that this girl and guy were together and had been dating for a long time but in reality, they had met that night, he interpretation was very different from mine. I had seen the couple in question meet that night so I knew that had only just met but from an outsider’s perspective it had looked like they had known each other forever.

Another example is how everyone misinterprets Canadians because of TV shows and movies! The TV show How I Met Your Mother does this to the extreme. They love to make fun of how one of the characters are Canadian. They say things like how they all love hockey, always apologize and always say eh. This could lead to people truly misinterpreting what living in Canada is like more than they already do. People who do not live in Canada would not know any better!

In the article by Emma Pett, she talks about the Tartan brand. The tartan brand is an Asia cult brand; it focuses on very vulgar topics like rape and incest. It has a cult following (Pett, E. 2016). A relating example to this is a film my friend made me watch. She used to be obsessed with Asian culture and loved the movie Battle Royale. She read the book multiple times and made everyone watch the movie. It has a mini cult surrounding it. It is VERY terrifying to watch I could not finish the movie. At the very start a child is begging as he has a neck collar around him and then it explodes and he dies. It is very graphic and disturbing, not many people can watch movies like that. I could not stomach it. I feel like this relates to the Tartan brand because I based on the article I would not be able to watch any of that either. Watching all this you get a warped perception of Asia because it seems very violent. What everyone needs to realize is just because it shows that in the TV shows and movies does not mean that it is true.

I want to mention a little bit about the political economic approach to communication! Corporations can predict consumer behavior (Sullivan, J. L. 2013).  I have a little experience of this because my parents own lots of restaurants! They own three Shoeless Joes, one Burger King and are opening a Kernels. They must predict what consumers want. For example, they are opening the Kernels this weekend, originally most Kernels have a Baskin Robbins attached to them but since my parents are opening the Kernels in the Casino there are already lots of ice cream stores so what they did instead is open a Kernels attached with a Bubble Tea. There are not lots of Bubble Tea places in the Niagara region and lots of tourists love Bubble Tea and come to the Casino! My parents are predicting what the consumers want!

Another example I have about how people look at what consumers want and give it to them is when Disney made Moana a princess. Everyone was complaining how Disney princesses weren’t diverse enough so they came up with Moana. She is the first Hawaiian princess! Disney wasn’t known for being very diverse in the earlier films. Disney also is bringing in an African Queen and a Latina princess! Disney listened to what the people wanted and are coming up with more diverse princesses. There is also speculation about Disney giving Elsa a girlfriend in the upcoming movie Frozen 2! This would go a lot in making Disney more diverse! They did this with the new Beauty and the Beast by making LeFou gay! This made a lot of people happy because you can see how over the years the world is slowly including more diverse things!

I want to mention something about how you interpret things differently from others. For instance, different people have different views and depending on them you can interpret things differently. An example of this I have is a story I was telling my friend. I have a hamster and his name is sushi. So, I was telling my friend how my roommate had a lot of stuff in her hand so she put sushi down in the bathroom. My roommate though I was talking about sushi the hamster but I was talking about the food. My roommate had but food that was sushi in the bathroom but because I have a hamster named sushi my friend thought that was what I was referring too. I feel like misunderstandings can happen a lot because there are so many words that have different meanings and it’s easy to confuse them!

I wanted to talk a little bit about me now and the way I use media and technology. I use media because it helps me relax, keeps me entertained and I get updated with social things. For instance, I can stay connected with all my friends even if I live far away from them, I can read and watch TV for entertainment purposes. I can listen to music while showering and in the car so I won’t be bored. I also like to go on Instagram, Snapchat and just news website so I can keep updated on celebrities! It’s the easiest way to know what is going on in the world.

References:

Pett, E. (2016). Transnational cult paratexts: exploring audience readings of Tartan’s Asia   Extreme brand. Transnational Cinemas, 8(1), 35-48.             doi:10.1080/20403526.2016.1251679

Sullivan, J. L. (2013). Media audiences: effects, users, institutions, and power. Thousand Oaks,     CA: SAGE.

Sundar, S. S., & Limperos, A. M. (2013). Uses and Grats 2.0: New Gratifications for New            Media. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 57(4), 504-525.           doi:10.1080/08838151.2013.845827