The Use and Gratification theory is based around an active audience and is an approach to understanding why we as consumers enjoy and continue to enjoy specific forms of media. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs outlines four basic needs for someone to use a type of media outlet and can be simplified and applied to this series as, information, personal identity, personal relationships, and diversion. One of the main aspects that we focused on in this theory was the idea of fandom, or personal identity driving you to use media. Fandom began in the united states with baseball. Baseball became a very popular sport in the US and has picked up a lot of fans on the way. Fans were and still are able to buy and collect baseball cards featuring their most beloved players, but fandom (as we know) doesn’t apply to just sports. In the mass media world there are fandoms for almost everything, just look at what kind of groups there are on Facebook!

This weeks screening of the Galaxy Quest documentary and the Jaws 45th anniversary remake were very interesting and truly showed the power of the fans. I remember the first time watching Galaxy Quest when I was younger. My parents thought it was the funniest thing in the world, not only because it was casted with funny actors that they had grown up seeing, but it had also tapped into their childhood of watching Star Trek after school. This was accomplished by using actors who were real life and of the movies it was based off of, and real great use of special effects all the way down to the costume design and character development. This made it even easier for the movie not to come off as making fun of Star Trek, but making it a funny memory of good old times and possibly made it into an even bigger fandom.

What Fandoms are you in or were in?

Do you think fandoms are powerful enough to impact society as a whole to create change in a community?