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It is my strong belief that you should try everything, even if its only once. This fall, as with every year, a new season of football started. I'm not new to the concept of football of course, I understand the way in which points are scored, and I know how insane the players pay checks are, but I have never payed much more attention than that. Cumulatively, I would say I may have attentively watched half a game of NFL throughout all of my 20 years, and even that may be a stretch. My family has never really gotten into sports spectatorship as my my dad is a conductor, and spent the majority of his time in the opera house or studying his cues. So imagine my ignorance when I began spending weekends with my boyfriend and his family, where the most important part of the weekend is football Sunday (also referred to as Sunday funday). The first few games I watched, I didn't understand the hype. Now that I've watched (inattentively) quite a few games, I still don't get the hype.
So wanting to truly give this football thing a shot, when my boyfriends sister asked if I wanted to join her fantasy football league, I said absolutely (I'm pretty sure there's a thing called beginners luck??). This league in particular is an all girl league and only consists of choosing the winner and looser of the game, not all of the players on your draft (thank god). So basically we are approaching week eight and I am of course in 9th place... in dead last, and I still have no idea whats going on.
So how did this happen? I've attended all Sunday fundays since I started in the league, yet I still can't seem to understand the attraction to this ridiculous sport. The Uses and Gratifications Theory created by Mark Levy and Sven Windahl would try to understand my media consumption habits through the needs that drive me to consume this media. Their framework outlines five basic needs that drive consumption:
So wanting to truly give this football thing a shot, when my boyfriends sister asked if I wanted to join her fantasy football league, I said absolutely (I'm pretty sure there's a thing called beginners luck??). This league in particular is an all girl league and only consists of choosing the winner and looser of the game, not all of the players on your draft (thank god). So basically we are approaching week eight and I am of course in 9th place... in dead last, and I still have no idea whats going on.
So how did this happen? I've attended all Sunday fundays since I started in the league, yet I still can't seem to understand the attraction to this ridiculous sport. The Uses and Gratifications Theory created by Mark Levy and Sven Windahl would try to understand my media consumption habits through the needs that drive me to consume this media. Their framework outlines five basic needs that drive consumption:
- Cognitive needs - Needs associated with the building or strengthening of information, knowledge and understanding
- Affective needs - The strengthening of emotional, aesthetic or pleasurable experience
- Integrative needs - Improve credibility, confidence, status and stability
- Social needs - Developing and strengthening relationships with family, friends and the world
- Tension free/ Escape needs - Needs associated with tension release
![Picture](/uploads/5/0/2/1/50214435/928132671.jpg?295)
Although it may be easy to make the assumption that I am watching football to develop my cognitive needs and build my knowledge of the sport, I have still found that I don't understand (or care to understand) many of the rules. This conscious understanding of the various ways in which media content may seek to gratify my personal needs, has brought my to the conclusion that I am inadvertently serving my social needs instead. Through my presence in the ritualistic Sunday football family time, I am developing relationships with my boyfriend and his family. A progression of the Uses and Gratifications Theory was the 'Need Hierarchy' proposed by Maslow. This hierarchy acted as a foundation for the motivation of human beings and their psychological drives that are necessary for homeostasis* . The application of this progression would explain my inclusion in this particular form of media consumption as fuelled largely in part by my desire to belong and to receive love.
This deeper understanding of my personal needs, and their relation to my media consumption habits, may be eye opening, but unfortunately it still leaves me in last place of the pool**. It is important to remember that when evaluating the motivation for media consumption, on a personal level or professional brand development standpoint, that these needs are very hard to accurately determine. All of the needs outlined above must be consciously recognized by the viewer or consumer in order to be recorded, and unfortunately many of our psychological drives and processes are very much so subconscious. This doesn't mean that Maslow's Need Hierarchy or the Uses and Gratifications Theory are useless, but they should be exercised with the understanding that they provide an outline of human behaviour, and not a formula for behavioural evaluation.
*Homeostasis: "the body's automatic efforts to maintain a constant, normal state of the blood stream" (Media Audiences, 2013, p. 115)
**Thats 20$ i'll never see again.
This deeper understanding of my personal needs, and their relation to my media consumption habits, may be eye opening, but unfortunately it still leaves me in last place of the pool**. It is important to remember that when evaluating the motivation for media consumption, on a personal level or professional brand development standpoint, that these needs are very hard to accurately determine. All of the needs outlined above must be consciously recognized by the viewer or consumer in order to be recorded, and unfortunately many of our psychological drives and processes are very much so subconscious. This doesn't mean that Maslow's Need Hierarchy or the Uses and Gratifications Theory are useless, but they should be exercised with the understanding that they provide an outline of human behaviour, and not a formula for behavioural evaluation.
*Homeostasis: "the body's automatic efforts to maintain a constant, normal state of the blood stream" (Media Audiences, 2013, p. 115)
**Thats 20$ i'll never see again.