#also love watching with my dad cause he used to ref hockey so I get good commentary lol

[catzgam3rz]

God I love watching hockey I really do but sometimes the Ref calls are truly mind boggling oh my god

[blogdience]

The Last Hoorah

Welcome back to weekly blogs!!

Why do audiences consume what they do? What needs are audiences searching to satisfy based on the media they are searching to consume?

Audiences interact and engage with media for many different reasons and use media to fulfill many different needs depending on a user’s emotional well-being or a goal at a said moment in time.

For instance, many students may turn to their social media accounts to connect with friends or to keep up on the latest news every two minutes; to satisfy what needs exactly?

                       The need for escape or distraction from work.

We have all done it, student or not, media content is used as a constant distraction, although at times we may use media content to further excel our knowledge, such as digging for videos or articles to learn more on a topic.

For this particular theory of Uses and Gratifications, I want to focus on a little app I love and continuously use to satisfy my needs as a consumer of media; YouTube.

YouTube is a platform filled with videos to satisfy many needs of its users. Whether an audience member needs a good laugh, and informative learning video, or a good playlist of songs to match their mood, YouTube offers it all.

It makes me think about the particular YouTube videos I watch and reflect on why I choose to watch the videos I do and what need I am trying to fulfill.

I have always been interested in crime and the psychology and the mystery behind a criminal’s actions. I believe my fascination for it all came from my father and his career as a Peel Police detective in organized crime. 

My Dad in his full Peel Police get-up as him and my mom head to his retirement ceremony. 

First time ever seeing him wear this suit, he was always in jeans and plain t-shirts going to work!

It is something that always intrigued me, partly because the “behind the scenes” of criminal activities are only shown in movies or other fictional forms. I think the idea that humans can do such awful things, and the excitement of trying to solve something so extreme, fascinated me growing up and continues to do so. I went back and forth for years thinking of all the ways I could become a detective or deal with murder or missing people’s cases without starting as a boring ticket or traffic officer. 

Now I realize for all jobs, as drake says, you need to start from the bottom.

I have been watching true crime YouTube videos for years. When I say true crime, the videos I watch are solved and unsolved murder cases, as well as, missing people or solved abduction cases. I would think of it as a topic I am extremely interested in, however, I am not in school studying. Therefore, I turn to these videos, whose creators usually have a background in criminology, to fulfill my “needs” or interest in such topics.

Two of my favorite YouTubers who I religiously watch are Bella Fiori and Kendall Rae.

As discussed in the lecture on October 10th, Gratifications can be broken down by the MAIN acronym.

           M-modality

           A-agency

           I-interactivity

           N-navigability

I watch their videos via YouTube on both my phone and laptop; whichever is most convenient at the time that I want to watch. This is referred to as mobility. No matter where I go, I am satisfied that YouTube is available as an app via my phone or on my laptop via Safari.

As much as I love watching videos on YouTube, I also love creating videos on YouTube. I have mainly only created travel and fun vlog videos, but this is an example of agency. I consume YouTubes content but turn into a prosumer when I share my own content.

Enjoy...

When I watch YouTube videos, I do not often comment or like the video. However, there are users who do feel the need to leave their opinion, like or dislike the video or take it a step further and mimic, mock or turn it into a meme. 

Such as Rebecca Black's song “Friday”, that Professor Good showed in the lecture on November 14th, 2019. 

In the instance of the true-crime videos, as I mentioned earlier, Kendall Rae sells merch where 100% of the proceeds goes to the organization called “Thorne” where they help find victims, limit crimes, and raise awareness for sex trafficking. Audience members who purchase, design the t-shirts, leave suggestions, or share, are interacting with the creator’s content. Interacting with media content this way gives the audience members a chance to give back and feel fulfilled in doing so.

Lastly, most social media users do not just have one form of social media. I personally find myself following and interacting with the YouTubers I watch across other social media platforms. 

Different platforms of social media allow audiences to interact with media is various different ways based on what the platform offers. However, when texts get spread across different platforms it can cause a telephone effect. News or scandals can get misinterpreted or easily spread like wildfire. Not only that but with many different platforms of media allows for many different opinions.

We live in a digital day and age where “cancel culture” is huge. If one thing is misinterpreted or decoded in the wrong way, audience members can turn a person’s world upside down within hours.

In recent news, Don Cherry, a long-time Canadian Icon, shamed Canadians who do no purchase poppies during the month of remembrance for Canadian soldiers. For those who missed the live Coaches Corner episode, where Cherry “misspoke” by referring to immigrants as “you people” instead of addressing it as “everyone”, the video can be found on almost every social media platform… 

However, here is a video from City News Toronto’s YouTube channel…

The whole scandal started when Don Cherry was mentioning the poppy. A widely known symbol throughout Canada that reminds its nation of all the fallen soldiers who fought for our freedom and the ones that continue to do so.

That nights broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada was broadcasted to millions, not just in Canada, but all of America too.

How an audience interprets Don Cherry’s message is based solely on each individual audience members personal experiences and upbringing. For instance, immigrants and people of color were mainly offended by Cherry’s comments. Defending themselves, many of “those people” who immigrated to Canada, who claim that they do wear a poppy and support the Canadian vets were extremely offended by the comments made. Of course, on the contrary, those who were on Cherry’s side either kept quiet or were majority white Canadians who were born and raised here.

In this instance, those who came to Canada felt attacked by Cherry’s comments and those who were born and raised in Canada agreed with his comments. 

For instance, I am a twenty-year-old female, born and raised in Canada, and I grew up in a very hockey-oriented family which led to Don Cherry being on my television set every Saturday night. From my perspective, what Don Cherry was attempting to say was correct and everyone, whether born here or not, should be wearing a poppy in remembrance. I do not agree with how he spoke and the words he chose to use to get his message across. However, I may interpret Cherry’s comments in that way because of my background and how I was raised. 

While many people have their thoughts and opinions, I think in this case especially, the audience member’s background and demographics directly affect how you respond to the comments made by Cherry and your reaction to the news of him being let go after 38 years of Hockey Night in Canada.

However, times are changing, rights are changing, and in this social media, cancel culture day and age, comments such as Don Cherry’s do not always fly.

Fans were furious when SportsNet announced they were letting Don Cherry go. The buzz around it all hit home for many Canadians and others who grew up with Coaches Corner every Saturday night tuning in to see Don’s many crazy suits. Cherry became a Canadian icon for a reason, he became a part of the hockey audiences Saturday night viewing routine. 

Often, hockey fans become very immersed with the games they watch, especially if it is their favourite team playing. Don Cherry would give his professional hockey advice based on his evaluation of the first period. The part that made Don Cherry so popular, is his straight to the point, uncensored opinions. Cherry, aside from his hockey sense, is known to be unapologetically himself and I believe that is what fans loved about Coaches Corner. When Coaches Corner appeared after the first period, at least in my hockey household, everyone would stop and listen to Don Cherry’s thoughts on how the players, coaches, or refs were performing.

The firing of Don Cherry disrupted many Saturday night hockey rituals.

The week following Cherry’s firing, conversations throughout fans started circulating. Fans began questioning who Cherry will be replaced with or what will now fill the Coaches Corner broadcasting time after the first period.

Fandom is “associated with cultural tastes of subordinated formations of the people, particularly those disempowered by any combination of gender, age, class, and race” (Fiske cited in Sullivan, p 193).

Fandoms can hold great power when they rally together. 

For instance, Don Cherry got fired due to audience members complaining and writing into SportsNet.

On the contrary, fans of Cherry and Coach’s Corner are currently rallying together, and earlier this week protested outside of Rogers (Owner of SportsNet) headquarters in Toronto.

Whether or not Cherry gets brought back, the voices of fans are very powerful and are heard.

For instance, the city of Toronto, while awaiting Kawhi Leonard’s decision on signing with the Raptors, tried to sway the basketball star to stay with Toronto by offering “Kawhi and Dine” restaurants where Kawhi and his family would be able to eat for free. A multi-million-dollar penthouse was also offered to Kawhi for free along with many other things. Fans of Toronto and all of Canada was making an outcry for Kawhi to stay and as a result companies and real estates offered up insane deals if the athlete signed with the Raptors.

Not a bad time to be Kawhi...

Meet mini Brooke...

This is me when I was in grade four and did my very first speech on my favourite hockey player Sidney Crosby. That same year I got a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey with Crosby’s number as well as a hat.

In the lecture on November 7th, Professor Good listed on a spectrum the types of fandoms from the most passive to the most active. From passive to active the continuum went as follows; Consumer, enthusiast, fan, petty producer.

As a young fan of Sidney Crosby and always begging my parents for Penguins merchandise, I would definitely put myself in the consumer category. I would also consider mini Brooke to be an enthusiast as well as a fan because those pictures were taken moments before my dad recorded me saying my speech and later emailing it off to the Pittsburgh Penguin team.

Arguably, I could be a producer by making a fan letter and video of my speech to send to Crosby. Weeks later I got a response from the team and a signed Crosby hockey card.

Some fandoms, for instance, take their support and turn themselves into producers such as creating fan pages, blogs or YouTube accounts dedicated to the content they are fans of.

Sullivan mentions Intellectual property and discusses the challenging question of when users of digital media create content who exactly owns the content that is being generated? Should content creators, regardless of the size of their following, be given credit or payment for the refurbishment of their work?

Jack Denmo is a Canadian YouTuber from Hamilton, ON who started creating videos interviewing young adults within the bar atmosphere of Hess Village. He has a subscription of 414,000 people on YouTube and 29,500 followers on Instagram. Just recently the television station French TV aired Jack's videos on their program. One of Jacks' follower's videos recorded the feature and sent it to the YouTube Creator. 

Jack responded by posting it on his story asking French TV “Where're my cheques, boys?”.

Content creators, especially YouTubers, produce content and post it on a public platform where it has the potential to be scooped up by big companies or stations such as French TV to then be used as television entertainment for their audiences without any payment given to the original creator.

Many of us are working for these large companies for free and our audience attendance and participation are sold to advertisers. Many blog websites or social media sites would not be able to support themselves if audience members did not actively, but passively, work for them. 

Sullivan coins this term as “Crowdsourcing”. This means that companies rely on content creators and audience members to create content for them. 

For instance, many companies such as Frito-Lay did a competition with its consumers, challenging them to come up with their next chip flavour. While consumers went to work inventing and working with different flavours to create the next Lays flavour, Frito-Lay sat back and let the consumers do the work. 

On a smaller scale, I previously mentioned the YouTuber Kendall Rae and the Thorne initiative to raise awareness around sex trafficking. The t-shirt designs that are sold are to raise money for Thorne are created by Kendall Rae’s audience members. This is another example of Crowdsourcing because Kendall Rae’s fans are putting in work and effort to create a design to be sold. These fans and contributors are of course unpaid.

As you can see, audience consumption, creation, and how audiences interpret the content that they consume is extremely powerful and can sometimes raise tricky questions. 

Audience experiences and interpretations of the content that is consumed can lead to the careers of people, such as Don Cherry, to be jeopardized and “canceled”. In a generation where fans can easily make their voices heard, it ultimately has a huge impact on certain media content and what is produced to appeal to what fans want. It becomes a sticky situation also when content creators are not getting correct recognition for the work, they put into the content they create. 

At what point should an online content creator get paid and given proper ownership of their content?

As well as, who has the power in today's society? The media or the audience?

If you ask me, from the examples I have talked about within this blog, it is evident that the audiences of today's media content hold extreme power. Media companies want to satisfy the needs of consumers and will go to lengths such as changing plot lines or firing popular segment hosts, such as Don Cherry, to avoid the possibility of being canceled by overbearing audiences. 

Today, Transmedia makes news and opinions of audience members spread like wildfire. Once the headline of something breaks loose, almost every social platform is booming with the opinions of its audience members. We live in an inescapable society, where thoughts and opinions are strongly being shared. Audiences, now than ever before, have the tools and access to make their concerns known and stand for their beliefs, thus, putting power now in the audiences hands.

Thanks for reading!!!

References

Sullivan, J. (2013 or 2020). Media Audiences: Effects, users, institutions and power (1st or 2nd ed.). Sage Publications Inc., New York, NY.