Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-2002

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Communication

Major Professor

Dorothy Bowles

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine how college students who say they are sports fans use the media for their newsgathering habits. Data were collected from 158 respondents at the University of Tennessee and compiled to draw conclusions regarding their media use for gathering sports news and information. The study was based on the uses and gratifications approach to mass communication studies. Uses and gratifications is a theory that attempts to explain why people use certain media in fulfilling their everyday needs. The basic premise is that people are goal oriented in their media use and will use each medium in a different way in fulfilling different needs. The study found significant differences in the way students gather sports news and information and how they used each medium. An overwhelming 95.6 percent of respondents said they used television for gathering sports news and information. Respondents also indicated that they used newspapers and the World Wide Web a great deal in gathering sports news and information. Magazines were the least-used medium, as only 27.2 percent of respondents said they used magazines for gathering sports news and information. Males indicated that they used the media more than females for gathering sports news and information. However, females tended to be more social in their newsgathering habits. This study was a new application of the uses and gratifications approach. No other studies have dealt with audience gratifications and media use for sports news and information, but this thesis shows that there is room for more research in this area.

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