GWS 2021: Inspiring media

The last time we dove into the Great Wargaming Survey results (see: What Inspires You?), the analysis focused on dissecting primary wargaming inspiration to see what sparks motivation. Today's analysis examines a related survey question. That question asks about media sources of inspiration. As in the inspiration question looked at last time, today's question allowed for up to three choices for media sources of wargaming inspiration. Those results were aggregated, and the final counts are shown in Figure 1. The top four choices overall are:

1. Printed book or magazine
2. Online video
3. Social media
4. Film or TV

Given the current shift in emphasizing digital media, seeing the appearance of physical books or magazines coming out on top may be somewhat of a surprise. Or is it?

Media source by age group

One theme consistent throughout many of these deep-dives into the survey results is that respondent age matters. Looking at the choices of media, it may not be much of a leap of faith to imagine that age may play a role in choice here as well. When examining the results as a percentage of Age Group by Media Source, we see that digital media is favored by the 40-and-under groups. For audio book listeners, almost 40% (37.4%) of all responses to this preferred media source fall into the 31-40 age group. Similarly, wargamers in the 31-40 age group are the largest consumers of all digital media.  See Figure 2 for details. Are there age dependent tendencies in preferred media consumption? Tough to discern from a quick glance at Figure 2. Transposing the results in Figure 2 to show Media Source by Age Group reveals distinctive patterns of media consumption. See Figure 3. What pattern pops out of the graphic above? Two tendencies become easily identifiable at a glance. One, online video consumption declines monotonically as age increases and, two, printed media (books and magazine) usage increases directly as age increases. While we may think these results intuitive and obvious, it is striking to see the survey confirm these intuitions, graphically. Do I fit into the media source tendencies of my age group as shown in the results? Not quite.  My top 3 media sources for wargaming inspiration are:

• Printed book or magazine
• A Blog
• Digital book or magazine.

I tend to derive much more inspiration from blogs than the aggregated survey statistics suggest. Perhaps my perspective is biased since I am communicating these results via a blog post? How about you? Do your media sources for wargaming inspiration correspond with the survey results as detailed for your age group?  If not, how do your choices differ? What are your Top 3 media sources for wargaming inspiration?