Uses and Gratification

1. The social and psychological origins of2. Needs, which generate3. Expectations of4. The mass media or other sources, which lead to5. Differential patterns of media exposure (or engagement in other activities,

resulting in6. Need gratifications and7. Other consequences, perhaps unintended ones.

From Katz, et.al

Theoretical assumptions1. Audience is conceived as active: mass media use is goal-directed2. Audience member chooses to link need gratification with media choice3. Media compete with other sources of need satisfaction4. Methodologically: audience is self-aware, so they can self-report5. Value judgments about the cultural significance of mass communication needs

to be suspended ( e.g. high/low culture debate, as in Shils)

Audience gratifications derive from1. Media content2. Exposure to media per se3. Social context of media exposure

Uses and Gratification

….early U&G studies were primarily descriptive, seeking to classify the responses of meaningful categories.

Criticisms of early U&G research focus on the fact that it (a) relied heavily onself-reports, (b) was unsophisticated about the social origin of the needs that audiences bring to the media, (c) was too uncritical of the possible dysfunction both for self and society of certain kinds of audience satisfaction, and (d) was too captivated by the inventive diversity of audiences used to pay attention to the constraints of the text.

Until the 1970s, U&G research concentrated on gratifications sought, excludingoutcomes, or gratifications obtained

Windahl (1981)…sought to advance U&G theoretically. In his “Uses and Gratifications at the Crossroads,” he argued that the primary difference between the traditional effects approach and the U&G approach is that a media effects researcher usually examines mass communication from the perspective of the communicator, whereas the U&G researcher uses the audience as a point of departure.

Uses and Gratification

[M]uch contemporary criticism of U&G challenges assumptions that include (a) media selection initiated by the individual; (b) expectations for media use that are produced from individual predispositions, social interaction, and environmental factors; and (c) active audiences with goal-directed media behavior

Changes in media environment undermines earlier research:InteractivityDemassificationAsynchronicity

Has innovation in media technology validated the basic tenets of uses and gratification theory?