Uses and gratification

theory

Media influence

Overview of Uses and Gratification Theory

Suggests that the media has no power over audiences

Proposes that audiences have uses for particular forms

of media and use their chosen media for personal
gratification

gratify - to give someone satisfaction

Proposes that audiences are active participants in the

communication process and texts are open as
audiences create their own meanings

Where did it come from?

Originated in the 1940s as an extension to Lazarsfelds

ideas about audience interaction with the media

Came about to debunk the Hypodermic theory of media

effects

Diverged from other media effect theories that question

"what does media do to people? and instead focused on
the question "what do people do with media?

Functions of the media

Harold Lasswell, a member of the Chicago School of Sociology and an
advocate of the Uses and Gratification theorized that the media served
four functions:
1. surveillance (keeping people informed by providing information and
news)
2.correlation (selecting and interpreting information to distribute)
3.entertainment (presenting material that is relaxing and fills leisure
time)
4.cultural transmission for society and individuals (communicating
norms, values and rules of society)

The uses and gratification theory

Katz and Blumler developed this theory further in 1974

and expanded on Lasswells original functions, adding:

to provide an emotional release from problems

to provide companionship

to reinforce personal identity

The power of the

audience

Mostly based on quantitative research such as TV ratings

This theory not only proposes that audiences are active in using the media, it
also suggests that the audience has power over the media.

If people fail to watch a TV show, for example, ratings will be down and it is likely
the show will be taken o the air.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths
Particularly relevant in a diverse
media environment where audiences
have choice - on social media and
the Internet, for example, audiences
must be active

Weaknesses
Too functionalist (i.e. it views the
media as serving a purpose and
being useful to audiences) thus
ignoring potential negative impact

Largely reliant on quantitative

Relies on individuality and
research (e.g. survey data) which
acknowledges that audiences are all may not adequately reflect the
dierent
complex relationship between the
media nd the audience

APPLYING THE THEORY

Some Tweet this: A uses and gratifications perspective on how

active Twitter use gratifies a need to connect with others research

A study by Gina Masullo Chen (2011)

The core of the U&G approach is that it asks what

people do with media, not what the media does to
people.

This aspect of U&G is particularly salient for Twitter use

because it explains how people first select this medium
and then use it to meet their psychological or social
needs.

APPLYING THE THEORY

Some Tweet this: A uses and gratifications perspective on how

active Twitter use gratifies a need to connect with others research

Use of Twitter functions also positively correlates with

gratification of this need for connection, with frequency of
tweet- ing showing the strongest relationship (r = .63, p
< .01). This shows support for the hypothesised
contention that use of Twitter functions mediates the focal
relationship between active Twitter use and gratification of
the need to connect with others on Twitter.

Twitter is not just virtual noise of people talking at each

other, as some critics contend, but that it is a medium
that people actively seek out to gratify a need to connect
with others.