THEORY

https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=smc_pub

The media system dependency theory (MSD) stresses that the amount of time spent using a
medium is explained by the audience’s dependency on the medium (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur,
1976; Loges & Ball-Rokeach, 1993). According to this theory, as a person’s needs are met from
a certain medium use, the person will increase his or her dependency on the medium. When a
person has a high dependency on a medium, he or she will use the medium more often and
longer. Therefore, in this theory the amount of time spent using a medium corresponds to its
fulfillment of a person’s needs.

In the framework in MSD, this result indicates that heavy SNS users are dependent on online
media for information and ignore other non-online alternatives. It seems like these heavy SNS
use is not conducive to accessing quality information that may only be available offline but only
related to other heavy online media use. For these users, they are highly dependent on online
media

A key to understanding Media Systems Dependency Theory and its application to digital media
is to study variations in how people depend on the Internet for in-depth, specialized information
and how they evaluate the Internet relative to traditional media for acquiring this class of
information. This study used a national probability sample to examine the dependency of the
Internet for in-depth specialized information about science, health, and business.

Results show that a significant percentage of people, from a third to a half, depend on the
Internet weekly for these types of information. In-depth, specialized information is important in
helping people who depend on media for understanding and for orientation. Because the cost of
storing and distributing this type of information online is inexpensive compared to traditional
media, the Internet holds great promise for allowing people to access in-depth specialized
information. This potential is enhanced even more by the search capabilities of the Internet

The one consistent predictor of the evaluation of the usefulness of in-depth Internet information
was age. The older the respondent, the less likely he or she was to rate the Internet information
high in usefulness. This result is consistent with most studies about the impact of age on the use
and evaluation of the Internet. Age was related to self-understanding, social-understanding, and
action-orientation dependency in a study of newspapers and MSDT.51 The relationship between
age and the evaluation of the Internet as a source is consistent with the idea that habit (stability of
media mix) plays a role in the evaluation of media. However, the magnitude of the relationship
found here was small. This probably reflects the fact that all of the respondents asked to evaluate
the Internet did, in fact, use the Internet for in-depth specialized information, or the limited range
of the measurements.