Uses and gratifications theory is a communication theory that describes the reasons and means by which people seek out media to meet specific needs. The theory postulates that media is a highly available product, that audiences are the consumers of the product, and that audiences choose media to satisfy given needs as well as social and psychological uses, such as knowledge, relaxation, social relationships, and diversion. Uses and gratifications theory was developed from a number of prior communication theories and research conducted by fellow theorists. The theory has a heuristic value because it gives communication scholars a "perspective through which a number of ideas and theories about media choice, consumption, and even impact can be viewed".
History
1940s: Basic premise Beginning in the 1940s, researchers began to see patterns under the perspective of the uses and gratifications theory in radio listeners. Early research was concerned with topics such as children's use of comics and the absence of newspapers during a newspaper strike. An interest in more psychological interpretations emerged during this time period. By 1944, researchers began to look into the earliest forms of uses and gratifications with their work classifying the reasons why people chose specific types of media. Herta Herzog interviewed various soap opera fans and was able to identify three types of gratifications based on why people listened to soap operas: emotional, wishful thinking, and learning. Then, in 1948, Lasswell introduced a four-functional interpretation of the media on a macro-sociological level: media served the functions of surveillance, correlation, entertainment and cultural transmission for both society and individuals. According to Richard West and Lynn Turner, UGT is an extension of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs that argues that people actively look to satisfy their needs based on a hierarchy. These needs are organized as a pyramid with the largest, most fundamental needs at the base and the need for self-actualization at the top. Wilbur Schramm developed the fraction of selection, a formula for determining which form of mass media an individual would select. The formula helped to decide the amount of gratification an individual would expect to gain from the medium over how much effort they had to make to achieve gratification. Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, and Michael Gurevitch synthesized that UGT's approach was focused on "the social and psychological origins of needs, which generate expectations of the mass media or other sources, which lead to differential patterns of media exposure (or engagement in other activities), resulting in need gratifications and some other consequences, perhaps mostly unintended ones."
1970s: Five assumptions proposed In 1969 Jay Blumler and Denis McQuail studied the 1964 election in the United Kingdom by examining people's motives for watching certain political programs on television. By categorizing the audience's motives for viewing a certain program, they aimed to understand any potential mass-media effects by classifying viewers according to their needs. The audience motivations they were able to identify helped lay the groundwork for their research in 1972 and eventually uses and gratifications theory. McQuail, Blumler and Joseph Brown suggested that the uses of different types of media could be grouped into 4 categories: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity, surveillance (i.e. forms of information seeking). McQuail, Blumler and Brown were joined in their media exploration by Elihu Katz, Michael Gurevitch and Hadassah Haas, and their collaborative research began to indicate how people saw the mass media. A 1974 study by Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch stated five basic assumptions for a framework for understanding the correlation between media and audiences. These assumptions are:
The audience is conceived as active. In the mass communication process, much initiative in linking gratification and media choice lies with the audience member. The media compete with other sources of satisfaction. Methodologically speaking, many of the goals of mass media use can be derived from data supplied by individual audience members themselves. Value judgments about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while audience orientations are explored on their own terms. According to their research, goals for media use can be grouped into five uses. The audience wants to:
Be informed or educated Identify with characters of the situation in the media environment Simple entertainment Enhance social interaction Escape from the stresses of daily life
Applications of UGT since 1980s Rehman (1983) applied UGT to study the relationship between movie audience expectations and the satisfaction they derived from going to the movies. The following year Alan Rubin identified two main types of television viewers: ritualized (or, habitual) users and instrumental (or, non-habitual) users. Rubin defined the ritualized users as individuals who had a high regard for television, used television often, and primarily used it for the purpose of a diversion. Meanwhile, the instrumental users were defined as having a lower regard for television, did not use it often, and when they would use television it was for the purpose of acquiring information. Mark Levy and Sven Windahl identified three types of audience activity, which they labeled as "preactivity", "duractivity", and "postactivity". Levy and Windahl described preactivity as seeking out certain media to gratify intellectual needs, "duractivity" as focusing on deciphering and interpreting messages, and "postactivity" as seeking out a message for personal or interpersonal benefit. A year later, in 1985, Levy and Windahl provided a description of what it means to be an "active consumer" of media:
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