Uses and Gratification

1. Uses and Gratification 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 Other consequences, perhaps unintended ones. From Katz, et.al Theoretical assumptions Audience is conceived as active: mass media use is goal-directed Audience member chooses to link need gratification with media choice Media compete with other sources of need satisfaction Methodologically: audience is self-aware, so they can self-report 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 from Media content Exposure to media per se Social context of media exposure

2. 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 on self-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, excluding outcomes, 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.

3. Uses and Gratification [M]uchcontemporary 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: Interactivity DemassificationAsynchronicity Has innovation in media technology validated the basic tenets of uses and gratification theory?