Uses and Gratifications Theory
Uses and Gratifications Theory
This theory is propounded by Katz in 1970 ; it is an approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy a specific needs. Diverging from other media effect theories that question "what does media do to the people?", UGT focuses on "what do people do with the media?". The UGT approach reminds us that people use media for many purposes. This communication theory is positivistic in its approach, based in the socio-psychological communication tradition, and focuses on communication at the mass media scale. The driving question of UGT is: "Why do people use media and what do they use them for? UGT discusses how users deliberately choose media that will satisfy given needs and allow one to enhance knowledge, relaxation, social interactions or companionship, diversion, or escape.
Assumptions of the Theory:
Unlike other theories concerning media consumption, UGT gives the consumer power to discern what media they consume, with the assumption that the consumer has a clear intent and use.
Given those differing theories, UGT is unique in its assumptions:
- The audience is active and and its media use is goal oriented.
- Then initiative in linking need gratification to a specific medium choice rests with the audience member.
- The media compete with other resources for need satisfaction.
- People have enough self-awareness of their media use, interests, and motives to be able to provide researchers with an accurate picture of that use.
- Value judgments of media content can only be assessed by the audience.
HISTORY
Beginning in the 1940's, researchers began seeing patterns under the perspective of the uses and gratifications theory in radio listeners. Early research was concerned with topics such us children's use of comics and the absence of newspapers during newspaper strike. An interest in more psychological interpretations emerged during this time period.Stages of the Theory:
Uses and gratifications theory was developed from a number of prior communication theories and research conducted by fellow theorists.
Stage 1:
- In 1944 began to look at the earliest forms of uses and gratifications with her work classifying the reasons why people chose specific types of media. For her study, Herzog interviewed soap opera fans and was able to identify three types of gratifications. The three gratifications categories, based on why people listened to soap operas, were emotional, wishful thinking, and learning.
- According to West and Turner, UGT was an extension of Needs and Motivation Theory, as outlined by Abraham Maslow in 1954, which argues that people actively looked to satisfy their needs based on a hierarchy. These needs are organized as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in the form of pyramid with the largest, most fundamental needs at the base and the need for self-actualization at the tip.
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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs |
- In 1954 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.
- 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 classify viewers according to their needs in order to understand any potential mass-media effects.
- In 1972 Denis McQuail, Jay Blumler and Joseph Brown suggested that the uses of different types of media could be grouped into 4 categories. The four categories were: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance.
- In 1973-74 McQuail, Blumler and Brown were joined by Elihu Katz, Michael Gurevitch and Hadassah Haas, in their media exploration. The collaborative research began to indicate how people saw the mass media.
- The most recent interest surrounding Uses and Gratifications Theory is the link between the reason why media is used and the achieved gratification.
- UGT researchers are developing the theory to be more predictive and explanatory by connecting the needs, goals, benefits, and consequences of media consumption and use along with individual factors.
- In the 1980s, Rehman (1983) applied UGT to study the relationship between the movie audience expectations and satisfaction derived from going to the movies.
In general researchers have found four kinds of gratifications:
- Information - we want to find out about society and the world- we want to satisfy our curiosity. This would fit the news and documentaries which both give us a sense that we are learning about the world.
- Personal Identity - we may watch the television in order to look for models for our behavior. The characters help us to decide what to feel about ourselves and if we agree with their actions and they succeed we feel better about ourselves.
- Integration and Social Interaction - we use the media in order to find out more about the circumstances of other people. Watching a show helps us to empathize and sympathize with the lives of others so that we may even end up thinking of the characters in program as friends.
- Entertainment - sometimes we simply use the media for enjoyment, relaxation or just to fill time.
McQuail (1994) commented that the approach has not provided much successful prediction or casual explanation of media choice and use. Since it is indeed that much media use is circumstantial and weakly motivated, the approach seems to work best in examining specific types of media where motivation might be presented (McQuail, 1994).
This theory is highly individualistic, taking into account only the individual psychological gratification derived from individual media use. The social context of the media use tends to be ignored. This overlooks the fact that some media use may have nothing to do with the pursuit of gratification - it may be forced upon us for example. There is relatively little attention paid to media content, researchers attending to why people use the media, but less to what meanings they actually get out of their media use. The UGT approach has been criticized as 'vulgar gratificationism'. It is individualistic and psychologistic, tending to ignore the socio-cultural context. As a theoretical stance it foregrounds individual psychological and personality factors and backgrounds sociological interpretations. UGT theorists tend to exaggerate active and conscious choice, whereas media can be forced on some people rather than freely chosen. The stance can also lead to the exaggeration of openness of interpretation, implying that audiences may obtain almost any kind of gratification regardless of content or of 'preferred readings'. Its functionalist emphasis is politically conservative: if we insist that people will always find some gratifications from any use of media, we may adopt a complacently uncritical stance towards what the mass media currently offer.
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