uses for gratifications theory, or uses and gratifications theory, is one of the mass communication theories; it’s used to understand people’s relationship with media. The theory is an approach to knowing how and why people actively seek out media to satisfy their specific needs. Moreover, it focuses on what people do with the media rather than what media does to people. This theory shows that the audience members are active and don’t react to media passively. Therefore, the audience use specific media content to provide gratifications to fulfill their needs.
Uses and gratifications theory is very important, and still is, since it relates to people and their relationship to the media. So people are still using media like television, print and now social media. Therefore, this theory is still relatable to people. Even though media has been developed and changed over the years, this theory can be used to understand people and their minds; the way they react and use media. According to www.academia.edu, “Applying the U&G Theory to SNSs is of vital importance in today’s mass communication research because this form of mass media is relatively new in relation to radio,television, and film” (Gallion, n.d.).
It states here that if this theory is applied to the social networking sites and all the social media applications, it will work and it would be relevant. As stated as well by another article, “Uses and gratifications theory is relevant to social media because of its origins in the communications literature.” (Williams and Whiting, 2013). This theory shows that people get specific kinds of needs and uses from social media to fulfill their gratifications; it shows that people can take anything from life and just fit it to their benefit. If this theory can be used for social media apps that is used a lot today, that means it still has importance in people’s lives.
The basic premise or idea about the uses and gratifications theory is that people will seek out media among competitors that can achieve their needs which can lead into fulfilling and getting their gratifications. It’s also important in the political point of view, “uses and gratifications theory has also been used extensively within the study of politics and the dissemination of political messages.” (Williams and Whiting, 2013). So it’s not only used for the people themselves, but for bigger matter like politics or economics.
There are seven themes or main points to show how this theory is used and how significant it is for people to use it in their daily life. These seven themes are:
1. Social interaction
2. Information seeking
3. Pass time
4. Relaxation
5. Entertainment
6. Communicatory utility
7. Convenience utility
So these themes look at the theory more closely; it shows that the theory can be expanded to more than one idea or aspect.
“Communication theories have developed through the realms of psychology and sociology over the past 100 years” (T.,2016). The uses for gratifications theory came around in 1950s, at that time it was still a new fresh idea; a refreshing view which was different from the schematics of the other models. Researches have a long history of trying to come up with new ideas, theories and concepts to try and understand media and how people use it to communicate with each other. Therefore, they try to come up with different series of higher conceptions of understanding media. It is said that, “uses and gratifications approach is suggested to be originally stemmed from a functionalist paradigm in the social sciences” (Blumler & Katz, 1974). Functional theories on communication influenced studies from the 1920s to the 1940s. After that, a shift which rediscovered the relationship between media and individuals and led to the establishment of the uses and gratifications approach.
The exploration of gratifications that motivate people to be attracted to a certain type of media, is almost as old as the empirical mass communication research. Back in the 1940s, researchers became interested in the reasons of viewing different radio programs and daily newspapers. So they discovered a list of functions that give out specific content. For example, “radio soap operas were found to satisfy their listeners with advice, support, or occasions for emotional release” (T.,2016). This was the way media provided content to people; not just by giving information. For these many dimensions of usage satisfaction, psychologist Herzog marked them with the term “gratifications”.
This theory was more popular and prevailing in the late 1950s till 1970s when television was growing. Among the other scholars and researchers, Elihu Katz is a very well-known researcher and he contributed greatly to structuring this approach. According to www.jstor.org, Katz has put basic assumptions or propositions on this theory to let people know that this theory does work if applied. The basic assumptions are:
1.Audience members are active.
2. There is much initiative in linking the need, gratifications and media choice lies with the audience member.
3.The media compete with other sources of need satisfaction.
4. Consumers have a structure of motivating needs that they seek to gratify.
5. The needs are shaped by inherited nature and by personal learning experiences.
6. Needs lead audience actively seek specific forms of media content.
7. Media provide gratifications, like information, education, emotion, personal and social integrative and escapism needs.
So this theory has some pros and cons; some positives and limitations. The theory can work or be applied because it gives us an idea of why TV is so important to some people and that we are passive in the way we consume media. It can also give us an idea of why reality TV is so popular as people find it so believable. According to an article Is the Uses and Gratifications Approach Still Relevant in a Digital Society?, is explaining how the theory can be positively used and how it can be applied now. The theory was investigated on a 2001 study by Leung where he, “examined students’ motivations for chatting on the instant messaging platform ICQ” (Quan-Haase, 2012). This study found that the students use this platform primarily to express emotions, care about others’ feelings, show encouragement, offer help and show concern to others.
A number of studies emerged seeing what kind of gratifications that is obtained from using SNSs. For SNSs it’s mostly used for pleasure or pass time, for entertainment, relaxation and escapism. It’s also used for social interaction and surveillance and relationship maintenance. “This illustrates clear differences in gratifications obtained from each type of social media” (Quan-Hasse, 2012).
Although the uses and gratifications theory does have pros and is used to study, it has some cons and limitations that can’t be applied to everything. There are weakness like this theory is individualistic; according to the researcher Len Ang, it gives you the idea of the psychology of a person from the personal media use. There isn’t a social context of media use for this theory. Also, it ignores that fact that some media content use doesn’t have to fulfill a gratification. Another weakness is that there is little attention given to the media content; it only tells you why people use the media, it doesn’t make you aware of the meanings that people get out of their media content. Another point is that the theory states that media is only functional to people, so this way it offers a justification for the way medias are organized. (Smith, 2013).
Even though the uses and gratifications theory can be limited to some extent, it still can be applied in some parts, like the different purposes for Internet use. However, it can’t be used all the time. That’s why there are other theories that relate to media usage and why people use media. One way to fix the problem of limitations is bringing different theories together; using different theories for one application and compare the differences. See which one works well. We can come up with new theories that have similar ideas to the uses and gratifications theory. Another way is taking the same theory but changing the variables depending on what kind of people use what kind of media and type of media content; see if people actually need the media or not.
The uses and gratifications theory has a huge role in connecting media with people. Even if it does have its cons, it also has its pros. This approach looks closely into the lives of the audience; it looks at how they use certain media and media content. Moreover, the approach looks at different type of media and if it fits the audience’s benefit, usage and need. This approach is one part of the mass communication theories that deals with people and how they deal with media and communicate with it.