There are countless theories that emerge with the emerging of media. And there are countless studies and research conducting in order to examine and evaluate the effects and impact of media on the audiences. There are hundreds of theory but the most known one is social action theory, cultivation theory, media dependency theory and agenda setting theory. All of these theories examine and discussed how the media affect the audience and what impact it has on them. However there is a theory that discuss just the other way around, it is uses and gratification theory. uses and gratification theory discuss and study why audiences use the media , not the media impact on people .this theory combine the needs, goals , result and the benefits, of media consumption. All the above-mentioned theories illustrate the audience as a passive part of consumption process, but not this theory, this theory evolve because there were several criticism on the effect the theory. In addition, it goes through many enhancement since its emerging. This essay will discuss the uses and gratification theory, the theory and its criticism.
What is Uses and Gratification theory.
The uses and gratifications has always provided a cutting-edge theoretical approach in the initial stages of each new mass medium, such as newspapers, radio and television, and now the Internet, which receives the significance via this approach (Ruggiero, 2000)..
As we formerly mentioned m most of the theory that are in the media talk about thy effects and impacts that media has on audiences. However, uses and gratification theory is the opposite of these theories and very different. Elihu Katz first introduced uses and gratifications theory. It is one of the approaches that aim to understand mass communication. Uses and gratification theory attempts to examine and discuss the individual and society uses of the media .Besides, evaluating the function media contents in gratifying the needs of people, this could be seen when the media using become goal oriented. There will be reasons that motivate audience to use a specific type of media. This support the idea that individual has different needs. In response to these needs, people develop their choices on the ways of meeting these needs. .
This theory claims that audience are active with their consumption of media, they are also integrate with the media content and give a feedback. This theory emphasize that audience are using for gratification and purpose and. Therefore, audiences are consuming media in order to meet their needs and goals and to fulfill this gratification. An ideal example of this is to choose one media content out of many. You choose your media content according to your motive and needs .therefore; this theory intent to explain what is media function in the audiences, which is to gratify their needs. Further more, why audience choose particular type of media among others are affected by their background, education and personalities. Besides, people can use the same media content but for different goals.
There are a lot of studies that had been conducted based on the uses and gratification model which aimed to find out its effect in e-consumers
and the results show that "entertainment gratification, irritation surfing experience (mass medium), perceived usefulness and ease of Web use (information systems) are important predictors of e’consumers' use intention"( Huang,2008).
Why do people use the media .
As I mentioned before, people use the media to fulfill and gratify their needs and goals. This means,. There are always reasons behind people consumption of media. There are a several purposes foe people using of media. The theorists grouped and classify them in many different approaches. The needs of audiences differ based on people interests.
‘ Cognitive needs: one of the major reasons of using media is the need to know new things. They need to gain information and knowledge. Consequently, people will make understanding of the thing s goes around them.
‘ Diversion and entertainment: media is an effective tool to escape from the boring routine of daily life and to escape from the real life to another interesting life the virtual world give us the entertainment and the joy that we ask. Therefore, media give the people chance to relax and forget about their concerns and their problems.
‘ Affective needs and personal relationships: people use media as a way for interacting with each other when discussing the media content. People feel social empathy with others because through media they can feel and understand circumstances and feeling of others. Besides, create and strengthen sense of belonging. In addition, it creates topics of conversation. And discussion of what they see in media. So, that this will enable them to interact with friends and family.
‘ Personal identity: (Valentine,2018): Through media people can gain an insights about their selves.by knowing what they like and dislike and by emphasizing their beliefs and values.
The development of uses and gratification:
.the main question of this theory is why people use the media?. From long back time, theorists star to think and concern about the effects of all type of media in people. Earlier this concern was limit to the children, and how they are severely affected by the media. However in 1948 Lasswll introduces four function of the media , these four function was: surveillance, entertainment, cultural transmission and correlation. Uses and gratification theory was not evolve instantly but it goes through steps and stages. in 1970 was the first stage when Abraham Maslow suggest that uses and gratification theory is just an extension of the former theory which is needs and motivation theory. in 1954 fraction of selection introduced by Wilbur Schramm, this formula explain what type of media an individual may choose to use?. in 1969 Jay Bulmer and Denis McQuil studied people selection of political program, this formula grouped and classify people motive to watch a specific political program. in 1973 uses and gratification theory start to appear.
Criticism of uses and gratifications theory.
The uses and gratification theory has been a subject of criticism:
One major criticism was that uses and gratification theory does not meet all the needed standards that enable it to be called a theory, they said that it is nothing but approach used to collect and analyses date about media uses. The theory put the whole blame of the media effects on people in the producers, where the individual chose to use media by their choice. People chose media and they are realized and aware of Its potential effects. Another, criticism is that when audience select a certain type of media to use, this does not necessary mean they are aware of the power of media. Furthermore, the theory said that audience use media while they know that it will affect them but it denies the idea that media could be manipulative. The theory also concentrate on the individual use and needs and give a small attention to the society. Also, according to (Blumber,2018 )’Common criticisms include the fact that gratifications are more dependent on researchers’ input than on the subjects’, that audiences of different ages will have different motivations for watching the same media’,
Although uses and gratifications approach holds a significant status in communication research, the research of the approach receives criticisms both on its theory and methodology represented.
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).
The researcher Ien Ang also criticized uses and gratifications approach in such three aspects:
It 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 approach starts from the view that the media are always functional to people and may thus implicitly offer a justification for the way the media are currently organized (cited by CCMS-Infobase, 2003).
Since it is hard to keep track of exposure patterns through observation, uses and gratifications research focus on the fact relied heavily on self-reports (Katz, 1987). Self-reports, however, are based on personal memory which can be problematic (Nagel et al., 2004). As such, the respondents might inaccurately recall how they behave in media use and thus distortion might occur in the study.
Conclusion
ALL in all, uses and gratification theory concentrate and focuses more in the audiences of the media rather than the media content and message. Therefore, the main goal and concentration will be what audience are doing with the media rather than how media affect audiences . So, the audiences are active part here not passive, also people are responsible and mindful of their using of the media. The audience use media to fulfill and gratify certain needs. However sometimes audiences are not fully aware of what they are consuming.