Uses & Gratifications Theory (UGT)

Chapter Overview

• The Uses & Gratifications Theory (UGT)
• Introduction of Mass Media Theory
• Assumptions
• Stages of UGT Research
• Media Effects
• Key Terms

Kick-off Questions

• What (traditional & new) media have you ever used, and what kinds of needs do they individually serve?
• Were you in a situation debating which media to use (e.g., watch TV/movie, read newspapers, go on FB, etc.)? If so, how did you make your decision?

Introduction

• A. In the early days of mass media, mass society thinking was prevalent.
  • 1. Mass Society Theory (MST) argues that people are helpless victims of powerful media.
    • “Magic Bullet" or "Hypodermic Needle” Theory
  • 2. Although this was predominant in thinking about media effects, social science and observation could not confirm the "all-powerful" view.
    • Not only were most people not directly affected by media messages, but when they were influenced, they were not all influenced in exactly the same way
• B. Mass society thinking was replaced by "limited effects" theories: aspects of audience members' personal and social lives limit/minimize media effects
  • 1. Individual differences perspective: the media‘s power is shaped by personal factors (E.g., intelligence, education, self-esteem)
  • 2. Social categories model: the media's power as limited by audience members' associations and group affiliations. Audiences engage in selective exposure.
    • e.g., ideological consistency between audience and media

Ideological Placement of Each Source's Audience

• Average ideological placement on a 10-point scale of ideological consistency of those who got news from each source in the past week…
• Lists labeling multiple points are ordered from more consistently liberal on top to more consistently conservative on the bottom
• This section illustrates the ideological placement of various news sources and their audiences, ranging from consistently liberal (e.g., Daily Show, The Guardian) to consistently conservative (e.g., Fox News, Drudge Report).

Introduction to Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT)

• C. Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT; Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974): a systematic and comprehensive articulation of audience members' roles in the mass communication process, and clarification of how effects can and do happen
  • 1. people actively seek out specific media & content to obtain specific gratifications or results.
    • a. People are able to examine and evaluate various types of media to accomplish communication goals.
    • b. "What do media do to people?" "What do people do with media?"

Assumptions of U&G

• Proposed by Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch (1974)
  • 1. The audience is active and its media use is goal oriented.
    • Classification By McQuail and colleagues (1972)
      • CATEGORY: Diversion
        • DEFINITION: Escaping from routines or daily problems (e.g., entertainment)
      • CATEGORY: Personal relationships
        • DEFINITION: People substitute the media for companionship (e.g., FB, Skype)
      • CATEGORY: Personal identity
        • DEFINITION: Reinforce an individual’s value (e.g., TCU twitter; politician’ website)
      • CATEGORY: Surveillance
        • DEFINITION: Collect needed information (e.g., news, informative videos)
  • 2. The initiative in linking need gratification to a specific media choice rests with the audience.
    • People are active agents who take initiative; only audience can determine their need gratification with specific media
    • Implication: audience members have a great deal of autonomy in the mass communication process
  • 3. Media compete with other sources for need satisfaction.
    • Media and their audiences do not exist in a vacuum; both are part of a larger society, and the relationship between media and audiences is influenced by that society
  • 4. People have enough self-awareness of their media use/interests/motives to be able to provide researchers with an accurate picture.
    • Reaffirms the belief in an active audience and implies that people are cognizant of their activity
    • Early UGT research was qualitative, later, however, researchers typically use more quantitative procedures
  • 5. Value judgments of media content can only be assessed by the audience.
    • Researchers should suspend value judgments linking the audience’s needs to specific media/content

Needs Gratified by the Media

• Adapted from Katz, Gurevitch, & Haas, 1973.
  • NEED TYPE: Cognitive
    • DESCRIPTION: Acquiring information, knowledge, comprehension
    • MEDIA EXAMPLES: Television (news), video ("How to Install Ceramic Tile"), movies (documentaries or films based on history, e.g., The Other Boleyn Girl)
  • NEED TYPE: Affective
    • DESCRIPTION: Emotional, pleasant, or aesthetic experience
    • MEDIA EXAMPLES: Movies, television (sitcoms, soap operas)
  • NEED TYPE: Personal integrative
    • DESCRIPTION: Enhancing credibility, confidence, and status
    • MEDIA EXAMPLES: Video ("Speaking With Conviction")
  • NEED TYPE: Social integrative
    • DESCRIPTION: Enhancing connections with family, friends, and so forth
    • MEDIA EXAMPLES: Internet (e-mail, chat rooms, Listservs, IM)
  • NEED TYPE: Tension release
    • DESCRIPTION: Escape and diversion
    • MEDIA EXAMPLES: Television, movies, video, radio, Internet

Group Discussion

• In a group of 5-7, please individually share
  • What is your most frequently used media?
  • What needs does that medium gratify?
• Then, please summarize as a group
  • Are there multiple media that gratify the same needs?
  • Is there any medium that gratifies different needs?
  • How does this activity relate to the assumptions of UGT?

1ST Stage in U&G research

• A. Herzog (1944) sought to classify reasons people engage in different forms of media behavior.
  • Focused on why women were attracted to radio soap operas.
    • By interviewing fans, Herzog identified three major types of gratifications: emotional release, wishful thinking, obtaining advice
  • Credited with having originated UGT
    • It was the first published researcher to provide an in-depth examination of media gratifications
• B. Uses and Gratifications is an extension of needs and motivation theory developed by Abraham Maslow (1998).
  • Maslow posited that people actively seek to satisfy a hierarchy of needs.
• C. Schramm (1954) developed the fraction of selection to determine “which offerings of mass communication will be selected by a given individual.”
  • It visually represents the idea that audience members weigh the level of reward (gratification) they expect from a given medium or message against the effort they must make to secure that reward: expectation of reward/effort required.
  • $E.g., bypassing the GFW$

2nd Stage in U&G research

• Researchers created typologies representing all the reasons people had for media use.

3rd (Recent) Stage in U&G research

• The most recent stage of Uses and Gratifications research has focused on linking specific reasons for media use with variables such as needs, goals, benefits and the consequences of media use.
  • 1. Researchers are striving to make the theory more explanatory and predictive.
  • 2. Rubin and Step (2000) have examined the relationship of motivation, interpersonal attraction, and para-social interaction.
    • Para-social interaction: the relationship we feel we have with people only through the media

Media effects

• The UGT history has much to do with how researchers shifted and changed their positions on media effects
  • There was controversy about how in control audience members might be.
• ”Vulgar gratificationism” should be purged from UGT, as the world in which media consumers live shapes them just as surely as they shape it.
• A 2nd set of premises made clear the belief that people's use of media and the gratifications they seek from it are inextricably intertwined with the world in which they live.
  • “social situation” by Katz et al. (1974)

Key Terms—The active audience

• A. Blumler (1979) offers several suggestions about the kinds of audience activity
  • 1. Utility: media have uses for people, and people can put media to those uses.
  • 2. Intentionality: people’s prior motivations determine their consumption of media content.
  • 3. Selectivity: audiences’ use of media may reflect their existing interests and preferences.
  • 4. Imperviousness to influence: audience members construct their own meaning from content and that this meaning influences what they think and do. They often actively avoid certain types of media influence.
• B. Uses and gratifications also distinguishes between activity and activeness to better understand the degrees of audience activity.
  • 1. Activity: what the media consumer does.
  • 2. Activeness: the audience's freedom and autonomy in the mass communication situation.
    • a. Activeness is relative: Some people are more active participants in the mass communication process; others are more passive (e.g., couch potato)
    • b. Often varies by time of day and type of content

U&G in New Media

• UGT researchers believe that the theory will be able to explain the ways people use the Internet, social media, and cell phone technology
  • UGT has been useful in understanding cell phone use (Leung & Wei, 2000), computerized video game playing (e.g., Lucas & Sherry, 2004), and Internet use (e.g., Kaye & Johnson, 2004)
  • Some research suggests that the exact list of gratifications will change based on the specific medium

Evaluating UGT

• Logical Consistency
  • Lack of theoretical coherence (McQuail, 1984)
    • The theory relies too heavily on the functional use of media but doesn’t address the irresponsibility of the media or citizen journalists
• Utility
  • Active audience may be questionable
    • The theory highlights a reasoning media consumer but does not take into account the fact that people may not have considered all available choices in media consumption
• Heurism
  • Research has spanned several decades