11
NM3413 Audience Analysis
USES AND GRATIFICATIONS
Uses and gratifications approach
perceiving...
 Audience as agent
 Audience as active users of media
Uses and gratifications approach
• Uses and gratifications theories consider how and why individuals
use the media rather than considering the ways in which they are
acted upon by outside forces.
• The ‘uses’ approach assumes that people’s values, their interests,
their associations, their social roles, are prepotent and that people
selectively ‘fashion’ what they see and hear to those interests.
• Audiences bring their own sets of beliefs, values, and needs, some
of which may be shaped by their social environment, do their media
exposure.
Uses and gratifications approach
• The theory reorganizes the traditional notion of the media-audience
relationship, which presupposes that media have some type of effect
on the audience (usually in the form of some type of harmful
influence). U&G reverses these roles, proposing instead that the
audience members actively choose media channels and content to
suit their own needs at a particular moment.
• U&G takes an essentially functional perspective on audience
activity, looks to understand why people do what they do.
Five basic assumptions of the U&G
Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch (1974)
1. The audience is considered active, and media use is directed toward
particular goals of the individual.
2. The individual selects different types of media in order to satisfy a
particular need or desire.
3. Mass media compete with other sources of need satisfaction.
4. Audience members are aware of their own individual needs and
motivations in selecting certain media.
5. Scholars utilizing the uses and gratifications approach do not make value
judgments about peoples’ media choices. Instead, they try to understand the
audiences’ orientation to certain media “on their own terms.”
Social and psychological
functions of mass media
Katz, Gurevitch, and Haas (1973)
•
Cognitive needs: Needs related to “strengthening information, knowledge,
and understanding”
•
Affective needs: Needs related to “strengthening aesthetic, pleasurable, and
emotional experience”
•
Integrative needs: Needs related to “strengthening credibility, confidence,
stability, and status”
•
Social needs: Needs related to “strengthening contact with family, friends,
and the world”
•
Escape needs: Needs related to escape or tension release, also “weaken[s]
contact with self and one’s social roles”
Audience Activities and Media Motives
Audiences’ uses for television
A. M. Rubin (1983, 1984, 1985)
1.Ritualized audiences tend to use TV more habitually, watching in order to
consume time or to be diverted from other activities.
2.Instrumental audiences search for specific kinds of message content, often
seeking out and selecting informational material in a purposive way, suggesting
greater care and selectivity over media as well as increased involvement with
the programming itself.
Audience Activities and Media Motives
Motivations for watching TV soap operas
A. M. Rubin (1983, 1984, 1985)
Viewing Motive
Definition
Orientation
Reality-exploration; seek to understand how others think and act
(understand others’ ideas, motives, problems, lifestyles)
Avoidance
Escapism; avoid work or life; tension release; time consumption
Diversion
Entertainment; amusement; relaxation
Social utility
Companionship’ convenience; seeking to meet and spend time with
others and to acquire topics for conversation
Audience Activities and Media Motives
Ranking of Facebook Uses
Uses
Description
Mean
Friend functions
Accepting, adding, browsing through, or reviewing friends; seeing
how friends are connected; showing friends other individuals
3.91
Personal
information
Reading personal information, looking through photos, reading
walls, etc.
3.78
Practical
information
Course and contact information
3.38
Regulatory
functions
Features that offer users control over their accounts, i.e., updating
info or photos, privacy settings or editorial control over walls
3.32
Groups
Features related to Facebook groups
2.55
Events
Finding or planning events
2.34
Misc. features
Friend details; social timeline; “pulse”; poking; social web
visualization; being friends with high schoolers, etc.
2.08
Audience Activities and Media Motives
Ranking of Facebook Motivations
Motivation
Description
Mean
Social utility
Using Facebook with friends; talking with others about Facebook
3.91
Directory
Use as directory to keep track of people, such as for class
information
3.71
Voyeurism
Learning about others from a distance; comparing oneself to others
3.13
Herd instincts
Usage because everyone else does; not wanting to be left out
3.08
Collection and
connection
Amassing friends; organizing friends; feeling connected to others
3.04
Personal
expression
Expressing oneself, such as to develop relationships; gaining
feedback on oneself; having others understand oneself
2.69
Initiating
relationship
Meeting people, particularly for romantic or sexual reasons; finding
parties or events
1.98
The Uses and dependency Model of Mass
Communication
Societal System
Mass Media System
sociocultural structure
political structure
economic structure
content
structure
functions
Audience
psychological traits
social categories
social relations
Functional Alternative use
needs
interests
activities
Mass Media use
non-media channels
media channels/content
mass medium
media content
consumption
processing
other activity
consumption
processing
interpreting
dependency
non-dependency
Effects or
Consequences
cognitive
affective
behavioral
dependency
non-dependency
Reference:
Sullivan, John L. Media Audiences: Effects, Users, Institutions, and
Power. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2013.