Understanding Uses and Effects of Media: A Gratifications Approach

1. Chapter 8 Uses and Gratifications

2. Uses and Gratifications Approach • Assumes that differences among audience members cause each person to: • Seek out different messages • Use those messages differently • Respond to them differently

3. Societal-level Functions of the Mass Media • 3 major functions media serves in society: • Surveys the environment • Correlation of environmental parts • Transmits social norms and customs • Others functions include: • Entertainment, parasocial interaction, escapism, and anxiety reduction.

4. Models to Explain Uses and Effects • The transactional model • The gratification seeking and audience activity model • The expectancy-value model • The uses and dependency model

5. Transactional Model • Two factors combine to produce an effect: • Characteristics of the message • Psychological orientation of the audience

6. Gratification-Seeking and Audience Activity Model • Different factors bear on the uses and effects model: • Particular kinds of gratifications sought by the viewer • The viewer’s attitude and involvement with the message • Behavioral intentions of the viewer

7. Expectancy-Value Model • Examines the use of the media: • Gratifications sought and obtained • Outcomes that are expected • Explains person’s behavior, intentions, and attitudes as a function of: • Expectancy • Evaluation

8. Uses and Dependency Model • Dependency is the result of two factors: • Viewer’s motives for obtaining gratifications • The availability of viewing alternatives • Proposes that certain elements in the media system cause people to use and depend upon the media

9. Assumptions of Uses and Gratifications • Viewers are active participants. • Media is used for gratifications. • Social and psychological factors mediate people’s communication behavior. • Viewers must pay attention to be influenced or affected by the media.

10. Uses and Gratifications Research:A Brief History • 1940s • Series of studies to identify people’s motives for listening to certain radio programs • 1970s • Researchers began to categorize the various motives for media use. • Others developed their own typology for gratifications. • Rosengren and Windahl suggest that media uses and effects should be linked.

11. Recent Research • Links identified between viewing and attitudes and behaviors towards the media • Comparison of motives for using media and viewing particular content • Identification of social and psychological characteristics that influence the use of media

12. Other Research • How different backgrounds, motives, and levels of exposure have affected outcomes • Characteristics and motives of particular media users • Gratifications from media use • Personality traits that predict media use

13. Criticisms of Uses and Gratifications • Too individualistic • Synthesized research findings • Lack of clarity among key concepts • Differences in the meaning of key concepts • The active audience and use of self-reporting