USES & GRATIFICATION IN THE AGE OF INTERNET

Uses and gratification theory is a communication theory that explores how individuals actively choose and consume media to fulfill their specific needs and desires.

In the age of the internet, this theory takes on new dimensions and implications as technology continues to evolve.

Customized Content Consumption: The internet offers a vast array of content, allowing users to tailor their media consumption to their preferences. Users seek information, entertainment, and social interaction based on their individual interests, which aligns with the fundamental premise of uses and gratification theory.

Empowerment and Control: Internet users have more control over what they consume. They can actively select sources of news, entertainment, and information, allowing them to feel empowered in their media choices. This contrasts with traditional mass media, where content is more passive and controlled by media organizations.

Social Networking and Interactivity: Social media platforms epitomize the interactive nature of the internet. Users actively participate in online communities, share content, and engage in discussions. This aligns with the social integration and personal identity gratifications identified in uses and gratification theory.

Information Seeking and Learning: The internet is a primary source of information and education. Users frequently turn to search engines, online courses, and tutorials to satisfy their need for knowledge, aligning with the cognitive gratification aspect of the theory.

Escapism and Entertainment: Streaming services, gaming, and online forums provide ample opportunities for users to escape from everyday life and be entertained. This corresponds to the entertainment gratification dimension, where individuals seek relaxation and enjoyment through media.

Community Building: Online forums, social networks, and interest-based websites facilitate the building of virtual communities. Users can connect with like-minded individuals worldwide, addressing their need for social integration and affiliation.

Feedback and Validation: Internet users often seek feedback and validation from their online peers through likes, comments, and shares. This can satisfy the need for recognition and social validation, another aspect of uses and gratification theory.

User-Generated Content: Many users actively create and share content online, such as blogs, vlogs, and social media posts. This creative outlet fulfills personal expression and identity gratifications.

In the age of the internet, uses and gratification theory remains highly relevant as it provides insights into how individuals proactively select and engage with digital media to fulfill a wide range of needs and desires. The internet's interactive nature, customization options, and diverse content offerings empower users to take an active role in their media consumption, making it an ideal platform for studying this theory.

Uses and Gratification

By the nineteen fifties and sixties, communication researchers began to fine tune their theories and research methods. These thinkers turned their attention to how audiences used the media to live out their fantasy lives and to seek out other gratifications, or even to inform and educate themselves about the world and its people.

Uses and Gratification Theory emerged in the 1970's as a reaction to traditional Mass Communication Research.

Most theories discuss how media had an impact on people. This theory explains how people use media for their need and gratification.

According to this theory, Media is used for

1. Diversion - Escape from everyday problems and routines.

2. Personal Relationship - Emotional other interaction e.g. substituting soap operas for family life

3. Personal Identity - Find yourself reflected in texts, learning behavior and values

4. Surveillance - Information could be useful for living - weather reports, financial news, etc.

Therefore, users play an active part in the communication process and are goal oriented in their media use.

Users seek out a media source that best fulfills their needs.

Thus Uses and Gratification has a humanistic approach.

Media consumers have free will to decide how they will use media and how it will affect them.

Three Objectives

1. To explain how individuals use mass communication to gratify their needs.

2. To discover underlying motives for individuals media use

3. To identify positive and negative consequences of individual media use.

Five Basic Assumptions:

1. "The audience is conceived as active" - Viewers are goal oriented and attempt to achieve their goal through the media source.

2. "In the mass communication process much initiative in linking needs, gratification and media choice lies with the audience member" - Viewers use media to their advantage rather than media uses viewers. The receiver decides what is to be absorbed and does not allow media to influence him.

3. "The media competes with other sources of need satisfaction" - Each individual has several needs and a wide range of choices to fulfill these needs. Strongest rival to media based sources include face to face communication as this helps individual cope with circumstances surrounding them most effectively. Thus, Mass media must compete with non media related sources and help create a need for itself as well as a proper balance between the two.

4. "Many of the goals media use can be derived from data supplied by individual audience members themselves" - Individuals are aware of their motives and choices and are able to explain them verbally if necessary.

5. "Value judgments about cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while audience operations are explored on their own terms" - Individuals decide which media to view. Thus, Individuals place value on the media by their individual decision to view it.

These assumptions provide a framework for understanding the corelation between media and the viewers. It also provides a distinction between how the audience is more or less active and the consequences of their involvement in the media as a whole.

A medium will be used more when the existing motives to use the medium leads to more satisfaction.

This is the most widely used theoretical concept in communication research.


Additional Information
Thus media 'effects' were related to the needs and activities of audiences. The theory was largely concerned with the selection, reception and nature of response of audiences to the media, the assumption being that individual members in an audience made conscious and motivated selection of channels and programmes.

According to the studies done by researchers, it was found that daily soap operas (esp in the noon slots) were patronized by women who found role models in the leading female characters (ideal mothers, daughters and daughters-in-law). This brought about a catharsis of emotions in female viewers as this provided them moments of joy and tears.

On conducting research on newspapers, it was found that newspapers were not only a source of information but also shaped the daily routine of the individual. It gave the individual a sense of belonging that he was not the only individual reading the newspaper but many others shared this activity. This gave him a sense of belonging to a larger audience.

The thinkers felt that the reasons for use of this media was mainly social interaction, entertainment, understanding the environment around them and developing an identity along with shared decision making. Thus by reading sports pages or reading about their favorite personalities, individuals found social companionship. Thus it was a means to escape the hardships and realities of life.

Uses and gratification applies this principle of diversion to media content and explains that these media transport the audience into a romantic world where they can escape painful realities of life. For e.g., Watching a movie or a television program transports the individual to the story thus enabling the individual to temporarily forget his problems and experience the fantasy world portrayed in the movie or television program.