Uses and Gratifications

Theory
 Audience Theories: From
Source-Dominated to
Active-Audience Perspectives
 Propaganda theories are concerned with
audiences.

 The propagandist dominates the audience and

controls the messages that reach it.

 The focus is on how propagandists are able to

manipulate audiences using messages that
affect them as the propagandist intends.
 Reading
 The Russian Plot to Control Your
Mindfulness (reading posted in TIMeS)

 Among Russia’s many fake social media

accounts was a Facebook page called “Mindful
Being,” which cleverly mixed legitimate spiritual
teachings with material intended to make
readers more receptive to authoritarianism.

 Propaganda works best when you don’t realize

that it’s propaganda.
 Most propaganda theories are source-
dominated theories.

 They center their attention primarily on

message sources and content, not on the
audiences the sources want to influence.

 As media theories have developed, this focus

has gradually shifted.
 Uses and Gratifications Approach

 The uses and gratifications approach was

first described in an article by Elihu Katz
(1959) in which he was reacting to a claim by
Bernard Berelson (1959) that the field of
communication research appeared to dead.

 Katz argued that the field that was dying was

the study of mass communication as
persuasion.
 Con’t out that most
 He pointed
communication research up to
that time had been aimed at
investigating the question “What
do media do to people?”

 Katz suggested that the field

might save itself by turning to the
question “What do people do with
the media?”
 Katz had three objectives in developing
Con’ttheory:
uses and gratifications

1. To explain how individuals use mass

communication to gratify their needs.
What do people do with the media?
2. To discover the underlying motives for
individuals’ media use.
Why does one person rush home or stay up late
at night?
Why do some people only watch HBO movies?

3. To identify the positive and negative

consequences of individual media use.
 The uses and gratifications theory views the
Con’t
audience as more active and involved than as
passive and disconnected.

 The audience chooses its media and does so

for a variety of reasons.

 Needs and desires structured how messages

are received to what people do with the
media.
 Assumptions in
Uses and Gratifications Theory
1. Media use is typically goal-directed and
motivated.

2. People select media sources and media

messages to satisfy felt needs and desires.

3. Media sources compete among themselves

and with interpersonal communication for
selection, attention and use.
4. Interpersonal communication is generally
more Con’t
influential than media
communication.

5. Demo-psycho-sociographics affect an
audience member’s selection of media.
 Audience Needs and Gratifications
 The uses and gratifications theory
suggested the following categories of
audience needs and gratifications:

1. Diversion – escape from routine and

problems; emotional release.

2. Personal relationships – social utility of

information in conversation; substitute of
the media for companionship.
3. Personal identity or individual
psychology – value reinforcement or
reassurance; self-understanding; reality
exploration and so on.

4. Surveillance – information about things that

might affect one or will help one do or
accomplish something.