Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) is an approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. UGT is an audience-centered approach to understanding mass communication. Divergent from other media effect theories who question “what media do to people?”, UGT focuses on “what people do with media?”
This Communication theory is positivistic in its approach, based in the socio-psychological communication tradition, and focuses on communication at the mass media scale.The driving question of UGT is: Why do people use media and what do they use them for? UGT discusses how users deliberately choose media that will satisfy given needs and allow one to enhance knowledge, relaxation, social interactions/companionship, diversion, or escape.
It assumes that audience members are not passive consumers of media. Rather, the audience has power over their media consumption and assumes an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. Unlike other theoretical perspectives, UGT holds that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their desires and needs to achieve gratification. This theory would then imply that the media compete against other information sources for viewers' gratification.
UGT has a heuristic value today because it gives communication scholars a "perspective through which a number of ideas and theories about media choice, consumption, and even impact can be viewed."
(Wikipedia)
The Uses and Gratifications theory was developed by Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch from Herzogs original research. In 1944 Herta Herzog began to look at the earliest forms of uses and gratifications with her work classifying the reasons why people chose specific types of media. For her study, Herzog interviewed soap opera fans and was able to identify three types of gratifications. The three gratifications categories, based on why people listened to soap operas, were emotional, wishful thinking, and learning.
Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch said that the UGT's approach was focused on "the social and psychological origins of needs, which generate expectations of the mass media or other sources, which lead to differential patterns of media exposure (or engagement in other activities), resulting in need gratifications and other consequences, perhaps mostly unintended ones."
(Katz, Elihu, Jay G. Blumler, and Michael Gurevitch. "Uses and Gratifications Research."The Public Opinion Quarterly 4th ser. 37 ,1973-1974)
According to Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch's research there were five components comprising the Uses and Gratifications Approach. The components are:
- The audience is conceived as active.
- In the mass communication process, much initiative in linking gratification and media choice lies with the audience member.
- The media compete with other sources of satisfaction.
- Methodologically speaking, many of the goals of mass media use can be derived from data supplied by individual audience members themselves.
- Value judgments about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while audience orientations are explored on their own terms.
According to the research, goals for media use can be grouped into five uses. The audience wants to:
- be informed or educated
- identify with characters of the situation in the media environment
- simple entertainment
- enhance social interaction
- escape from the stresses of daily life
(Wikipedia)
