BY RUMAANA HAQ

Uses and Gratifications theory

Definition (Wikipedia)

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-centred approach to understanding mass communication.

Media’s effects on people

Most of the theories on what the media does talks about the effects it has on the people. It’s the theory that explains how we all use the media for our personal needs and desires. This theory states that what media does to people and not what the people do with the media.

Basic model

It suggested that the uses and the gratification theory to fulfil one of the following when we choose a form of media:

Personal Identity To educate or to gain information To Entertain Interrogation or social interaction

Personal Identity

To be able to seek out who you are through the media, the people or products displayed in the media may well show same values as you and therefore act as role model in you seeking out who you are and or want to be.

To Educate or to gain information

To be able to gain knowledge that you acquire from the world. I.e. the news to find out what is going on in the world, for personal needs or just wanting to know for personal interest.

To Entertain

May act like a sense of escapism, or emotional escapism. We listen to music to feel a certain way; we listen to happy music at happy time and so forth. Makes us feel certain emotions and this acts as a sense of escape. This can be done with films and TV programs, we watch them to feel a certain way i.e. we watch a comedy to make us laugh, again this idea of escapism.

Integration and social interaction

People may require that need to be apart of a social environment. Unlike younger people older people cannot engage in social gatherings as much as they used to. So they may watch soap operas for example to feel apart of a social environment such as EastEnders. Also it creates conversation in social surroundings ‘oh did you watch EastEnders last night’ and so on. Creates a topic of conversation when much is not said.

Criticisms

This theory suggests that we are the ones who always choose to consume the media.

It suggests that we need it to fulfil our own needs. It suggests we are always in control of the media

texts we are presented with. These are criticisms due to the fact that they are considered not true in the eyes of some. This is rightly said due to the fact that there is no hard core evidence that this is true. People feel, ‘who are they to say that is all true.’ People feel blamed for the effects the media has on them.