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Needs and Gratifications

15 January, 2016 - 09:14

Uses and gratifications approach emphasizes motives and the self-perceived needs of audience members. Blumler and Katz (1974) concluded that different people can use the same communication message for very different purposes. The same media content may gratify different needs for different individuals. There is not only one way that people uses media. Contrarily, there are as many reasons for using the media as there are media users (Blumler & Katz, 1974).

Basic needs, social situation, and the individual’s background, such as experience, interests, and education, affect people’s ideas about what they want from media and which media best meet their needs. That is, audience members are aware of and can state their own motives and gratifications for using different media. McQuail, Blumler, and Brown (1972) proposed a model of “media-person interactions” to classify four important media gratifications: (1) Diversion: escape from routine or problems; emotional release; (2) Personal relationships: companionship; social utility; (3) Personal identity: self reference; reality exploration; value reinforces; and (4) Surveillance (forms of information seeking).

Another subdivided version of the audience’s motivation was suggested by McGuire (1974), based on a general theory of human needs. He distinguished between two types of needs: cognitive and affective. Then he added three dimensions: “active” versus “passive” initiation, “external” versus “internal” goal orientation, and emotion stability of “growth” and “preservation.” When charted, these factors yield 16 different types of motivations which apply to media use.

Katz, Gurevitch and Haas (1973) developed 35 needs taken from the social and psychological functions of the mass media and put them into five categories:

  1. Cognitive needs, including acquiring information, knowledge and understanding;
  2. Affective needs, including emotion, pleasure, feelings;
  3. Personal integrative needs, including credibility, stability, status;
  4. Social integrative needs, including interacting with family and friends; and
  5. Tension release needs, including escape and diversion.

Congruously, McQuail’s (1983) classification of the following common reasons for media use:

Information

  • finding out about relevant events and conditions in immediate surroundings, society and the world
  • seeking advice on practical matters or opinion and decision choices
  • satisfying curiosity and general interest
  • learning; self-education
  • gaining a sense of security through knowledge

Personal Identity

  • finding reinforcement for personal values
  • finding models of behavior
  • identifying with valued others (in the media)
  • gaining insight into oneself

Integration and Social Interaction

  • gaining insight into the circumstances of others; social empathy
  • identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging
  • finding a basis for conversation and social interaction
  • having a substitute for real-life companionship
  • helping to carry out social roles
  • enabling one to connect with family, friends and society

Entertainment

  • escaping, or being diverted, from problems
  • relaxing
  • getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic enjoyment
  • filling time
  • emotional release
  • sexual arousal (p. 73)

These dimensions of uses and gratifications assume an active audience making motivated choices.

McQuail (1994) added another dimension to this definition. He states:

Personal social circumstances and psychological dispositions together influence both … general habits of media use and also … beliefs and expectations about the benefits offered by the media, which shape ... specific acts of media choice and consumption, followed by ... assessments of the value of the experience (with consequences for further media use) and, possibly ... applications of benefits acquired in other areas of experience and social activity (p. 235).

This expanded explanation accounts for a variety of individual needs, and helps to explain variations in media sought for different gratifications.