Uses and Gratification Theory

Abbey Cotterill

History of uses and gratifications In the 1960’s, it became increasingly aware to media theorists that audiences

made choices about what they did when consuming different texts. Instead of being a passive mass, audiences were made up of passive individuals who were active and consumed texts for a range of reasons and in different ways.

In 1948 Lasswell spoke out and suggested that media texts had four main functions for individuals and society which were:

1. Surveillance2. Correlation3. Entertainment4. Cultural Transmission Renown researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded Lasswell’s theory and

published their own version in 1974. This stated that individuals might consume a text for the following purposes:

1. Surveillance- information which could be useful for living such as weather reports and news reports.

2. Personal Relationships- using the media for emotional and other types of interaction. For example, using soap operas to represent different types of family life.

3. Personal Identity- finding yourself in similar situations as the text as well as learning values and behaviour from texts.

4. Diversion- the texts act as a form of escapism from everyday problems.

What it focuses onThe Uses and Gratification theory focuses on

questions such as:1. What do the audience want from the text

and how to target that ‘want’?2. What does the audience do with a media

product/text?3. What is the overall effect of the media

product/text on the audience?