Question

Discuss with examples, the features of the Uses and Gratifications Theory of communication.

Answer 1

It is the theory which explains of how people use media for their need & gratification. In other words we can say this theory states what people do with media rather than what media does to people. Also this theory is contradictory to the magic bullet theory which States the audience is passive. According to use and gratification theory, it is not so people make use of the media for their specific needs. This theory can be said to have a user/audience-centered approach. Even for communication people refer to the media for the topic they discuss with themselves. They gain more knowledge and that knowledge is got by using media for reference. There are several needs and gratification for people they are categorized into five categories.

1) cognitive needs:- people use media for acquiring knowledge, information etc.,Among the audience some of them have intellectual needs to acquire knowledge this is not common to all only certain people have their needs, each person have a different need for e.g. quiz programs on TV, in order to acquire knowledge and information you will watch news to satisfy the need,search engines in the internet, they make use of these to gain more knowledge. Particularly for the Internet search engine they can browse for any topic under the run with not time restriction.

2) Affective needs:- It includes all kinds of emotions, pleasure and other moods of the people. People use media like television to satisfy their emotional needs . For example, people watch drama or movie and if there is any sad scene means people used to cry.

3) Personal needs:- This is the self-esteem need. People use media to reassure their status, gain credibility and stabilize. So people watch TV and assure themselves that they have a status in society for e.g. people get to improve their status by watching media advertisements like jewellery ad, furniture's ad and buy products, so the people change their life style and media helps them to do so.

4) Social Integrative needs:- It encompasses the need to socialize with family, friends and relations in the society. For social interaction now a days people do not seems to have social gathering in weekend, instead they do such social interaction using media like the social networking sites like, twitter, Facebook,Snapchat,my space,Instagram etc. To satisfy their need.