Uses and Gratification Theory

• Popular approach to understanding mass communication
• Focuses on the consumer, or audience instead of the actual message itself by asking "what people do with media" rather than "what media does to people" - Katz (1959).
• Assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives.
• Audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their needs. This suggests that people use the media to fulfill specific gratifications.
• Implies that the media competes against the other information and sources for viewers' gratification - Katz, E Blumler, J G & Gurevitch, M (1974).

Basic Model

Identify - Being able to recognize the product or person in front of you, role models that reflect similar values to yours, aspirations to be someone else.

Educate - Being able to acquire information, knowledge and understanding.

Entertain - What you are consuming should give you enjoyment and also some form of 'escapism' enabling us to forget our worries temporarily.

Social Interaction - The ability for media products to produce a topic on conversation between other people, sparks debates.

Reception Theory: Stuart Hall (1980)

Hall's 'encoding - decoding' model argued that media producers encode 'preferred meanings' into text, but these texts may be 'read' by their audiences in a number of different ways:

• The dominant - hegemonic position: a preferred reading that accepts the text's messages and the ideological assumptions behind the messages.

• The negotiated position: the reader accepts the text's ideological assumptions, but disagrees with the aspects of the messages, so negotiated the meaning to fit with their 'lived experience'. 

• The oppositional reading: the reader rejects both the overt message and it's underlying ideological assumptions.

Cultivation Theory: Gerbner 

Exposure to television over long periods of time. Cultivates standardized roles and behaviors Gerbner used content analysis to analyse repeated media messages and values, then found that heavy users of TV were more likely, for example, to develop 'mean world syndrome' - a cynical mistrusting attitude towards others - following prolonged exposure to high levels of TV violence.

Media Effects Theory: Bondura

The media can influence people directly. Human values judgement and conduct can be altered directly by media modelling. Direct influence can lead to imitation. The media may influence directly by media messages without being exposed to them. Different media have different effects. The 'new' media offers opportunities for self-disconnectedness.