USES AND GRATIFICATIONS THEORY

Uses and Gratifications Theory Applied to Religious Programming

Uses and Gratifications Theory Applied to Religious Programming

Introduction

Uses and gratifications theory is based on these basic ideas: that media audiences are active rather than passive; that their media choices depend on perceived needs, satisfactions, wishes, or motives; and that audiences are formed on the basis of similarities of need, interest, and taste. The primary questions to be answered with uses and gratifications research are why do people choose certain media and not other media, and what are the rewards derived from attending to these media? Media may be a medium such as television or a subset such as a program type or a specific television program.

Discussion

Communication scholars studied the uses and gratifications of various aspects of mass media before it became known as the uses and gratifications approach. Researchers in the 1940s looked at what people missed about reading the newspaper when the newspaper staff was on strike, the gratifications derived from listening to soap operas, reasons for becoming interested in serious music on radio, and how children develop an interest in the comics. In the 1960s and 1970s, a more systematic approach to studying how and why people use media led to the emergence of the uses and gratifications model. Blumler and Katz (1974) discuss the major elements in the model: The audience is considered to be active rather than passive in media consumption; initiative in linking need gratification and media choice lies with the audience member; the media compete with other sources of need satisfaction; many of the goals of mass media use can be derived from data supplied by audience members themselves; and value judgments about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while audience orientations are explored. McQuail (2000) lists additional elements: Audiences are conscious of media-related needs and can voice them in terms of motivations; personal utility is a more significant determinant of audience formation than aesthetic or cultural factors; and all of the relevant factors for audience formation can be measured. With these elements in mind, researchers set out to find the attributes of different media that satisfy needs of media consumers.

They found, among other things, that television and print media were interchangeable for learning purposes; that books share an information function with newspapers and an aesthetic function with movies; and that in times of crisis, radio is the best medium for news, ...