Communication Yearbook 8

Robert Bostrom

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135148652
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Communication Yearbook annuals publish diverse, state-of-the-discipline literature reviews that advance knowledge and understanding of communication systems, processes, and impacts across the discipline. Sponsored by the International Communication Association, each volume provides a forum for the exchange of interdisciplinary and internationally diverse scholarship relating to communication in its many forms. This volume re-issues the yearbook from 1984.

I

Communication Reviews and Commentaries

1

Uses and Gratifications: A Theoretical Perspective

Philip Palmgreen

University of Kentucky

SINCE the publication of Blumler and Katz’s (1974) landmark volume, The Uses of Mass Communication, research into the uses audience members make of the mass media, the gratifications derived from media consumption, and their antecedents and consequences has continued at an accelerating pace. Ten years ago critics argued with some success that such research was basically “atheoretical.” Today, such an argument would be more difficult to defend. In fact, an examination of the research agenda reveals that the last decade has been a period of rather vigorous theoretical growth for the uses and gratifications approach. This growth was heralded by Blumler and Katz’s (1974, p. 13) observation that “the uses and gratifications approach is well and truly launched on a third major phase of its development: a sort of coming of age.” This third phase, they said, is concentrated on attempts to provide explanations of the ways in which audience motives, expectations, and media behaviors are interconnected. In other words, Blumler and Katz felt that after lengthy periods in which researchers concentrated mainly on description and measurement of audience uses and motives, the emphasis had shifted in the 1970s to theory development.

While description and measurement remain important concerns, a growing number of studies have indeed been dedicated to the specification and testing of hypotheses about gratifications and media consumption, the relationship between gratifications sought and obtained, the social and psychological origins of media use, and gratifications and media effects. Many of these studies have begun to bridge certain important gaps observed by Blumler and Katz and others a decade ago, while others represent the first tentative steps down entirely new paths of inquiry. The result has been a significant transformation in an important research tradition as researchers strive for a greater understanding of the roles played in society by media undergoing both rapid change and functional reorganization.

This chapter attempts an assessment of the various strands of uses and gratifications research from a theoretical perspective. It examines in some detail the empirical evidence relating to a number of important theoretical linkages and assumptions, including those stemming from certain relatively new and particularly promising approaches to uses and gratifications phenomena. In turn, the research findings in each of six categories are explored: (1) gratifications and media consumption; (2) social and psychological origins of gratifications; (3) gratifications and media effects; (4) gratifications sought and obtained; (5) expectancy-value approaches to uses and gratifications; and (6) audience activity. The findings in each of these areas are incorporated into an integrative model of gratifications and media consumption representing the rather complex theoretical structure that appears to be emerging from uses and gratifications research and work in related areas. Finally, a few of the many challenges facing uses and gratifications researchers are discussed, including understanding the uses of new communications technologies and the development of a comparative theory of mass media use.

Gratifications and Media Consumption

In a now classic précis, Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch (1974, p. 20) describe the uses and gratifications approach as one concerned with “(1) the social and psychological origins of (2) needs, which generate (3) expectations of (4) the mass media or other sources, which lead to (5) differential patterns of media exposure (or engagement in other activities), resulting in (6) need gratifications and (7) other consequences, perhaps mostly unintended ones.”

While research concerned with almost any of these diverse elements has been placed rather loosely under the broad uses and gratifications umbrella, researchers have emphasized the broad center of Katz et al.’s list (elements 2–6), while paying less attention to the end points of “social and psychological origins” and “media effects.” The actual research agenda, then, contradicts a common interpretation of uses and gratifications research as an approach that evolved out of dissatisfaction with earlier “effects” research, and that sought to utilize gratifications concepts as intervening or interacting variables to improve effects predictions. If the uses and gratifications paradigm were indeed a “modified effects model,” it is curious that Katz et al. (1974, p. 28) nearly thirty years after the origins of the approach, would conclude that “hardly any substantial empirical or theoretical effort has been devoted to connecting gratifications and effects.” While there has been a welcome upsurge in “uses and effects” studies in recent years, and while the social and psychological origins of needs and gratifications is also an important and legitimate concern, most of the research has been devoted to explaining and explicating processes of individual mass media consumption. Such consumption, which is defined narrowly here as audience members’ choices of and exposure to various media and types of media content, is viewed by uses and gratifications adherents as motivated by individuals’ needs, wants, and requirements. The perceived fulfillment of these manifold needs and requirements through media consumption constitutes, in the lexicon of uses and gratifications researchers, the perceived “gratifications obtained” from media experience. These gratifications, when sought by audience members, are viewed as one of the major causes of active, purposive media consumption behavior directed at gratification fulfillment.

Empirical Studies

Research on the relationship between gratifications (both sought and obtained) and media consumption falls into two main categories: (1) typological studies of media gratifications and (2) studies that investigate the empirical association between gratifications sought and % or obtained on the one hand and measures of media exposure or medium or content choice on the other. Typological studies are at the core of the uses and gratifications tradition and have as their main purpose the identification of types of motives for media consumption. Typological studies formed the bulk of uses and gratifications research prior to the 1970s, and new typologies, particularly for specific content types (such as television news), continue to appear in the literature. Most of the empirical studies cited in this review, in fact, present one or another typology appropriate to the medium or content type under study.

Becker (1979) and McLeod and Becker (1981) have discussed three techniques that have been employed in such studies to elicit consumption motives and to measure their strength: (1) self-report techniques; (2) observer inference of motivations presumed to intervene between media consumption and antecedent variables (such as age, sex, and social location); and (3) experimental manipulation of motives. Self-report is the most direct method of measurement and is far more commonly used than either observer inference or experimental manipulation, although examples of the latter two methods are treated later in this review. The self-report “technique” actually encompasses a variety of methods, including the writing of essays by respondents about their reasons for media consumption; interviews with audience members, either alone or in “focus groups”; and closed-ended Likert-type gratification scales, usually devised on the basis of the open-ended essays or interviews. The closed-ended measures are usually subjected to factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, or cluster analysis to aid in the identification of various gratification dimensions. Through such methods, typological studies have identified a great variety of motives for media consumption, including information, entertainment, social utility, and personal identity (Katz et al., 1974).

The validity of this type of explanation of media consumption rests in turn on the validity of the different self-report techniques. While self-report measures have a long and respected tradition of use in the social sciences, they also have recognized limitations. In the present context, there is controversy over the extent to which respondents are conscious of their motives for consumption or can be made conscious of such motives through closed-or open-ended techniques. The measures have also been criticized as subject to the influence of social acceptability, respondent educational level, and researcher-imposed conceptualization (Becker, 1979; McLeod & Becker, 1981) . The debate about these issues is neither new nor unique to the uses and gratifications tradition. Much doubt about the construct validity of gratification measures would be resolved, however, if it could be shown that such indices relate in theoretically predictable ways to other variables, particularly various measures of media consumption. Such empirical evidence would at the same time support the general postulate that mass media consumption is motivated by the gratifications identified by researchers.

In this regard a survey of the literature reveals more than twenty studies that show empirical associations between various gratification measures (both sought and obtained) and media exposure, medium choice, and content choice (Becker, 1976; Becker & Fruit, 1982; Blood & Galloway, 1983; Blumler & McQuail, 1969; Davis & Woodall, 1982; Greenberg, 1974; Hedinsson, 1981; Hur & Robinson, 1981; Kippax & Murray, 1980; McLeod & Becker, 1974; McLeod, Bybee, & Durall, 1982; McLeod, Durall, Ziemke, & Bybee, 1979; McQuail, 1979; Nordlund, 1978; Palmgreen & Rayburn, 1979, 1982; Palmgreen, Wenner, & Rayburn, 1981; Peled & Katz, 1974; Rosengren & Windahl, 1972; Rubin, 1981, 1983; Rubin & Rubin, 1982; Wenner, 1983). While only one of the above studies provides data of a longitudinal nature (Blood & Galloway, 1983) and the evidence is thus primarily correlational, taken together these studies provide documentation of the ability of a wide variety of gratification indices to predict a still wider variety of media consumption measures in diverse settings ranging from peacetime presidential campaigns to media use in a war zone.

A majority of studies to this point concern television, including total TV exposure, exposure to different program content types—such as television news, debates, and quiz shows—public television viewing, and viewing of specific programs (for example, Roots). A number of studies also have shown that gratifications are related to program choice in different ways. For example, Palmgreen et al. (1981) found that respondents consistently perceived that they were obtaining greater gratifications from their favorite network television news program than they obtained (or felt they would obtain) from the two competing programs. Rubin & Rubin (1982) found that specific gratifications sought are related to viewing specific types of programs. Canonical analysis revealed that the seeking of essentially passive-entertainment kinds of gratifications from television (companionship, relaxation, passing time, arousal, and habit) was related to total viewing time and the viewing of daytime serials and game shows. The seeking of informational gratifications, on the other hand, characterized viewers of television news, documentary magazines, and talk shows.

The published research does not relate exclusively to television, however. Kippax and Murray (1980) found that perceived gratifications obtained from each of five different media were generally positively related to exposure. Only newspapers failed to show a consistent relationship. McLeod et al. (1979) report that seeking of surveillance-vote guidance was positively correlated with overall cross-media campaign media exposure for the young, while seeking of content-excitement was a stronger predictor for older voters. Both sets of gratifications predicted exposure to partisan media content among both age groups. Other studies that relate gratifications and needs to exposure to newspapers, radio, and other media include Nordlund (1978), Rosengren and Windahl (1972) Kline, Miller, and Morrison (1974), and Becker and Fruit (1982). The last study also provides evidence that audience members’ comparisons of gratifications obtained from different media are related to medium choice. Respondents’ evaluations of newspapers and television (relative to one another) concerning the ability of these media to satisfy local and national information needs were related to choice of one or the other medium for either local or national news.

In general, the various media consumption studies show low to moderate correlations (.15 to .40) between the gratifications measures and consumption indices. While not large, the observed correlations are in the range of those generally found in cross-sectional surveys of mass media behavior, including “effects” studies. Also, approximately half of the studies cited employed statistical controls, sometimes multiple ones, for a variety of demographic, exposure, and political variables. In one of the most stringent tests of this type, Wenner (1983), using hierarchical regression analysis, demonstrated that gratification measures (both sought and obtained) accounted for significant additional variance in exposure to network evening news and 60 Minutes when demographic, exposure, and dependency measures are included. Additional evidence of this type is furnished by Hedinsson (1981), who employed a fifteen-variable structural equation model (LISREL) in a study of television use among Swedish children. Television use associated with identification and interaction with TV content (“capture,” according to Rosengren & Windahl, 1972) was positively related to television viewing levels for both fifth graders (β = .16) and ninth graders (β = .26). The effect was independent of the numerous social class and socialization variables in the model.

Conclusions

Data, then, from studies in the United States, Britain, Sweden, Israel, and Australia are supportive of the postulate that mass media consumption is motivated by gratifications associated with the consumption experience. Moreover, the research evidence speaks strongly against univariate or bivariate motivational schemes, since several investigations have found consumption predicted by multiple motivations. While much media consumption may be accidental, and though consumption is certainly constrained by such factors as availability and work schedules, as Bogart (1965) and others have contended, there seems to be no denying that motivation also plays a substantial role.

Social and Psychological Origins of Media Gratifications

In a study of social integration and mass media use among adolescents, Johnstone (1974, p. 35) observes that “members of mass audiences do not experience the media as anonymous and isolated individuals, but rather as members of organized social groups and as participants in a cultural milieu.” This is a view shared by the majority of uses and gratifications researchers who “have always been strongly opposed to ‘mass audience’ terminology as a way of labelling the collectivities that watch TV shows, attend movies, and read magazines and newspapers in their millions” (Blumler, 1979, p. 21). According to this view, then, many of the media-related needs and requirements of individuals spring from their location in and interaction with their social environment.

Blumler has posited three major social origins of media gratifications: (1) normative influences, which give rise to certain requirements or expectations based on sex, life-cycle position, social roles, and so on; (2) socially distributed life chances, consisting of factors that “facilitate” a richer involvement with media content (for example, organi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Overview
• Part I: Communication Reviews and Commentaries
• Part II: Information Systems
• Part III: Interpersonal Communication
• Part IV: Mass Communication
• Part V: Organizational Communication
• Part VI: Intercultural and International Communication
• Part VII: Political Communication
• Part VIII: Instructional Communication
• Part IX: Health Communication
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• About the Editor
• About the Authors