Blumler and Katz

USES AND GRATIFICATIONS

•The uses and gratifications theory asks what the audience does with media rather than what the media does to its audience.

•During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became adults, media theorists became more aware that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Individuals consumed texts for

different reasons and in different ways.

•Blumler and Katz argue that people use the media to gratify certain needs. Uses and gratifications puts the audience in the driving seat, they are able to

choose what the media has to offer in order to gratify their needs. Blumler and Katz expanded Lasswell’s theory that media texts had the following functions: surveillance, correlation, entertainment, cultural transmission.

They then published their own four uses.

WHAT IS IT?

Diversion: this lets people escape from everyday problems and routine.

Personal Relationships: using the media for emotional and other interaction.

Personal Identity: finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts.

Surveillance: Information which could be useful for living (to gain knowledge).

4 MAIN USES