Through Uses and Gratification Theory

From the article by Urista et al., I learned about the uses and gratification perspective, which states that “people will choose media according to their expectations and their drive to attain a gratifying experience” (Urista et al 2008, pg 220).  In other words, this perspective focuses on people as consumers of media and it examines what people do with media such as where they go and what they look at. Thus, this perspective gives people an active role since its goal is to determine how people use media to fulfill their wants and needs.

Using a uses and gratifications framework, researchers conducted several focus groups in order to gauge more information about how SNS like Myspace and Facebook fulfill the needs and wants of college students. Five major themes of why the participants use SNS to fulfill their wants/needs emerged at the end of the study: (1) efficient communication, (2) convenient communication, (3) curiosity about others, (4) popularity, and (5) relationship formation and reinforcement.  Thus, SNS was found to satisfy specific personal and interpersonal gratifications that the participants sought. Additionally, SNS serve as a powerful medium for participants because they are efficient, convenient, and allow participants the opportunity to seek approval and support of other people in their network.

I thought this article was very interesting since it gave me another perspective on how to analyze media. While McLuhan’s article focused more on how the medium of media influences people, this article focuses on how people use media and what they do to/with it. Reflecting on all the readings then, I see media and consumers engaged in a feedback loop where they both influence one another.