Mass media: effects research - uses and gratifications

Uses and Gratifications

Personal identity

By personal identity we refer to finding out who we are, what we're like and how we compare with others. We do this in our interactions with other people of course, but we can use the media to gratify that need as well.

Think about how you might be sitting on the couch with your Mum commenting on a character in Eastenders: 'She's a silly cow, what did she do that for?', 'I hate that bloke. He's so stuck up' and so on, much as you might discuss real people you know, thereby locating yourself in comparison with the people on TV and at the same time getting feedback from your Mum as to whether she sees things the same way, finds your views acceptable etc.

Equally we could use the media to compare ourselves with valued others - a person in a soap, a sportsperson in our favourite sport etc. We could use the news in the same way. Maybe when we switched on the news, our main need seemed to us to be for surveillance, but we can soon get into commenting on the characters in the news, the newsreader's bushy moustache or dangly earrings etc. Again, here we see how the obvious use of the media texts is not necessarily our primary use. News broadcasters presumably see the news as imparting information. Amongst the journalists, editors and producers who contribute to the programme there will no doubt be a range of different views on what the programme is for and what their own role is. Some will see themselves as attempting to fulfil the Reithian ideal of impartiality, others will be politically committed and try to make as polemical a contribution as they can within the rules, yet others will be less concerned with the information itself as with maximizing the ratings, but it is unlikely that many of them will have our personal identity at the forefront of their minds. It's quite possible also that it is not at the forefront of our minds though it may be the foremost of our purposes. We may say to ourselves that we watch the news to keep abreast of what's going on in the world, but we may well be watching it for quite other purposes as well.

Please select from the following:

Surveillance

P ersonal relationships

Diversion

Criticism of uses and gratifications research

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