mass-communication-theory

AUDIENCE THEORIES: FROM SOURCE-DOMINATED
TO ACTIVE-AUDIENCE PERSPECTIVES
uses-andgratifications
approach
Approach to
media study
focusing on the
uses to which
people put media
and the gratifications
they seek
from those uses
fraction of
selection
Schramm’s
graphic description
of how individuals
make
media and content
choices based on
expectation of
reward and effort
required
Chapter 9 Audience Theories: Uses, Reception, and Effects 245
Propaganda theories are concerned with audiences. As we saw in Chapter 4, the
power of propaganda resides in its ability to quickly reach vast audiences and
expose them to the same simple but subversive messages. In these theories, the propagandist
dominates the audience and controls the messages that reach it. The
focus is on how propagandists are able to manipulate audiences using messages
that affect them as the propagandist intends. Most are source-dominated theories.
They center their attention primarily on message sources and content, not on the
audiences the sources want to influence. As media theories have developed, this
focus has gradually shifted. As early as the 1940s, the work of people like Herta
Herzog, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Frank Stanton reflected at least the implicit concern
for studying an active, gratifications-seeking audience. Lazarsfeld and Stanton
(1942) produced a series of books and studies throughout the 1940s that paid
significant attention to how audiences used media to organize their lives and
experiences. For example, they studied the value of early-morning radio reports
to farmers. As part of the Lazarsfeld and Stanton series, Bernard Berelson (1949)
published a classic media-use study of the disruption experienced by readers during
a newspaper strike. He reported convincing evidence that newspapers formed an
important part of many people’s daily routine.
Herta Herzog is often credited as the originator of the uses-and-gratifications
approach, although she most likely did not give it its label. Interested in how and
why people listened to the radio, she studied fans of a popular quiz show (1940)
and soap opera listeners (1944). This latter work, entitled “Motivations and
Gratifications of Daily Serial Listeners,” provides an in-depth examination of
media gratifications. She interviewed one hundred radio soap opera fans and identified
“three major types of gratification.” First, listening was “merely a means
of emotional release”; “a second and commonly recognized form of enjoyment
concerns the opportunities for wishful thinking”; and the “third and commonly
unsuspected form of gratification concerns the advice obtained from listening to
daytime serials.” Herzog wanted to understand why so many housewives were
attracted to radio soap operas. In contrast with the typical effects research conducted
in Lazarsfeld’s shop,herworkdidn’t try to measure the influence that soap operas
had on women. She was satisfied with assessing their reasons and experiences—
their uses and gratifications.
One of the first college mass communication textbooks, The Process and Effects
of Mass Communication, offered an early active-audience conceptualization. Author
Wilbur Schramm (1954) asked this question, “What determines which offerings of
mass communication will be selected by a given individual?” (p. 19). The answer
was the fraction of selection:
Expectation of Reward
Effort Required
His point was that people weigh the level of reward (gratification) they expect
from a given medium or message against how much effort they must make to
secure that reward. Review your own news consumption, for example. Of course,
Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.