(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
Introduction
It is evident through empirical studies that mass media, one of the most effective medium
in creating political socialization, plays a significant role of controlling information flow
in the society (Ahn, 1995).
Though media is usually used for political bench, human rights violation, invasion of
privacy and imperialistic domination in the society but concurrently, there is a drastic
change in media scenario of Pakistan after a success story of judiciary restoration
movement through media support in the country and now its progress towards another
fallout of most crucial conflict of war on terror i.e., public discourse on national politics.
The present study focuses television news exposure on current political issues and seeks
to find out the nature and extent of their contribution to the ongoing discourse on war on
terror and its consequences on internally displaced persons and their rehabilitation. It
looks at the organisational and production aspects of these alternative media, and how
these affect their performance as alternative channels of discourse.
Uses and gratification approach emphasizes audiences’ choice by assessing their reasons
for using a certain media to the disregard of others, as well as the various gratifications
obtained from the media, based on individual social and psychological requirements
(Severin & Tankard, 2001). As a broader perspective among communication researches,
it provides a framework for understanding the processes by which media participants
seek information or content selectively, commensurate with their needs and interest.
Furthermore, the uses and gratifications approach also postulates that the media compete
with other information sources for audience’s need satisfaction (Katz et al., 1974).
Congruously, McQuuail’s (1983) classified the following common reasons for media use:
besides other classifications he has identified integration and social interaction as social
utility which are sought to gain insight into circumstances of other, and social empathy as
finding a basis for conversation and social interaction, enabling one to connect with
family, friends and society. In another study, McQuil, Blumler and Brown (1972)
proposed a model of ‘media-person interactions’ to classify media gratifications and
emphasized on personal relations: companionship and social utility as one of the
components of the model.
Television is the preferred medium and its reception occurs through the different
discourses that circulate in the work world, (Paulino, R. 2004). Subsequently, this paper
is set to investigate the electronic media, television in particular, which inflict television
viewers to use newspapers in the moment of crises leading to interpersonal discourse in
developing a socio-political consensus.
This paper is concerned about human behavior as the theory of uses and gratifications of
mass media, specifically television, as an act which occurs frequently in our lives.
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