Uses and Gratifications Theory in the 21st Century

Some mass communications scholars have contended that uses and gratifications is not a rigorous social science theory. In this article, I argue just the opposite, and any attempt to speculate on the future direction of mass communication theory must seri-ously include the uses and gratifications approach. In this article, I assert that the emergence of computer-mediated communication has revived the significance of uses and gratifications. In fact, uses and gratifications has always provided a cutting-edge theoretical approach in the initial stages of each new mass communications medium: newspapers, radio and television, and now the Internet. Although scientists are likely to continue using traditional tools and typologies to answer questions about media use, we must also be prepared to expand our current theoretical models of uses and gratifications. Contemporary and future models must include concepts such as interactivity, demassification, hypertextuality, and asynchroneity. Researchers must also be willing to explore interpersonal and qualitative aspects of mediated commu-nication in a more holistic methodology. What mass communication scholars today refer to as the uses and gratifications (U&G) approach is generally recognized to be a subtradition of media effects re-search (McQuail, 1994). Early in the history of communications research, an ap-proach was developed to study the gratifications that attract and hold audiences to the kinds of media and the types of content that satisfy their social and psychologi-cal needs (Cantril, 1942). Much early effects research adopted the experimental or quasi-experimental approach, in which communication conditions were manipu-lated in search of general lessons about how better to communicate, or about the un-intended consequences of messages (Klapper, 1960).