Uses and Gratification Theory

Uses and Gratification Theory
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Institution

Abstract
Individuals are able to interact with other people through communication, which does not merely involve the passage of information but also encapsulates the channels used to transmit this information. Therefore, communication can occur verbally, visually, non-verbally, and electronically in light of the current computer-age. Communication enables individuals to understand what is happening in the world and assert one’s position based on one’s ability to express him/herself. In order to understand this essence of communication, this paper discusses the application of the uses and gratifications theory to understand how an individual is able to display his or her autonomy in media use. Therefore, it nullifies the commonly held notion that individuals’ behaviors are governed by the media, and especially the social media. The social media is selected because it is one area where people freely express their ideas because, at most times, the individuals hide behind pseudonyms. Moreover, the social media sites, and especially Facebook is an avenue for various activities, and an individual is able to relate to that activity which best suits him or her.

Introduction
Communication is essential in our day-to-day life because it helps to express our thoughts and views, which in turn is associated with a feeling of gratification. In the current world, direct face-to-face communication has become a major challenge as the society is engulfed in working relentlessly.

The media has become the main form through which people get to learn and know what is happening in the world out there because sociability has become a challenge. The uses and gratification theory helps to understand how individuals are using the media to communication and to fulfill their needs and motives. Even in the workplace as competition heightens, people are working more and having limited direct engagements compared to online interaction via companies’ websites or internal memos. It is therefore, important to understand how individuals use and derive gratification from using the social media as discussed herein.
Justification of Uses and Gratification Theory
The uses and gratification theory is an important theory in communication because it explains the needs and motivations that guide individuals to select particular types of media during communication. This theory indicates how people use the media to fulfill their communication needs and derive gratification from using the media be it in the workplace or a social gathering (Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008). Therefore, it helps to understand how individuals involve the media in meeting their needs and motives. The main of communication in the current world is the internet; it is through the Internet that individuals get news updates, connect with friends, and gain valuable information. Individuals use online communication to derive pleasure in life considering that man is a social being, he or she uses the media to build relationships and find life partners or soul mates. This theory also helps to understand why individuals prefer a certain type of media over another and understand the various needs that might prompt individuals to this specific media. Therefore, this theory provides a framework through which the needs and motivations of individuals are understood. Individuals make independent decisions regarding the amount of time they will engage in a certain media, where and when; and this helps individuals to maintain contact as they go about their daily routines. The uses and gratifications theory, therefore, helps to understand how individuals utilize different types of media to fulfill their different specific needs. The individual, in reference to the uses and gratifications theory, controls the media and not the other way round.
Communication Context
The uses and gratification theory can be used in various communication context because it helps to meet individuals’ varied needs. The needs are related to the usage of the media as explained above, and since the media plays a major role in enhancing communication, an array of communication processes involved are as follows as described in “Uses and gratification theory” (2010).
Cognitive needs
Cognitive needs are achieved when individuals use the media to gain knowledge and insight about particular things, events, or processes. For example, if one motives to cook a particular food, the media, and mainly the Internet, can be used as reference to know how to gain insight on how to go about it. By so doing, the uses and gratification theory can be used to justify the use of the media to meet cognitive needs and derive a form of satisfaction.
Affective needs
Individuals use the media for entertainment, and this can be explained by explaining one’s moods and emotions. Different individuals will watch different genres of movies to gain emotional fulfillment.
Personal Needs
The celebrities and renowned political figures are mainly the point of focus in this arena because they mainly use the media to increase their fame and popularity. The political figures, also, use the media to carry out their campaigns implore citizens to vote for them. Also, it is through the media that individuals get to know what is trending; thus, they are able to align their status quo with those laid down by the society. The media helps people to fulfill their personal needs by providing an array of shopping options from which to choose.
Social Needs
This entails the sociable nature of man and the uses and gratification theory helps to explain how individuals will utilize the different forms of the social media to interact with other individuals.
Tension free needs
This mainly involves the gratification bit as individuals will use the media to relieve stress. Different individuals have different ways of relieving their stress; whereas others might engage in binge drinking, others watch their favorite films or TV shows to get rid of unwelcomed stress.
Considering all these communication needs, this paper will focus on the social aspect, which has been the significant domain in which the media is used. Nowadays, mainly due to the busy schedules, there is hardly any time for individuals to gather together; hence, the social media becomes the meeting place for social gatherings. Groups are formed via Whatsapp and Facebook, and the members are able to give input regarding various issues (“Uses and gratification theory,” 2010).
Applying the Uses and Gratification Theory in Social Media
The social media entails a variety of social network sites whose purposes include, but not limited to creating public profiles within “a bounded system” that enables individuals with similar characteristics to interact and engage in various social activities, including sharing photographs and videos. Sometimes, after school at different levels, individuals will go about their own way but these sites, and especially Facebook, helps individuals to reconnect. Thereby, the sites help to mainly build on already existing relationships. The social media is the main avenue through which the public gets to learn about the latest event, for example, a sporting activity or other social event. As business are using the social media to advertise their products and services, then shopping becomes possible as individuals can learn about the best places from where to purchase their products and services.
The uses and gratification theory will be used to understand how communication progresses in the context of the social media. More than 30million people use Facebook on a daily basis because Facebook has grown to become the hub of communication ranging from news updates, employment opportunities, to socialization. Facebook is also useful for students because it enables them to establish discussion forums via the site. The social media is a perfect medium through which this theory can be applied because it helps to engage individuals more rapidly and more actively in various activities. Park, Kerk, and Valenzuela (2009) argue that the uses and gratifications linked to the social media help to achieve various social outcomes, such as political involvement.
The changing structure of society has largely contributed to the strong association between social involvement on social media sites and information motivation. In addition, due to increased social needs, there is a subsequent increment in developing social contacts and community engagement. Different social media sites have different functions that are meant to fulfill different individuals’ needs; messaging and groups are such functions. In their study, Park et al. (2009) showed that students will join social media sites like Facebook to get information about activities within and outside the campus. In addition, they are able to socialize with friends, get entertained, and establish a social status for themselves on the sites. The various college groups enable students to form strong movements in support of various political and social causes.Park et al. (2009) aimed to indicate the uses and gratifications of developing groups on Facebook and political and civic engagement of these groups. The study showed that different students will engage in different Facebook groups based on their uses and gratifications; hence, a student who joins a Facebook group for the purpose of entertainment if not likely to pursue political or civic Facebook groups. This phenomenon justifies the application of the uses and gratification theory as one used to explain why people will take part in only those activities from which their needs and desires are gratified (Aramide, 2011). Students in the lower levels are more involved in these groups than those of upper levels because they have more free time given the fact that classwork becomes more involving and demanding as one moves up the college levels.
Acquisti and Gross (2009) also indicated that Facebook users are motivated to use it in communication because it helps them to know their classmates better given the challenges involved in direct socialization. In research studies, college students often state that they use Facebook for keeping in touch with family and friends, pass time in a constructive manner instead of indulging in anti-social behavior, and entertainment. Whereas these are the motives for using social media sites like Facebook, meeting new people has prevailed as a need for using these sites. The uses and gratifications of using social media sites have been replicated in various studies, and all of them point to the needs and motives discussed herein.
In their commentary paper, Whiting and Williams (2013) note that the application of the uses and gratification theory to explain how people communication based on their needs and motives has directed much attention to social media sites as meeting places for all kind of people from various social cadres. Using the uses and gratification theory, one can evidently tell that the various needs mentioned earlier in this paper influence individuals behavior to engage in particular forms of social media sites. These social media sites are used by companies for marketing purposes due to the motive of reaching out to a large crowd of people. In reference to the highly competitive world, provision of excellent services results in more referrals as customers will share information about products and services via the social media (Murugesan, 2007). In addition, video sharing sites like YouTube are informative because links are shared via Facebook help individuals to view and even learn how to use the various products. Hence, in this case, an individual might first access Facebook to learn about the best product or service in the market and later on use YouTube to know how to use or access the service. Evidently, the manner in which individuals’ select and use the social media clearly displays the essence of the uses and gratifications theory to fulfill the personal needs and motives of individuals and organizations.
Other than Facebook and YouTube, individuals can fulfill their needs and motives from other social media sites as outlined by Ezumah (2013). LinkedIn is one of the oldest social media sites that is mainly used to communicate business and professional related content. Hence, professionals aiming to build a more successful and productive world meet at LinkedIn. MySpace is important for advertising purposes; hence, business individuals and celebrities because businesses are able to interact with their customers and celebrities with their fans. Twitter focuses on the use of tweets for certain events; thereby, individuals who are mainly interested in engaging in latest developments would better be placed on Twitter because it is specific to its purpose. There is Flickr that that is largely involved in sharing photographs, and this is mainly aimed to seek self-status. Given the various social media sites, an individual is, therefore, able to choose the kind of media based on his or her purpose that will enable him or her meet her needs and fulfill his or her desires.
Karimi, Khodabandelou, Ehsani, and Ahmad (2014) explain that the social media behavior in communication is attributed to the fact that users are goal-oriented, and each type of media helps them to achieve a certain goal in reference to their needs and motives. Some researchers such as Choi, Kim, and McMillan (2009) have stated that demographic factors, for example, income, age, psychological status, and education are motivating factors for social media behavior among individuals. Therefore, women are more likely to engage in social media to address the issue of dysfunctional family relationships while men use the same media to remove loneliness. In addition, age and income combined influence utilization of social media because young individuals from high-income families are more likely to engage in Internet use and associated social media sites for leisure while young individuals from poorer backgrounds use the Internet to gain information because they cannot afford to stay online for long durations of times.
Therefore, driven by various needs and motivations in reference to the uses and gratifications theory, individuals are able to make their own independent decisions on how they wish to use a particular type of media. Different individuals will use a certain type of media for different reasons. Hence, the reason why Facebook has the majority of users because it is able to meet the varied needs of most individuals.
Conclusion
The uses and gratifications theory is an important theory that highlights the independence and autonomy of media users; users tend to make objective decisions regarding the best means to communicate. In the current era whereby the world has become a beehive of activities, individuals do not get time to meet and socialize; hence, the Internet has been used to develop various applications that help to fulfill this gap. The social media is the topic of interest for almost every individual as individuals will register for various social media sites for various purposes and utilize various applications within these sites to meet individual needs and not because they are influenced to do so.

References
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Whiting, A., & Williams, D. L. (2013). Why people use social media: A uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research, 16(4). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237566776_Why_people_use_social_media_A_uses_and_gratifications_approach.