Uses and Gratifications Theory
An Introduction
Uses and gratifications theory is an approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. Uses and gratification is an audience-centered approach to understanding mass communication. It assumes that audience members are not passive consumers of media.
Uses and gratifications theory focuses on the audience and their power as consumers of media, asking why they make the choices they do and what they get from a media product. Media exists to fulfill the audience's needs/desires.
* Key things that the audience wants:
- To be informed
- People to identify with
- Simple entertainment/ relaxation
- Social interaction
- Escape from daily life
* Other possible uses and gratifications include the need for personal identity, reassurance, the need for routine.
Which of the uses and gratifications could be applied to your genre of film?
Our chosen genre of film is a thriller. As a group we believe that it mainly applies to the audience wanting simple entertainment (adrenaline rush) and perhaps social interaction. We believe it applies to these because people watch them by choice and usually with friends. In addition, to sit through a thriller, is seen as a an admirable traits it includes tension/action/scary parts that one would brag about to friends - thus making it a social interaction. Thrillers usually exercise the brain as the audience are forced to keep up with the complex plots/story-lines. Furthermore, thrillers aren't necessarily seen as relaxing because they are created to keep the audience on the edge of their seat, and process the complexity of a story-line.
This links back to the simple entertainment of the Uses and Gratifications Theory because thrillers do entertain, but not in a relaxing way. For example the film Psycho, by Alfred Hitchcock, is know for being very enigmatic and having a complex story line showing that thrillers are largely about exercise the brain and feeling the trill of the genre. Therefore, this shows the escape from daily life and simple entertainment. Similarly the more recent film Gone Girl also follows the traditional structures of a thriller and a similar uses and gratification model of simple entertainment, showing that most thrillers follow the same arrangement.
This theory does not generally provide an analysis for a thriller film as it mainly focuses on what categories the film falls into and why the audience had watched it. A thriller is generally catered to the needs of the audience as seems to be no deeper reason for a film company to make them. Similarly, the uses and gratifications theory does not explain the progress of making a thriller as it doesn't take into account where the ideas for the film came from, the creativity and the originality of the idea and why some thrillers (such as Coraline) go against the conventions. There is generally no deeper meaning for a thriller (like teaching morals or teaching about life), however, the "Saw" franchise could argue that it is teaching the audience to look into their morals and think about what they see as wrong and right. The films are about the torture of people by a character called Jigsaw. At first this is seen as awful; however, the audience soon realise that those who are being killed have previously done something bad. This makes the audience feel that these characters possibly deserve this fate. Consequently, this makes the audience question their morals as it is inhuman to believe something like this.
Does Uses and Gratifications Theory provide enough to analyse films in your genre? Do these films simply cater for the needs of the audience?
The uses and gratification theory could help to generate our group's questions for the audience research by inspiring us to ask questions like; 'What is the main reason you watch a film?' and; 'Out of the following reasons to watch a thriller, which would you pick?'.
This will allow us to really look in depth as to what our audience want to watch and what draws them in when it comes to thrillers. It would be useful to know why the audiences believe they are drawn to a film, what they like about the thriller genre and why they believe they watch thrillers. It would also be interesting to do some follow up research about thrillers - for example, we could show a group of people the first few minutes of some thriller films and ask the group questions that link to the uses and gratification model, such as "Is there a character you identify with?".