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Audience Theory 

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This theory was one of the earliest ways that people thought about how audiences are influenced by mass media.

 

This theory was developed in the

and

.

This theory suggests that the passive audience gets messages from media imjected directly into their brains. So that the whole passive audience responds to media in the same way.

Stages of the theory:

Stage 1:

  • In 1944 Herta Herzog, who is an Austrian-American social scientist began to classify the reasons why people chose specific types of media by looking at the earliest forms of uses and gratifications with her work.

  • In 1970 Abraham Maslow, who is an American psychologist suggested that this theory was an extension of the Needs and Motivation Theory.

  • In 1954 Wilbur Schramm, a scholar and "authority on mass communications".

Stage 2:

  • In 1969, Jay Blumler, an American-born theorist of communication and media and Denis McQuail, a communication theorist studied the United Kingdom election in 1964 he did this by examining people's motives for watching certain political programs on television.

  • In 1972, Denis McQuail, Jay Blumler and Joseph Brown suggested that their are 4 different categories that the uses of different types of media could be put into. These 4 categories were:

- Diversion

- Personal Relationships

- Personal Identity

- Surveillance

  • In 1973-74 Denis McQuail, Blumler and Brown were joined by Elihu Katz, an American and Israeli sociologist, Michael Gurevitch and Hadassah Haas in their exploration of media.

 

Stage 3:

 

  • The link between the reason why media is used and the achieved gratification is the most recent interest surrounding Uses and Gratifications Theory.

  • The theory is being developed to be more predictive and explanatory by Uses and Gratifications Theory researchers.

  • The research of Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch built on Herzog's research caused work in UGT to trailblaze.

 

The uses and gratifications theory has to fulfil one of the following when we choose a form of media :

 

  • Identify

  • Educate

  • Entertain

  • Social Interaction

"U&G theory states what people do with media NOT what media does with people" (Blumler and Katz 1974)

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