Construct · 4 fields · 6 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one word, several gratifications Nearest construct by meaningIS continuancecompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to uses and gratifications is IS continuance.
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The idea that audiences are active, choosing media to satisfy felt needs rather than passively receiving whatever is broadcast. In their 1973 review Uses and Gratifications Research, Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch set out the programme: social and psychological needs generate expectations of the media, which lead to patterns of exposure and to need satisfactions. The companion study by Katz, Haas, and Gurevitch grouped the needs people bring to media into cognitive, affective, integrative, and escapist families, covering information, personal identity, social interaction, and entertainment. The move that defined the field was to flip the question from what media do to people to what people do with media. This founding meaning treats a gratification as one broad thing, the satisfaction of a need, and later work split that single word apart. It is the referent the rest of this map is measured against, and it stands opposite the media-effects tradition such as agenda-setting.[1][2]
The gratifications a person expects from a medium before using it, that is, the motives or anticipated rewards that drive the choice to attend. Palmgreen, Wenner, and Rayburn drew a line in 1980 between what audiences seek and what they later report getting, and their Relations Between Gratifications Sought and Obtained showed the two do not move together. Palmgreen and Rayburn then built an expectancy value account in 1982, in which a sought gratification is the product of a belief that a medium offers something and the value placed on it. A gratification sought is therefore a forward-looking expectation, closer to a motive than to an experience, which is why it is a near neighbour of motivation. Measuring it means asking why someone turns to a medium, not whether they were satisfied afterward.[3][4]
The gratifications a person actually reports experiencing after using a medium, an outcome rather than an expectation. In the same 1980 study, Palmgreen, Wenner, and Rayburn found that obtained gratifications could exceed, match, or fall short of what was sought, and that the gap predicted attitudes toward a news programme better than either measure taken alone. Because the word gratification names both the wish and the result, a single scale that asks only what a person gets will confuse the two. The discrepancy between sought and obtained became a construct in its own right, used to explain loyalty and switching between programmes. Treating gratifications obtained as if they were the same as the motives that produced them is the plainest version of the collision this page describes.[3]
The needs people bring to interactive and networked media, from web portals to social platforms, a use of the theory that revived after it had faded in the broadcast era. Papacharissi and Rubin reported in 2000 that internet use answered to motives such as information seeking, convenience, entertainment, and interpersonal utility, some familiar from television and some new. Sundar and Limperos argued in Uses and Grats 2.0 that carrying the old gratification lists straight onto new media misses satisfactions the technology itself affords, such as agency, interactivity, and being part of a community. The gratifications named here overlap with the broadcast ones but are not identical, so a scale written for television will miss what a platform uniquely offers. This revival is close to how adoption and engagement are studied for digital products, and it is the same word stretched across a new object, which is why it earns a place on a jingle map.[5][6]
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