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Uses and Gratifications: Evidence for
Various Media
AZI LEV-ON
Ariel University, Israel
eusesandgratications(U&G)approachemergedasaresponsetoearlier
approaches that perceived the mass media as a generator of strong and uniform eects
across individuals and groups. e new approach became prevalent as television was
transforming people’s media ecologies, prompting a need for approaches that more
adequately t the emerging media landscape. Given the signicant changes in the
current media ecology, we face a similar situation today, and, as with the diusion of
television, the penetration of new media again seems to be hospitable for the U&G
approach (Papacharissi, 2009; Ruggiero, 2000; Sundar & Limperos, 2013).
WhileintheirearlydaysInternetaccessandusewererestrictedinscopeandlim-
ited to government and academic institutions, Internet usage has expanded enormously
since the mid-1990s, following a broad range of developments including the invention
of the World Wide Web, the spread of personal computers, the introduction of com-
mercial service providers, and the growing reach of Internet access across the globe.
Internet penetration was followed by a growing academic interest in its impact at the
individual and social levels, which was met by a growing interest in and usage of the
U&G approach.
Since the mid-2000s another profound change in Internet use has been taking place,
following the growth in availability and usage of social media platforms. It is commonly
perceived that the Internet had, up to that point, connected computers and servers and
was most frequently used to gain access to information created by content providers,
which was stored in interconnected servers. From this point, however, emphasis shied
to content created by Internet users and to the ability not only to link websites but also to
link individuals (O’Reilly, 2005). Online social media had existed earlier, such as in the
form of Internet forums, which oered a platform for user-generated content, but, since
the penetration of social networks in the mid-2000s, individual Internet use (in terms
of the hours people spend online and the content they access) has become dominated
by social media platforms (see Yarow, 2014).
ethirdwaveinInternetuse,whichwearecurrentlyexperiencing(asofthe
mid-2010s) in some sense, has been brought about by the intensive penetration of
smartphones. In addition to the voice calls these devices enable, smartphones function
as mobile information stations, or small computers that are attached to users’ bodies
throughout most of the day, support an almost continuous connection to the Internet
through tools such as browsers and apps, and make information access and sharing all
the more handy and simple. Smartphone use and their location-based services make
e International Encyclopedia of Media Eects.
Patrick Rössler (Editor-in-Chief ), Cynthia A. Honer, and Liesbet van Zoonen (Associate Editors).
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118783764.wbieme0046
2USES AND GRATIFICATIONS:EVIDENCE FOR VARIOUS MEDIA
it possible to add another layer of connection—not just connecting information and
people but also connecting physical locations. Another recent manifestation of the
trend of enhanced connectivity is seen in the emergent discourse on the Internet of
things, or the connection of various devices to the Internet, including cameras, heart
pacers, lighting sensors, appliance sensors, and more and more, creating bilateral
information exchange between people and devices through the Internet, and even
between devices without human intervention.
e new media ecology has several relevant aspects. First, it contains a broad range
of end-devices: Multichannel television, radio, and newspapers have been joined by a
variety of computers, laptops, cellphones, and various handheld devices and wearable
gadgets. Second is the phenomenon of convergence of a large number of platforms into
end-devices such as smartphones and tablets, into which the functionalities of devices
suchas“traditional”telephones,newspapers,radio,cameras,GPS,andevenashlights
and many more have been incorporated, making these mobile devices present and
essential in many novel spheres of our lives, from tourism and consumption to navi-
gation,inwhichthepresenceofcommunicationdeviceswasnotasevidentpreviously.
ethirdaspectistheexistenceofincreased media presence:Peoplearemoreactivein
their media ecology, and are accessible by phone and the Internet during most of the
day and night, frequently through several devices concurrently (Green, 2014). Many of
these devices issue alerts and require users’ constant attention and responses. Fourth,
many online activities are carried out in community or social contexts and in front of
large publics. Fih and last, the new media ecology supports personalization based on
users’ expressed preferences or history of their own or relevant others’ activities.
Arguably, the uses and gratications approach is suitable for understanding this new
reality,anditisconsideredcentraltothestudyoftheInternetforseveralreasons.e
rst reason is that contemporary Internet use is consistent with the active audience
view, which characterizes the U&G approach (Papacharissi, 2009; Ruggiero, 2000). In
thepast,“audiences”wereactiveinselectingachannelonaremotecontrol.Aswe
move into a more social, place-based, and mobile media environment, people con-
stantly face many “mini-decisions” that aect subsequent actions: which websites to
enter, which websites to avoid, what content to share on Facebook or Twitter, what
organizations and people to follow or befriend, which groups to join on social media
platforms,whichsearchtermstouse,whichappstodownload,whichmobilegame
to play, and on and on. e constant and increasing availability of choices generates
more and more research environments and study questions for scholars using the U&G
approach.
e second factor is the transition to social communications.Wenolongerliveina
world of websites; we live in a world where we upload and respond to user-generated
content and create communities with other users. Communities have always evolved
and been maintained through communication, and the two terms—communications
and community—are even etymologically intertwined. But communities were not
typically studied through their media eects, and were rather the subject of mostly
sociological study. Today, communities are largely moving to Internet-based platforms,
and, for many, the Internet is their rst choice when seeking to communicate with
like-minded individuals. Hence, there is growing legitimacy in applying the U&G
USES AND GRATIFICATIONS:EVIDENCE FOR VARIOUS MEDIA 3
approach to studying areas that have not previously been commonly studied with these
tools, including in the contexts of social interactions and communities.
A third reason for the current dominance of the U&G approach stems from the
growth of collaborative online projects—crowdsourcing and open code initiatives—of
which Wikipedia is oen perceived as a agship project. Such initiatives defy the free-
rider logic that is prevalent in the social realm, and raise questions about why people
contribute to such collaborative eorts, typically without any compensation, despite the
fact that the public goods that are eventually produced are open and used by many peo-
ple, independent of their contribution. Many studies ask about users’ motivations to
contribute content to such collaborative online projects, and the U&G approach comes
in handy in these cases.
Lastly, smartphones,whicharefundamentallymeansofcommunication,arenow
used for a multitude of other purposes, which further extends the range of phenomena
that can be studied using this approach.
Mapping the landscape of uses and gratifications studies
Figure 1 illustrates the growing dominance of the U&G approach. e gure presents
the number of search results for the term “uses and gratications” in Google Scholar,
broken down by year of publication (the search was carried out in March 2015). e
methodological value of such a search is obviously limited because it can lead to rst-
and second-order errors. In other words, the result of the query may not include
papers based on the approach that for some reason were not classied as such by
Google Scholar’s algorithm, or may include irrelevant papers. Nonetheless, the results
are indicative when comparing the scope of studies in dierent years, or comparing
the magnitude of published studies on dierent media in the same year. e results
therefore assist in constructing a picture about the use of the U&G approach in social
science disciplines (including communication studies, but also psychology, sociology,
management, and others) between 1990 (before the widespread penetration and
massive use of the Internet) and 2013.
Figure 1 clearly demonstrates a signicant rise in the volume of research related to
theU&Gapproach.Whilefewerthan200studieswerepublishedannuallybetween
1990 and 1997, a signicant increase can be identied from that point on. In 2008, over
1,000 studies were identied, and in 2013 this number rose for the rst time to over
2,000 per year.
To examine the focus of these studies at a higher resolution, a database of 399 papers
was compiled, based on the 10 most popular and 10 most relevant U&G papers each
year, according to Google Scholar, for each year between 1990 and 2013. Papers that
appeared in both lists entered the database as a single item.
Analyzing the themes of the articles in the database shows clearly that the most popu-
lar and relevant studies in the context of the U&G approach have dramatically changed
over these years, as they closely followed (with a lag of a few years) technological devel-
opments. ese papers fall into three main categories. First are studies on television
(14%), the medium that is related to the breakthrough in U&G studies, which were
4USES AND GRATIFICATIONS:EVIDENCE FOR VARIOUS MEDIA
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
124 120 13 4 145 117 15 1 179 198 233 267 283
344 393
460
528 584
714
844
1,040
1,180
1,310
1,530
1,900
2,120
0
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Figure 1 Number of articles found in a search for “uses and gratications” in Google Scholar,
by year of publication.
common in the rst part of the sample (especially before 2000— aer this year, only few
studies were on television). Second are studies on the Internet (especially aer 2000),
and from 2008 on specically on online social media (48%). e remainder (38%) are
studies that were classied as “others,” and dealt with a wide range of areas including
reviews and conceptual pieces; comparisons of U&G in the media used for various cat-
egories (i.e., news, music, sports, health, religion); comparisons between media U&G
of various audiences, such as immigrants; comparisons of media uses of audiences in
dierent countries; and even comparisons of U&G of users and quitters. Notably, a
considerable share of the recent most popular and relevant studies that were classi-
edas“other”focusontechnology-intenseplatformssuchascellphonesandinstant
messaging (even before the penetration of smartphones and the mobile Internet), gam-
ing, music players, and so on. Very few studies were found that focus on cross-media
U&G of new media in conjunction with more traditional communication technologies
(e.g., Flanagin & Metzger, 2001; Lev-On, 2012).
Various major chronological trends emerge from the review of studies published on
U&G between 1990 and 2013. Between the start of data collection in 1990 and the year
1995, very few studies were published on Internet- and computer-mediated commu-
nications (9 out of 93), whereas 28 studies were published on television. In 1996, the
more popular and relevant studies contained, for the rst time, more studies on the
Internet than on television, a situation that has remained constant to the present (with
the exception of 1999).
USES AND GRATIFICATIONS:EVIDENCE FOR VARIOUS MEDIA 5
Between 1996 and 1999, the proportion of studies on the Internet increased (they
accountfor 30% of the most relevant and popular studies in this period), although they
still constitute a smaller proportion than studies of “other” themes.
e year 2000 marks the culmination of the shi in U&G research to the study of
Internet-related phenomena. e Internet was the topic of 15 of the 18 most popular
and relevant studies published that year. From 2000 onwards, more popular and relevant
U&G studies were done on the Internet than on all other topics combined (with the
exception of one year, 2004). At this stage, U&G studies still addressed the Internet
in general (or occasionally the World Wide Web), probably due to the relatively limited
volume of online users and variety of online tools (see, e.g., Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000).
Between 2000 and 2007, nearly 60% of the studies that were retrieved focused on
the Internet, but these studies increasingly point to an appreciation that the Internet
is not a single monolithic entity. Studies were gradually shiing to higher resolutions
of the Internet, drilling down to study specic arenas or platforms, such as chat
applications (2001), online games (2003), and blogs (2004–2005). e rst study on
friend-networking sites entered the most popular group of 2006 (Valkenburg, Peter,
& Schouten, 2006), and the rst study on Facebook was included in the most relevant
group of 2007 (Bumgarner, 2007).
Another signicant change occurred in 2008, when the focus of papers shied within
the Internet to online social media, and specically to social networks. ese stud-
ies mainly focused on Facebook, the leading social network, with a small number of
studies on other networks (such as MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube). Although several
studies published prior to 2008 also addressed online social platforms such as virtual
communities, blogs, and discussion groups, the change in volume in this year was dra-
matic. From 2009 onward, the majority of the most popular and relevant studies based
on the U&G approach each year focused on online social media. Between 2008 and
2013, the most recent year on which data were collected, 75% of the published relevant
and popular U&G studies focused exclusively on Internet-related topics, and only ve
studies were on television.
e questions explored by studies of online social media include what users do
in specic social networks; comparisons of uses of various networks (e.g., Raacke &
Bonds-Raacke, 2008, regarding Facebook and MySpace); and correlations between
social media uses and personality traits, sociodemographic variables, and consequences
(suchassocialcapitalandparticipation).
As stated, U&G studies of the Internet have moved from analyzing “the Internet” as a
whole to addressing specic online platforms and services, such as social media arenas.
A similar shi occurred within U&G studies of online social networks, which initially
addressed social networks as a whole and gradually drilled down into, for example,
comparisons of U&G of various Facebook groups (e.g., Park, Kee, & Valenzuela, 2009),
dierences in U&G of various Facebook features (e.g., Lai & Yang, 2016; Smock et al.,
2011), and social games on Facebook (e.g., Hou, 2011).
Uses and gratications studies of cellular phones and SMSs appeared during the
2000s. From 2010 onward studies on the mobile Internet begin to appear (e.g.,
Humphreys, Von Pape & Karnowski, 2013), including U&G of mobile applications, of
content sharing through smartphones (e.g., Chua, Goh, & Lee, 2012), of location-based
6USES AND GRATIFICATIONS:EVIDENCE FOR VARIOUS MEDIA
social applications, and more. Similarly to studies of the Internet in general and of
social media platforms in particular, in time scholars have realized the mobile Internet
is not a unitary phenomena, and studies have shied to the realization that multiple
cellular platforms exist, characterized by dierent users with divergent motivations.
In view of the explosive increase in smartphone penetration and use in recent years,
and specically of the mobile Internet, we can expect a signicant increase in the num-
berofU&Gstudiesonvariousaspectsofcellphoneuse.Inviewofthegrowinginterest
in the Internet of things, we can expect to see a similar increase in U&G studies of
devices that connect to the Internet and communicate with other devices and people.
A comparative study of the ndings of the hundreds if not thousands of the recent
popular and relevant studies is beyond the scope of this entry, but several general trends
can be identied. First, and supporting one of the basic tenets of the U&G approach, is
the recurrent nding that people clearly know how to make dierential use of media.
Dierent media are used for dierent purposes based on users’ needs and perceived
gratications (see Sundar & Limperos, 2013). Online, people will use certain websites,
social platforms, and mobile applications for specic purposes, rather than develop rit-
ualized use of these tools for all purposes. For example, dierent needs lead people to
choose traditional or new media (see Flanagin & Metzger, 2001; Lev-On, 2012), and,
within the new media, they choose, for example, whether to use social networks, chat,
or email depending on the purpose of their communications (Ku, Chu, & Tseng, 2013;
Quan-Haase & Young, 2010).
As found in earlier studies on U&G of television, the media are clearly the source
of many uses and gratications. In view of the fact that the Internet encompasses many
varied spheres of our lives, the list of gratications that appear in U&G studies of online
platforms and services continues to grow steadily. However, the two main gratications
emerging as most signicant in a considerable portion of the studies are cognitive and
social (Ji & Wayne Fu, 2013; Lev-On, 2015; Papacharissi, 2009; Sundar & Limperos,
2013). Additional gratications found in the relevant and popular studies range from
recognition, status, and professional advancement to expression, individual and gen-
eralized reciprocation, leisure, escapism, fun, entertainment, arousal, and even habit.
A more detailed analysis (or meta-analysis) of the prevalent uses and gratications
found in the recent popular and relevant U&G studies is, however, outside the scope
of this entry.
Challenges and future directions
ere are several practical and methodological challenges that aect contemporary
U&G research. e rst challenge is the dazzling pace of penetration of new platforms,
networks, and websites, which appear at a rapid pace and occasionally disappear with
similar speed. As a result, studies of such online platforms and services may lose
their relevance and generalizability shortly aer being published. Another challenge is
related to the fact that social media platforms, mobile applications, and other online
tools constantly change their algorithms and usage policies—for example, relating to
termsofdisclosureofuserinformationandpresentationofinformation.ismayalso
USES AND GRATIFICATIONS:EVIDENCE FOR VARIOUS MEDIA 7
aect the research. For example, studies on U&G of communications between citizens
andgovernmentagenciesonsocialmedia(suchasFacebook)areaectedbyFacebook’s
disclosurepolicy,and,ifFacebookdecidestohighlightcontentthatoriginatesfrom
an agency’s page itself and downplay content uploaded by users, this might have a
considerable impact on users’ motivations for using the page. Consequently, more than
ever, ndings of studies and methodologies are aected by frequently changing terms
of service dened by the organizations responsible for the communications platforms,
and researchers should be aware of this issue.
A second methodological challenge is the prevalent and as yet little studied phe-
nomenon of viewing on multiple screens, with over 80% reporting that they use their
telephone while watching television and 60% reporting that they use their computer
while watching television (Green, 2014). An increasing number of people do more
things while watching television: ey write messages, upload Facebook statuses, talk
onthephone,oraccesstheTVshow’swebsite.ResearcherswhousetheU&Gapproach
are therefore required to disentangle the uses and gratications from the various media
used simultaneously.
e nal challenge concerns the identication of the media by the audience. An
interesting phenomenon that researchers are reporting is that many people who are
online most of the time do not register that they are online, except when doing specic
tasks,suchasasearch;asaresult,theydonotregisterthisactivityasInternetuse
(Fleming, 2012). Moreover, many users in developing countries use no Internet tools
other than Facebook, and they respond in the negative when asked whether they use
the Internet, even though they use Facebook, which requires Internet access (Mirani,
2015). As a result, researchers should be cautious when formulating questions; for
example, researchers should ask specically about Internet use on various devices
(tablets, laptops, cellphones) rather than generally ask about Internet use, or list
potential Internet activities (such as social networking, browsing) rather than asking
about “the Internet” in general. Such concerns will become more dominant as we
approachtheInternetofthingsandasInternetconnectionsbecomemoreseamlessly
incorporated into the user experience.
ese issues, related to the identication of medium and platform use, distinctions
between uses and gratications of several platforms that are used simultaneously, and
monitoring changes in the use of platforms that may aect uses and gratications, pose
considerable challenges to researches who apply the U&G approach. Nonetheless, the
continued rapid penetration of the Internet and smartphones into increasing parts of
the globe, and their ongoing integration of more and more spheres of our lives, guar-
antees that U&G researchers will have their hands full in the foreseeable future.
SEE ALSO: Aective Disposition eory; Arousal and Activation; Connecting Media
Use to Media Eects; Content Eects: Entertainment; Content Eects: Political Com-
munication;Diusioneories:MediaasInnovation;Escapism;Floweory;Future:
Global Development in Media Uses and Eects; Involvement With Media Content;
Media Addiction; Media Habits; Mood Management eory; Motivation; Selective
Exposure; Selectivity Paradigms and Cognitive Dissonance; Uses and Gratications:
Basic Concept
8USES AND GRATIFICATIONS:EVIDENCE FOR VARIOUS MEDIA
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all-day-2014-5
Azi Lev-On istheheadoftheInstitutefortheStudyofNewMedia,PoliticsandSoci-
ety in the School of Communication in Ariel University, Israel. His research focuses
on the uses and perceived eects of social media, public participation and delibera-
tion online, online communities, collective action and campaigns, and behaviors in
computer-mediated environments, employing a variety of methods such as content and
link analysis, surveys, and laboratory experiments.
