A Historical Overview of Uses and Gratifications Theory

This paper is a part of the thesis: A Study on Chinese IPTV audience. In this study, on the basis of uses and gratifications theory, starting from IPTV audience demand, the author endeavors to explore how variables affect audience satisfaction and put forward feasible suggestions so as to improve IPTV audience satisfaction. Some mass communications scholars have contended that the uses and gratifications are not a rigorous social science theory. In this article, I argue just the opposite, and any attempt to speculate on the future direction of mass communication theory must seriously include the uses and gratifications approach. And, I assert that the emergence of computer-mediated communication has revived the significance of uses and gratifications. Theoretically and practically, for U&G scholars, however, the basic questions remain the same. Why do people become involved in one particular type of mediated communication or another, and what gratifications do they receive from it? Although we are likely to continue using traditional tools and typologies to answer these questions, we must also be prepared to expand our current theoretical models of U&G to include concepts such as interactivity, demassification, hypertextuality, asynchroneity, and interpersonal aspects of mediated communication

ONLINE DATING APPLICATIONS AND THE USES AND GRATIFICATIONS THEORY

Online dating has become an intricate part of today’s society, especially for the younger generation. Now, more than ever, it is accessible by the click of a button because online dating has gone through an evolution and is now readily available on a person’s mobile device. The most popular online dating applications are Tinder and Bumble, both strictly on mobile devices. This thesis seeks to examine how the Uses and Gratifications theory can be applied to online dating. This is to understand why 1) the Uses and Gratifications theory is a common theme, and 2) the representation differences amongst genders on online dating. For this purposes an online survey was created based around this theory. The survey was administered to 190 respondents aged 18 to older from the Northwest regions surrounding Eastern Washington University. The results from the survey displayed three common themes in regards to why individuals utilize online dating applications, these themes are: seeking attention, gaining self confidence, and passing time. The implications of this research were to better understand what the future of social interactions can look like, and how online dating applications hinder or enhance how individuals express themselves

Examining Social Commerce Intentions Through the Uses and Gratifications Theory

Changes in consumer behavior enabled by social networking technologies is leading to a transformation in e-commerce. Consumers' use of social media sites and relevant technologies for different aspects of shopping has become an issue of utmost concern to retailers and related businesses. Adopting a uses and gratifications theory (UGT) perspective, the article aims to demonstrate motives of users utilizing social media in their purchase decisions. Drawing from digital marketing and e-commerce literature, relevant uses and gratifications for social commerce (s-commerce) were chosen as information access, escape, entertainment, passing time, cool and new trends, and socialization. The proposed model was analyzed and tested via OLS regression and ANOVA analysis using the data collected from a survey study on 361 subjects in Turkey. Information access, relaxing entertainment, and socialization motives emerged as significant antecedents of s-commerce intentions. No significant effect of demographics on social commerce intentions were observed in the analysis

Communicating via Knoxblab

This study is a Uses and Gratifications based look at motivations surrounding long-term participation in an internet discussion forum and perceived effects of this participation on users’ social lives. Members of the Knoxville, TN based web forum “Knoxblab” were interviewed for the study. Participants indicated that the forum is a tool by which social ties are maintained and developed, and they indicated that membership in the forum community is perceived as having positive effects on social activity. Consistent with traditional Uses and Gratifications Theory, results suggest that participants are motivated by reasons related to information sharing and entertainment, though web forums and other forms of computer mediated communication (CMC) expand traditional Uses and Gratifications theory in that users both receive and generate content. Limitations and suggestions for further study are provided

Variety shows in the Chinese market: applying uses and gratifications theory and culture theory and to understand audiences’ viewer engagement, motivations and preferences

Master of ScienceDepartment of Journalism and Mass CommunicationsAlec TefertillerAs variety shows are rapidly developing in the Chinese market, brand-new viewer engagement is occurring in the young generation of China. This study applies uses and gratifications theory to understand the motivation and viewer engagement of Chinese audiences. With the development of technology, variety shows break free from cable television; the combination of online players provides audiences a broader platform to consume different styles of variety shows. Thus, this study applies uses and gratifications theory to examine the satisfaction that technology provides to viewers, as well as culture theory as another theory to understand whether cultural orientation has impacts on consuming variety shows

Assistance from Alexa: The social and material benefits of the Internet of Things

This article will apply the uses and gratifications theory to examine why people adopt products from the Internet of Things. Previous studies have applied the uses and gratifications theory to analyze why consumers have adopted forms of new media and technology, including social media and the Internet of Things. There are also many articles on the potential flaws of the Internet of Things, especially privacy concerns. This article will expand on this research by combining the benefits and concerns about the Internet of Things to asses user satisfaction. It argues that the Internet of Things satisfies user needs successfully despite serious flaws. Some potential flaws in products that would decrease user satisfaction are biased algorithms and possible privacy risks. However, the article concludes that the benefits outweigh these risks, as users continue to adopt Internet of Things products at a rapid rate

AUSES AND GRATIFICTIONS RESEARCH ON READING MOTIVATIONSE AND GRATIFICATIONS OFNEWSPAPER READERS

Giving information is one of the main function of mass communication tools. Newspaper readers are using newspaper for different motivations. Gaining information, entertainment, leisure time activities, social integration is some motivations of media. Uses and gratifications theory asserts that reader is active part of communication process and reading habits figure on social and psychological needs. Items from readers’gratifications are categorized by using factor analysis from questionnaire participants. In this study, researcher used random sampling from Eskisehir population. There are four basic motivations and gratifications from surveys: gaining information, entertainment, leisure time activities and self-actualization. “I read newspaper, because it provides me news†item is the most remarked option for participants. Also it has high-level mean with 4,70.Uses and Gratifications Theory, Newspaper Readership, Journalism

Technology behavior of Millennials: an approach through the uses and gratifications theory

Programa Oficial de Doutoramento en Análise Económica e Estratexia Empresarial. 5033V01[Resumen]La tesis está estructurada en un prefacio a modo de introducción y tres capítulos que se corresponden respectivamente con los tres artículos de investigación que fueron realizados para la misma. Los tres capítulos tienen una estructura similar. En primer lugar se realiza un resumen del artículo en el cual se introduce el mismo, se explica su propósito, se informa de los hallazgos obtenidos, se valora su importancia y se ofrecen unas palabras clave relacionadas con el artículo para facilitar búsquedas. En segundo lugar se realiza una breve introducción en la cual se explica el problema planteado y se formulan las preguntas que se esperan responder. En tercer lugar se expone el marco teórico del artículo y la metodología investigadora empleada. Por último se ofrecen los resultados obtenidos y se proponen una serie de conclusiones extraídas de los mismos así como potenciales líneas de investigación. Para la realización de los artículos de la investigación se llevo a cabo de forma previa a los mismos un cuestionario de carácter aleatorio. Los participantes en dicho cuestionario fueron contactados en diferentes campus universitarios así como en centros comerciales, así mismo se realizo la misma encuesta a través de Internet distribuyéndose mediante correo electrónico. Technology behavior of Millennials: An approach through the uses & gratifications theory. Page 116 Los lugares en los que se recogieron los datos fueron seleccionados al azar y se obtuvieron los diferentes permisos para llevar a cabo la investigación en dichos lugares. Los participantes rellenaron la encuesta voluntariamente sin que se ofreciesen incentivos por la participación. En el cuestionario se incluyó una pregunta previa a la evaluación para verificar la edad de los participantes de modo que solo los cuestionarios de individuos con edades comprendidas entre 20 y 30 años y de individuos con edades comprendidas entre 35 y 50 años de edad fueron tenidos en cuenta para realizar el estudio. Con carácter previo a la realización de la encuesta la misma se probó con un pequeño subconjunto de la población a fin de determinar si el instrumento de investigación era válido y confiable. Se verificó de este modo la redacción del cuestionario, el orden de las preguntas y la capacidad de los participantes para comprender el significado de las mismas..

Relevance of Health-Related Hashtags on Twitter: A Text Mining Approach

BACKGROUND Social media platforms facilitate user interaction and impact decision making. Users prefer to use hashtags while sharing posts. Knowing the sentiment towards diabetes, bloodpressure, and obesity is fundamental to understanding the impact of these information on patients and their families. The study seeks to determine the relevance of health-related hashtags on Twitter and analyze sentiments about diabetes, obesity, blood pressure. METHOD Tweets were retrieved using synonyms for “diabetes”, “hypertension” and “obesity”. The extended knowledge discovery in data mining (KDDM) model guided our research with research objectives defined in the ‘research problem understanding’ phase. The ‘information seeking’ from Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) determined the success and text mining assessment criteria. Text pre-processing was done using tokenization, stop word removal, and stemming. The research objectives, text mining goals, and success criteria were answered using ‘Uses and Gratifications Theory’ (UGT). RESULTS Total 6749 tweets were extracted using RStudio. 36.41% were about blood pressure, 0.25%- diabetes, 24.43% -obesity and 6.99% -combination of two or more terms. Additional topics such as cholesterol, chia seeds, postpartum, diet, exercise were identified. Upcoming conferences like ‘#ipna’, ‘#review’, ‘#APCH2019’, ‘#cardiotwitter’ were identified. Increased user engagement – about managing blood pressure, diabetes, obesity across different age groups, as well as the consequences of increased cardio exercise for obese and diabetic users were encouraging. Tweets about advertisements specific to clothing for oversized individuals-initiated conversation among users about monitoring self-health. CONCLUSIONS Sentiment analysis can thus increase our understanding about user engagement on such platforms and potentially help improve managing public health strategically.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1105/thumbnail.jp

Community Preparatory School: Alumni Relations Plan

When trying to get people to understand your message, you can use the Uses and Gratifications theory which talks about how people tend to pay attention when they are entertained, informed, their opinions get reinforced and they have a sense of belonging. Our message will get people to pay attention because the Alumni already have a sense of belonging to CPS, and it informs and reinforces their opinions about caring for their Alma mater. We will get Alumni to believe this message by holding events and other activities in which they can be a part of