Local newspapers fulfill audiences' needs through education/information, entertainment, social interaction, escape, and identification as outlined by Uses and Gratifications theory. Specifically, they provide local news and information to keep readers informed, entertaining content like stories, horoscopes, and puzzles, topics to discuss with others, an escape from daily life, and stories that allow readers to identify with characters. Researchers should analyze 3 local newspapers based on how their content satisfies these gratification categories.

1. Uses and Gratifications
Theory

2. • How do local newspapers fulfil its
audiences needs? Answer the question
with reference to Uses & Gratifications
theory.

3. Overview
• In 1974, researchers Blumler and Katz
came up with a theory stating that
individuals might choose and use a text for
the following purposes (ie uses and
gratifications):

4. • Diversion - escape from everyday problems
and routine.
• Personal Relationships - using the media for
emotional and other interaction, eg)
substituting soap operas for family life
• Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in
texts, learning behaviour and values from
texts
• Surveillance - Information which could be
useful for living eg) weather reports, financial
news, holiday bargains

5. Denis McQuail offered the
following reasons for media use:
• Education / information
• Entertainment
• Help with social interaction
• Escape
• Identification

6. EDUCATION / INFORMATION
• We read papers to keep up to date with
what is happening in the world, to learn
about things we don’t know about and to
keep informed. In local newspapers, this
tend to focus on local news issues.

7. ENTERTAINMENT
• Stories in the paper can be funny, articles
are often about things which interest us
and local newspapers may have things
like horoscopes, cartoons, showbiz pages,
readers’ letters, crosswords and puzzles
which are mainly for entertainment.

8. SOCIAL INTERACTION
• We talk to other people about things we’ve
read in the papers. We show them things
in the paper ( ‘Have you seen this?’). If we
know what’s happening in the world we
can join in conversations and discussions.
These things help us to interact with
others, they give us something to say and
give us shared interests, things in
common.

9. ESCAPE
• While we are reading about other people
and events we are taken out of our day to
day concerns for a while. Papers therefore
provide escapism in a similar way that
soaps or reality TV shows do.

10. IDENTIFICATION
• When we read about other people and
what is happening to them we often put
ourselves in their place or imagine what it
must be like to have the same thing
happen to us (in other words, we identify
with them). This makes us much more
involved and interested in a story and
helps us deal with similar events in our
own lives.

11. Research Task
• Take three local newspapers; you can
refer to the print format as well as the
website and apply the uses and
gratifications theory to the
consumption of these newspapers.