The uses and gratifications theory, developed by Blumler and Katz, focuses on how audiences interact with media to fulfill their needs rather than how media affects them. It suggests that individuals engage with media for various reasons, categorized into four main uses: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity, and surveillance. This theory places the audience in control of their media consumption, emphasizing individual choice in fulfilling personal needs.

1. USES AND GRATIFICATIONS
Blumler and Katz

2. WHAT IS IT?
•The uses and gratifications theory asks what the audience does with media
rather than what the media does to its audience.
•During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became
adults, media theorists became more aware that audiences made choices
about what they did when consuming texts. Individuals consumed texts for
different reasons and in different ways.
•Blumler and Katz argue that people use the media to gratify certain needs.
Uses and gratifications puts the audience in the driving seat, they are able to
choose what the media has to offer in order to gratify their needs. Blumler
and Katz expanded Lasswell’s theory that media texts had the following
functions: surveillance, correlation, entertainment, cultural transmission.
They then published their own four uses.

3. 4 MAIN USES
Diversion: this lets people escape from everyday problems and
routine.
Personal Relationships: using the media for emotional and other
interaction.
Personal Identity: finding yourself reflected in texts, learning
behaviour and values from texts.
Surveillance: Information which could be useful for living (to gain
knowledge).