The uses and gratifications model suggests that people use media to fulfill certain needs. These needs include reinforcing personal identity by finding similarities with media characters, fulfilling companionship and social interaction needs through parasocial relationships with media figures, staying informed about current events and issues through widely distributed media, and seeking entertainment and diversion from reality through engaging media content.

1. Uses and gratifications model

2. The model suggested that what people do with the media was governed by what they need from media. These needs have been identified into 4 major types:

3. 1 The need to reinforce a representation of our own personal identity by making comparisons and similarities that are also represented in different media formats.

4. 2 The need to have companionship and interaction with others in society. The media can become a companion as a character may be taken to by the audience as a real acquaintance. In this case the media is a social aid contact.

5. 3 The need to be informed. The wider the expansion of the media text, e.g. a global scale media text can have wider implication on the audience compared to a narrow one, e.g. a leaflet for a specific subject.

6. 4 The need to entertainment and diversion. It can be seen by matching the reality of the represented media and the need to escape from the constraints of reality.