Unitary, pluralist, core-periphery, breakup models of audience fragmentation
Blumler and Elihu Katz, in the book of which
they are editors, Th e Uses of Mass Communica-
tion (Sage, 1974), emphasize the social origin
of the needs that the media purport to gratify.
Th us where a social situation causes tension and
confl ict, the media may provide easement, or
where the social situation gives rise to questions
about values, the media provide affirmation
and reinforcement.
Uses and gratifications theory has been
subjected to criticism by a number of commen-
tators. In Th e Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural
Readings of Dallas (Polity Press, 1993), Tamar
Liebes and Elihu Katz state, ‘Th e idea that read-
ers, listeners, and viewers can bend the mass
media to serve their own needs had gone so far
[with gratifi cationists] that almost any text – or
indeed no text at all – was found to serve func-
tions such as social learning, reinforcing identity,
lubricating interaction, providing escape etc. But
it gradually became clear that these functions
were too unspecifi ed.’ In other words, theorizing
about use has to be linked to the texts that are
judged to fulfi l audience needs.
Th e internet has opened up new and excit-
ing avenues for uses and gratifi cations research,
and the four main categories suggested decades
ago by McQuail, Blumer and Brown continue
to serve, at least as a useful starting point of
enquiry into the many reasons users surf the Net.
See cognitive (and affective); facebook;
identification; maslow’s hierarchy of
needs; mobilization; networking: social
networking. See also topic guide under
communication theory.
Utterance meaning See sentence meaning,
utterance meaning.V
VALS typology Arnold Mitchell’s Nine American
Lifestyles: Who We Are And Where We’re Going
(Macmillan, 1983) describes a landmark in the
documentation of human needs – a massive
research project funded and carried out in
America in 1980 by SRI International. The
principle on which the research was based, and
which Mitchell’s infl uential book articulates, is
that humans demonstrate their needs in their
lifestyle, and that both needs and lifestyle fl uctu-
ate according to circumstance and ‘drive’. VALS
stands for Values and Lifestyle.
The VALS approach, and its typology of
categories of lifestyle, pigeon-holes people on
an all-embracing scale. It has given a signifi cant
boost to marketing trends that have increasinglya Day! A History of Mass Communication in Britain
(2nd edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2009).
Unitary, pluralist, core-periphery, breakup
models of audience fragmentation See
audience: fragmentation of.
Universality Principle that public services such
as education, health and justice must be avail-
able to all within a society; applies equally to
the notion of public service broadcasting
(psb).
USA – Patriot Act, 2001 Surveillance measure
that became law within a month of the terror-
ist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, 11
September 2001. Under its full title – Strength-
ening America by Providing Appropriate Tools
Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
- the Patriot Act, all 342 pages of it, provides the
US government and its agencies with a formi-
dable armoury of new powers to rein-in civil
liberties. Basically, security agencies are granted
extended powers to intercept wire, oral and elec-
tronic communications relating to terrorism;
to share criminal investigation information; to
seize voice-mail messages pursuant to warrants;
to use DNA identification of terrorists and
other violent off enders; to demand disclosure of
educational records; and to confi scate the assets
of organizations suspected of planning or carry-
ing out terrorism.
Uses and gratifi cations theory View that mass
media audiences make active use of what the
media have to off er, arising from a complex set
of needs which the media in one form or another
gratify. Broadly similar uses have been catego-
rized by researchers based on questionnaires or
interviews. An example is the compensatory use
of the media – to make up for lack of education,
perhaps, lack of status or social success. Where
the media have a supplementing use, the audi-
ence may be applying what they see, hear and
read in social situations as subject-matter for
interpersonal exchange.
In ‘Th e television audience: a revised perspec-
tive’ in Dennis McQuail, ed., Sociology of the
Mass Media (Penguin, 1972), McQuail, Jay
G. Blumler and J.R. Brown define four major
categories of need which the media serve to
gratify. (1) Diversion (escape from constraints of
routine; escape from the burdens of problems;
emotional release). (2) Personal relationships
(companionship; social utility). (3) Personal
identity (personal reference; reality exploration;
value reinforcement). (4) Surveillance (need for
information in our complex world – ‘Televi-
sion news helps me to make up my mind about
things’).