Uses and Gratifications

In the article Uses and Gratifications, I learned all about SNS. ( Social Networking Sites) and how they have changed our world today. SNS allows people to communicate with family, friends, and others. Previously, people have used a combination of face-to-face human interaction as well as mass media such as television, radio, and movies to fulfill these needs and wants. Many SNS members do not necessarily develop a network to meet new people but rather to communicate with people who are already a part of their existing social networks. In the article it discusses uses and gratifications. “Uses and gratifications can be viewed as a psychological communication perspective which focuses on how individual use mass media and other forms of communication such as interpersonal communication to fulfill their needs and wants (Rubin, 2002).” They believe that media is determined by a group of key elements that includes people’s needs and motives to communicate the psychological and social environment, the mass media, functional alternatives to media use, communication behavior, and the consequences of such behavior.” Previous research has grouped it into two categories; process and content. I learned about how Process gratifications arise from the performance of the activity, such as unstructured Web browsing or creating content on one’s profile whereas content gratifications occurs from acquiring information. Social networking has changed the way we communicate, keep in touch, and live our daily lives. Although it is a wonderful and convenient thing, it has become a privacy issue and people being too public with their information on the internet. I can’t wait to see what comes next after Facebook.