Newspaper

Intro to Comm. Research

This research paper is based around the uses and gratifications theory. It deals with various studies and articles that discuss the uses of newspapers in students daily lives, dealing with where the student gets a specific kind of news and why they chose that medium.

The theory that is used is the Uses and Gratifications Theory according to Stephen Littlejohn. (2002) This theory focuses on the consumer instead of a message. The consumer is responsible for choosing a specific media to meet their specific needs. An extension of this theory is the Dependency Theory. Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleur proposed this theory. (1976) They propose a relationship among audiences, media, and the larger social system. “Consistent with uses-and-gratifications theory, this theory predicts that you depend on media information to meet certain needs and achieve certain goals.” (Littlejohn pg. 325) There are two factors that seem to determine how dependent the audience member becomes on the media. The first says, “Media can serve a number of functions such as monitoring government activities and providing entertainment. For any given group of people, some of these functions are more important than others, and your dependence on information from a medium increases when it supplies information that is more central to you.” (Littlejohn pg. 325) Littlejohn explains this in more detail by saying, “If you follow sports carefully, you will probably become dependent on ESPN or Sports Illustrated. A person who is not interested in sports will probably not even know where ESPN is on the dial, may never have looked at Sports Illustrated and typically skips the entire sports section of the newspaper.” (Littlejohn pg. 325) The second source is social stability. “When social change and conflict are high, established institutions, beliefs, and practices are challenged, forcing you to reevaluate and make new choices. At such times your reliance on the media for information will increase. At other, more stable times your dependency on media may go way down. During times of war, for example, people become incredibly dependent on news programming.” (Littlejohn pg. 325)

The second article is entitled Competition between the Internet and Traditional News Media: The Gratification Opportunities Niche Dimension by John Dimmick, Yan Chen, and Zhan Li. (2004) This study was conducted to understand the uses of online news compared to the traditional media. It discusses the fact that the Internet encompasses the three main sources of mass media, while adding itself into the