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Theory stating that audiences have power over their media consumption
Uses and gratifications theory is a communication theory that describes the reasons and means by which people seek out media to meet specific needs. The theory postulates that media is a highly available product, that audiences are the consumers of the product, and that audiences choose media to satisfy given needs as well as social and psychological uses, such as knowledge, relaxation, social relationships, and diversion. Uses and gratifications theory was developed from a number of prior communication theories and research conducted by fellow theorists. The theory has a heuristic value because it gives communication scholars a "perspective through which a number of ideas and theories about media choice, consumption, and even impact can be viewed".

The studies of Katz and his colleagues laid a theoretical foundation for building the uses and gratifications approach. Since then, the research on this subject has been strengthened and extended. The current status of uses and gratifications is still based on Katz's first analysis, particularly as new media forms have emerged in an electronic information age when people have more options of media use.

Mobile phones, a comparatively new technology, have many uses and gratifications attached to them. Due to their nature of mobility, constant access, and options to both add and access content, this field is expanding with new research on the motivations behind using mobile phones. In general, people use mobile phones for the following uses and gratifications: sociability, entertainment, status, immediate access, instrumentality, mobility, and psychological reassurance. Researchers have also identified that the uses and gratifications for contributing mobile content differ from those for retrieving mobile content. The specific function of text messaging has also been studied to find its uses and gratifications and explore any potential gender differences. Seven uses and gratifications, in order of importance, have been proposed: accessibility, relaxation, escape, entertainment, information seeking, coordination for business, socialization, status seeking. The results also displayed gender differences, implying that social and societal expectations for females around independence and connection were a factor in their uses and gratification seeking.

The Internet provides a new and deep field for exploring UGT. It was found to have three main categories of gratifications: content gratification, process gratification, and social gratification. Content uses and gratification include the need for researching or finding specific information or material, which are gratified with content. Process uses and gratification involve the experience of purposeful navigating or random browsing of the Internet in its functional process. Social uses and gratification encompass a wide range of forming and deepening social ties. Scholars like LaRose utilize UGT to understand Internet usage via a socio cognitive framework. This reduces uncertainties that arise from homogenizing an Internet audience and explaining media usage in terms of only positive gratifications. LaRose also created measures for self efficacy and self disparagement and related UGT to negative outcomes of online behavior, such as internet addiction.

Whereas basic research finds that socialization motivates use of friend networking sites, uses and gratifications theory suggests that individual users will continue to be engaged with social networking sites if their gratifications and needs are fulfilled by such tools. Some further exploration has demonstrated that although emotional, cognitive, social, and habitual uses are motivational to use social media, not all uses are consistently gratified. By 2013, research has looked at social networking services, personal and subject based blogs, and internet forums. The relationship between gratifications and narcissism, and the effects of age on this relationship and corresponding gratifications have also been studied. Overall, users have the following motivations: social and affection, need to vent negative feelings, recognition, entertainment, cognitive needs. Users who share news are motivated by the uses and gratifications of socializing and status seeking, especially if they have had prior experience with social media. Users also engage in cyberbullying in order to fulfil a need to be vengeful and malicious, while avoiding face to face contact.

Achievement, enjoyment and social interaction are all motivations for starting to play an online game, with success at the game and the extent to which gamers' uses were gratified predicting continuance in playing. In 2017, researchers applied UGT to study user behavior among Pokémon Go players. Results show that enjoyment, physical activity, nostalgia, image, normative influences and flow drive various forms of user behavior. In addition, perceived physical risks, but not perceived privacy risks, lead to weaker forms of usage.

Research has shown that media taken in for entertainment purposes have a wide range of uses and emotional gratifications, and that these are not mutually exclusive but can overlap with each other. Rehman (1983) demonstrated a relationship between gratifications sought and obtained from the movies and movie attendance. The most prominently cited emotional gratification of media use of mood management. UGT proposes that people prefer to maintain a state of intermediate arousal. When in a bad mood, bored, or over aroused, people will seek media as regulation for or distraction from their mood. Another emotional gratification is affective disposition, which involves people experiencing gratificaition when rooting for characters depicted as good and moral. Other emotional gratifications include excitation transfer, sensation seeking, downward social comparison, mood adjustment, and competence. Additionally, the modes of reception of entertainment media correlates with emotion involvement and can facilitate the pursuit of other goals. Entertainment media allows users to live out gender socialised roles, satisfy parasocial relationships, live vicariously through fictional characters, and find meaning and purpose.

Media system dependency theory (MSDT or media dependency theory) has been studied as an offshoot of UGT. However, media dependency theory focuses on audiences' goals for media consumption as the source of their dependency; while uses and gratification theory focuses on audience's needs as drivers for media consumption. MSDT states that as a person becomes increasingly dependent on media to satisfy their needs, that media will become more important in a person's life and thereby have increased influence and effects on that person. MSDT acknowledges and builds upon UGT because it is based on the assumptions that people have different uses for media that arise from their needs.

Building on UGT, Social Cognitive Theory helped distinguish GS versus GO stimulus for media consumption. Social cognitive theory explains behavior in terms of the reciprocal causation between individuals, environments, and behaviors. This allows for a more personal application of UGT instead of a large, blanketing assumption about a large audience of mass media. If GO is greater than GS then there will be more audience satisfaction. Lastly, audiences' GS are not always the reality of their GO.

Cultivation theory is concerned with understanding the role that media — specifically television — plays in shaping a person's world view. Whereas UGT tries to understand the motivations that drive media usage, cultivation theory focuses on the psychological effects of media. Cultivation theory is used especially to study violence in television and how it shapes audience's understanding of the reality of violence in society. Often, because of media's influence, audiences have a more heightened and unrealistic perception of the amount of violence. A UGT approach may be implemented to Cultivation theory cases to understand why an audience would seek violent media and if audiences seek television violence to satisfy the need of confirmation of their worldview.

Hypodermic needle model (known as the hypodermic syringe model, transmission belt model, or magic bullet theory) is a model of communication suggesting that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver. The model was originally rooted in 1930s behaviourism and was largely considered obsolete for a long time, but big data analytics based mass customisation has led to a modern revival of the basic idea. After that, a shift which rediscovered the relationship between media and people occurred and led to establishment of uses and gratifications approach.

In media studies, mass communication, media psychology, communication theory, and sociology, media influence and media effects are topics relating to mass media and media culture's effects on individual or an audience's thoughts, attitudes, and behavior. Whether it is written, televised, or spoken, mass media reaches a large audience. Mass media's role and effect in shaping modern culture are central issues for study of culture.

Uses and gratifications theory has, almost since its inception, been viewed critics as not meeting the standards necessary to be a theory. Critics argue that it instead is more of an approach to analysis or a data collecting strategy. Common criticism include that gratifications are more dependent on input by researchers than on decisions made by research subjects; that early research utilized flawed methodologies that led findings to be overstimated; that most research relies on pure recollection of memory rather than data; McQuail criticized the UGT as too cumbersome and tried to do too much, arguing that there is no real way of testing the theory through content analysis or surveys. Among the most criticized tenets of uses and gratifications as theory is the assumption of an active audience. Ruggerio noted three assumptions necessary to the idea of active audience: First, media selection is initiated by the individual. Second, expectations regarding the use of media must be a product of individual predispositions, social interactions and environmental factors. And third, the active audience exhibits goal directed behavior. This concept of active audience finds, at best, limited acceptance outside of the United States. In 1973, Blumler, McQuail and Brown extended Lasswell's four groups to include four more primary factors for media usage: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity, and surveillance.