Internet usage[edit]
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.[27] 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.[28]
Social media usage[edit]
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.[29] 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.[30] By 2013, research has looked at social networking services, personal and subject-based blogs, and internet forums.[31][32] The relationship between gratifications and narcissism, and the effects of age on this relationship and corresponding gratifications have also been studied.[33] 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.[34] Users also engage in cyberbullying in order to fulfil a need to be vengeful and malicious, while avoiding face-to-face contact