Uses and Gratification Perspectives in New Media Environment

With the advent of digital technology and its consequent impact on information and communication, media consumption is fast changing in its various aspects like audience formation, media-audience interaction and use patterns (Kaplan & Haenle, 2010). Similarly, media production, distribution and ownership also undergo tremendous changes in the networked online environment. Newer and newer professional techniques are practiced, new devices are introduced and unending debates over ethical considerations are going on. Issues and challenges experienced never before are arising out innovations, come by almost every day. On the other hand, people, ‘who were formerly known as audience’, shedding off their aura of media consumers, develop new-fangled affinity/indifference to media of various types, resulting in unpredicted, sometimes, contradictory impacts like closure of newspapers in the West and explosion of the Press in the East. Unexpected outcomes of the inventive steps and styles coming up on technological front often trigger cultural shocks to the traditional societies in the form of increased use of online pornography or e-commercial scams. The present article seeks to revisit the structural factors elaborated by the Weibull in analysing Uses and Gratification of media consumers against the background of the present day new media trends.

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