传播学经典导读教材-3 施拉姆The uses and gratifications model.docVIP

3 The Uses and Gratifications Model Wibur Schramm and William E. Porter Almost as soon as it was founded, the bureau at Columbia became deeply interested in the uses people make of the mass media with which they spend so much time. The daytime serials, for example, draw millions of women to the radio every day. Herta Herzog interviewed 100 of these listeners at length(长时间地), and obtained shorter interviews with 2,500 others. Her results, published in a now historic paper entitled, “What We Really Know about Daytime Serial Listeners”, were surprising. The radio plays were digging deeply into the emotions of their audiences. A large portion of the women of the audience seemed to enjoy the serials chiefly as a means of emotional release—a “chance to cry”. They also enjoyed the chance to express some of their aggressions vicariously（可替代地）. They said it “made them feel better to know that other people have troubles too”. They experienced the sorrows of serial characters as partial compensation for their own troubles. A second large group of listeners used the serials as an opportunity for “wishful thinking”. They “drown their troubles” in listening to the soap operas and in some cases use the happier situations in the plays to compensate for failures in their own lives. Thus , says Herzog, “a woman whose daughter has run away from home to marry and whose husband ‘stay away five nights a week’ lists two serials as her favorites, each portraying a happy family life and a successful wife and mother.” The third, and perhaps least suspected, form of gratification obtained from daytime serials was their use as a source of advice. Women told the interviewer they liked the stories because they “explained things”. “If you listen to these programs and something turns up in your own life, you would know what to do about it” was a typical comment. It is obvious, and was obvious even in the early years of the bureau, that the effects of mass media must be determined in part by what