Media usage

This chapter is about how and why audiences make choices in medium and content through various platforms. Media use is a concept that has been developed over decades spanning from theories of passive reception to active creation. By examining the history of theories of media use and examining the elements of use within the context of a digitalized media environment, we can better understand the changing patterns and habits of media users in the digital age. Following a review of uses and gratifications theory and media dependency theory, the chapter lays out the elements of media use; access and exposure, interaction with the media, and sense making of messages. As an alternative to media use, ‘media activity’ is suggested as a new framework to examine media use in the digital age, where the term activity captures the broad range of what audiences do online, including content consumption, information seeking, communication, creating content, and engaging in transactional activities