The Stability of Media Gratifications

,The uses and gratifications perspective in mass communication research spans more than 40 years, but it is only recently that communication researchers began to deal with conceptualization, operationalization and measurement issues.! The major tenet of the perspective is a stress on "liberal-rationalist belief in human dignity and the potential of the individual for selfrealization."z Blumler posits that while the active audience concept has been taken as an article of faith for researchers in the uses and gratifications area, work should begin to convert that assumption into an empirical question, delineating the dimensions in which it applies.3 Previous research has tended to focus on the measurement of audience needs or on the motives guiding media use behavior. Varied analysis techniques resulted in a number of dimensions of audience needs, uses and gratifications; Blumler and McQuail reduce the list to about six or seven dimensions.4 More recently, Becker analyzed three dimensions of audience gratificationssurveillance/ guidance, communicatory utilitylexcitementl reinforcement and media avoidance. Becker suggests that these three basic constructs comprise an exhaustive list of the dimensions of media gratifications.' The surveillance/ guidance dimension (hereafter referred to as surveillance) reflects the