Users and Gratification Theory Approach to Understand Why People Use Digital Media Mainly During Lockdown

Introduction

Digital media plays a vsery important and crucial role, and it remains always an area of interest for marketing practitioners. Ninety percent of marketers use digital media to promote a range of goods and services, according to recent research. By 2024, it is anticipated that corporations would have spent approximately 26.3% of their budget on social media (Madan, 2021). It has been noted that most businesses and organizations are promoting their products and services on social media or digital media platforms during the epidemic (Liu, 2020). Therefore, it is critical to comprehend how to use social media in an acceptable way in order to maximize profits for a business or organization. Social media has expanded its reach and now serves as a vital component of peer review, online conversations, scientific information dissemination, continuing medical education, and many more during the current pandemic (Goel,2020).

The theory of uses and pleasure, which originated in the communication literature, is seen as crucial to comprehending and assessing the comprehension of social media marketing (Madan, 2021). According to the uses and gratification theory, people search for media that will satisfy their wants and provide them with the greatest level of satisfaction. Although this theory is applicable to social media, it has received little attention in the literature on social media and marketing. For this reason, in order to aid in and provide an explanation for why consumers utilise digital media, researchers employ the uses and gratification theory in this work.

In this model, we can find that this theory plays a very important role for Audiences as followed by surveillance, identity, relationship, diversion, and media sought which requires need gratified and results in continued use.

Figure 1.

Author’s own idea of model

This study shows how important the uses and gratification theory is for understanding the uses and gratification that consumers get from utilising digital media, as well as how to apply this theory to digital media.

We begin by providing a quick overview of the literature on digital media, usage, and satisfaction theory (Whiting et al, 2013). Following a description of the methodology, the research findings are presented, and finally, the study's implications and conclusion are drawn.

Literature Review

Global pandemics have increased in frequency in recent decades; SARS in 2003, H5N1 in 2006, and H1N1 in 2009, for example, all hindered economic growth and business operations (Chung, 2015).

The term “digital media” refers to “a group of internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technical Foundation of web 2.0 (Prykhodko,2019), and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” . Social media is made up of a variety of information sources that are developed, created, and shared by users to raise awareness of goods and services (Murugesan, 2007).

Massive data analysis and information dissemination about COVID-19 on Reddit, Gab, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Analysis of the topic's engagement and interest in COVID-19 was done, and each platform's users were given a unique evaluation of how the discourse has changed globally (Cinelli et al., 2020).

Because Uses and Gratification theory originated in a variety of communication-related literature, it is applicable to social media. According to Williams et al. (2012), social media is a platform that has allowed thousands of users to connect with one another. The uses and gratifications theory can be applied in the following very basic way: people will choose media among competitors that best satisfies their needs and provides them with their ultimate satisfaction (Lariscy et al, 2011).

It examined the impact of users’ gratification and the type of social media on the effectiveness of different brand content strategies through a two-week experiment involving 60 SNS users and 61 microblog users (Gao, 2016).

Using pertinent data and examples, uses and gratifications, positive experiences, usage and activity counts, and social context are all covered in detail. The model backs up the main idea of the chapter, which is to combine concrete indicators of engagement—like usage and activity counts—with more abstract ones, like positive user experiences, in order to better understand why people use social media, how much they use it, what social media platforms they use, and the results of their use (McCay,2016).