Anticipated Communication and Mass Media Information-Seeking

Abstract

T 18HIS INVESTIGATION focuses on the concept of communicatory utility, defined as the anticipated usefulness of information for future informal interaction with family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. present report describes findings from an experiment and two secondary analyses relating news media use to interpersonal discussion of news events. While researchers have not specifically tested the link between mass media exposure and expected conversational experiences, many have cited the role of social relationships in understanding why people attend to mass communications.1 specific interpersonal motive of social prestige from displaying current events knowledge was suggested as an explanation of news seeking behavior by Merton,2 Berelson,3 Wright,4 and Waples, Berelson and Bradshaw.5 1 E.g., Eliot Friedson, Research and the Concept of the Mass, American Sociological Review, Vol. 18, 1953, pp. 313-317; Matilda Riley and Samuel Flowerman, Group Relations as a Variable in Communications American Sociological Review, Vol. i6, 1951, pp. 174-180. 2 Merton concluded: The analysis of the functions of mass communications require prior analysis of the social roles which determine the uses to which these communications can and will be put. Had the social contexts of interpersonal influence not been explored, we could not have anticipated the selection of Time by one type of influential and its rejection by another. Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, New York, Free Press, 1949, pp. 406-409. 3 Berelson observed: Another group of readers seem to use the newspaper because it enables them to appear informed in social gatherings. Thus the newspaper has conversational value. Readers not only can learn what has happened and then report it to their associates, but can also find opinions and interpretations for use in discussions of public affairs. It is obvious how this use of the newspaper serves to increase the reader's prestige among his fellows. Bernard Berelson, 'Missing the Newspaper' Means, in Paul Lazarsfeld and Frank Stanton, eds., Communications Research, 1948-1949, New York, Harper, 1949, p. 119. 4 Charles Wright, Functional Analysis and Mass Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 24, 1960, pp. 605-62o. 6 Douglas Waples, Bernard Berelson, and Franklyn Bradshaw, What Reading Does to People, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1940.