Individual perception about the gratification of social and traditional media in Pakistan

Abstract

The revolutionization of information and communication through new media not only developed diverse needs but also blessed people to gratify those needs from single platform. The fundamental needs i-e information, communication, socialization, escapism as per Uses and Gratification theory is being gratified by social media. Uses and gratification theory conceptualize active role of audience and abets in the evaluation of how audiences use a particular medium and the gratifications they derive from that use. The replacement of traditional media by social media compelled media researchers to do in-depth analysis of social media. This current study aims at exploring difference between traditional and social media news and analyzed their role in gratification of informational need on the basis of gender and usage. Five categories of local, national, international, disaster and entertainment are selected for the survey which consists of 1383 male and female university student from capital of each province of Pakistan. The results are statistically analyzed by using SPSS. The findings suggest that social media remain active all the time to satiate informational need and dependency of traditional media on social media posit that soon traditional media would be displaced. The obtained gratification and individual perception of participants is found significant for social media than traditional media. The moderation effect of gender and usage is also momentous. The male dominance is not only prevalent in social structure but also evident in media consumption patterns. The social and gender disparities are reflective in this current study in informational need gratification through media.