The first generation to grow up with a television in lives became grown ups in the 1960s. During this time, it became more and more apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Audiences weren't a passive mass, they were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for various different reasons and in numerous different ways.
In 1948 Lasswell suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society:
- surveillance
- correlation
- entertainment
- cultural transmission
Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes:
- diversion: escape from everyday problems and routine
- personal relationships: using the media for emotional and other interaction (e.g. substituting soap operas for family life)
- personal identity: finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts
- surveillance: information which could be useful for living (e.g. weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains)
Since then, the list of uses and gratifications has been extended, particularly as new media forms have come along (e.g. video games, the internet).
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