I choose Pinterest to use in the classroom based around how I wanted students to use it and because I hoped that they would gain certain benefits from its use. Therefore, some investigation into audience theories and specifically ‘Uses and Gratifications’ (U&G) seems like an appropriate area of study.

Ruggiero T. (2000) Uses and Gratifications in the 21st Century, Mass Communication and Society 3(1), 3-37.  http://www4.ncsu.edu/~amgutsch/Ruggiero.pdf

“The emergence of computer-mediated communication has revived the significance of uses and gratifications”p3

The first part of this paper details a history of U&G research, saying that “an approach was developed to study the gratifications that attract and hold audiences to the kinds of media and types of content that satisfy their social and psychological needs” p3, when I first introduced Pinterest I gave specific tasks that required non-voluntary use of Pinterest with the hope that they would be attracted enough by its benefits that they would come back to it voluntarily and become regular users of the service.

Ruggiero seems generally critical about the rigour of early studies, as “early U&G studies were primarily descriptive, seeking to classify the responses of audience members into meaningful categories” p4

He links theories of active audiences to U&G, saying that variable levels and types of activity should be taken into account in any study.

Dependency Theory – “Media influence is determined by the interrelations between the media, its audience  and society. The individual’s desire for information from the media is the primary variable in explaining why media messages have cognitive, affective, or variable effects. Media dependency is high when an individual’s goal satisfaction relies on information from the media system” My hope was that because the students would be using Pinterest to gain information for the purposes of research (a key part of the curriculum), they might become more dependent on the system than any previous systems of research.

This also helps to give reason for variable levels of engagement over time, “Variability of involvement suggests that the motivation to use any mass medium is also affected by how much an individual relies on it and how well it satisfies his or her need”. p10

Interactivity – “Ha and James (1998) (must look them up) cited five dimensions of interactivity: playfulness, choice, connectedness, information collection, and reciprocal communication. Ha and James suggested that for “self-indulgers” and “Web surfers,” the playfulness and choice dimensions of interactivity fulfill self-communication and entertainment needs. For task-oriented users, the connectedness dimension fulfills information needs. For expressive users, the information collection and reciprocal communication dimensions allow them to initiate communication with others of common online interests. Ha and James assessed dimensions such as information collection and reciprocal communication as higher levels of interactivity. Playfulness, choice, and connectedness were viewed as lower levels of interactivity.”p15 Links here to Gamification and a suggestion that it is the information collection that may be more important to engagement than fun.

Demassification – (interesting term – more research needed) Defined as the ability of the media user to select from a wide choice and gain some control over the medium, “the individual media user is able, through newer technologies, to pick from a large selection of media, previously shared only with other individuals as mass media. Unlike traditional mass media, new media like the Internet provide selectivity characteristics that allow individuals to tailor messages to their needs.”p15 Students are able to select from sources that are not ‘published’ in a traditional sense. They can choose from a wider variety that in a traditional library and get broader results than from a ‘Google image search’, without this search feeling overwhelming, or too complex.

The Internet – “other scholars have insisted that the traditional audience concept must be modified because of the interpersonal potential of the Internet”p21

“This concept of ‘personalness’, social presence or the degree of salience in interpersonal relationships is being explored increasingly by U&G researchers, particularly in relation to interactivity”p21

Flexibility of approach is needed when studying computer-mediated communication as it “permeates every aspect of our individual and social lives” p28. A small number of students have expanded their use of Pinterest into their social lives and all students have the ability to access it via mobile technology, and/or their home computers, meaning it has the ability to seek into uses outside of my curriculum.