Thriller Opening (Research): Uses and Gratifications

Uses and Gratifications is an important theory for anyone to know. According to this theory, we all have different uses for the media and choose what we wish to see and what we don't, just like many of us turn off the television if there's something we don't like that's on. In more simpler terms, when we watch the media, we expect something from it and don't watch it just for mindless entertainment.

There are four types of gratification found and they are the following:

Information: This when we want to find out information on the society we're in and about the world we live in, satisfying our curiosity on the unknown. Some examples of such things would be documentaries and news as these are telling us important facts about many things, including the world.

Personal Identity: There's the idea that we watch television in order to find a role model for our appearances and behaviour. Some sort of inspiration. This is also the idea that we identify with the characters we see in TV dramas and soaps.

Integration and Social Interaction: We sometimes use media for research into circumstances that other people can be put in and it allows us to sympathise with the lives of characters who can get into incidents that many people in reality get caught up in. This is the idea that television will help us get along with our friends.

Entertainment: This last idea is that we simply use media for enjoyment and to help us relax after a day of stress and it's the simplest one of the lot to understand.

There are criticisms of the theory though which goes along the lines of us not actually having a choice over what we watch or listen to. An example of this would be that if I were to put on music in the car with other people in there, the others wouldn't be able to get a choice in music that's being played or something of the sort.
There's the second problem which relates to the last idea for the theory as, for example, if we saw something we don't like, we can't always change it in order to see something that we actually enjoy.
Many other problems exist which make this theory less plausible and undermines it.

I looked into uses and gratifications to get an idea on what the audience for our thriller opening would see or would enjoy seeing and how they would view it, thinking about how to make it so people might see certain characters as role models or just to find it entertaining.