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emerging trends in the commercial use of the Web (Eighmey, 1997b; Newhagen
& Rafaeli, 1996). U&G theory has already been demonstrated in business-to-
business Internet applications (Eighmey, 1997a; 1997b), and preliminary U&G
work on consumer Web site applications has shown much promise (e.g., Stafford
& Stafford, 1998).
USES AND GRATIFICATIONS FOR MEDIA
The basic premise of the U&G paradigm focuses on what people do
with the
mass media (Klapper, 1963). It has long been known that individuals have
particular motives for media use (Katz, 1959), and that individuals' media choices
are motivated by particular self-defined uses and goals (Lin, 1977). In the case of
the Internet, U&G provides the theoretical framework for understanding motiva-
tions that drive Web use.
The Active Audience
A basic tenet of uses and gratifications theory is the active audience (Katz,
Blumler & Gurevitch, 1974; Rubin, 1981), and this concept of active involvement
is particularly important when investigating the emerging Internet medium, where
communication is best conceptualized as a reversed
flow, and the individual user
controls the process by simple virtue of initiating access (Stafford & Stafford,
1998). To paraphrase Klapper, what people do with the Web is to use it to their
own personal ends.
Active audiences are selective and make their own choices (Levy & Windahl,
1984), so understanding the activities prized by audience members is critical, since
these activities are representative of the underlying motivations which influence
selective and individual media access. Hence, the Web site marketer is best served
by a clear understanding of those activities and motivations, which influence
audience members who electronically access and use Internet resources. Audience
activity is axiomatic in emerging Internet media — Web sites are designed for active