GRATYFIKOWANIE POTRZEB PRZEZ MASS MEDIA A POZIOM KOMPETENCJI SPOŁECZNYCH
THE SOCIAL SKILLS AND MASS MEDIA: USES & GRATIFICATION APPROACH

Summary/Abstract: The uses & gratification approach is one of the prominent research strategies in the massmedia psychology. There are two main directions of research within this framework.The first one assumes that the mass media, particularly interactive web applications,are possible ways to deal with deficits in the social skills. This approach also assumesthat the human needs not fulfilled in the natural social environment may be gratified bymass media. The second direction of research emphasizes that the mass media are notan alternative form to socialize and communicate for users with specific disabilities, buton the contrary, strengthen these deficits (or abilities) of the users.The present study verified the role of social skills in the scope of mass media gratificationsproposed by McQuail (2007). It was hypothesized that the low skills will be associatedwith stronger gratifications gained by the mass media, and the higher social skills will beconnected with higher gratifications gained outside the mass media. There were 1.034participants (53.3% women), Mage=32.09 (SDage=14.42) who completed two questionnairesSocial Competence Questionnaire and Mass Media Gratifications Questionnaire.The results supported the second research hypothesis, i.e. mass media are not thealternative way to cope with the deficits in social skills, but rather they catalyze andstrengthen the characteristics of users due to the model “rich gets richer, poor gets poorer”.People with high level of mass media gratification and social environmental gratificationare characterized by the highest level of social skills. Moreover, users with the lowestlevels of social skills are the ones whose needs are least gratified by both mass media and their social environment.

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