Three Types of Needs
According to Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, three media needs determine how important media is to a person at any given moment:
1) The need to understand one's social world (surveillance)
2) The need to act meaningfully and effectively in that world (social utility)
3) The need to escape from that world when tensions are high (fantasy-escape)
When these needs for media are high, the more people turn to media to meet these needs, and therefore the media have a greater opportunity to effect them. That said, none of these media needs are constant over long periods of time. They change based on aspects of our social environment. In fact, media dependency theory states two specific conditions under which people's media needs, and consequently people's dependency on media and the potential for media effects, are heightened.
Read more about this topic: Media Systems Dependency Theory
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