Analyzing the uses and gratifications concept of audience activity with a qualitative approach: Media encounters during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake disaster

Diaries and narratives produced by 29 college students during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake served as the data for a qualitative analysis grounded in the conventional philosophy, if not the traditional methodology, of the uses and gratifications perspective. Two hundred ninety‐nine individual media episodes were interpreted. Audience activity before, during, and after media exposure was studied through the application of the Levy and Windahl Typology of Audience Activity which demonstrated the operation of the nine types of media activity proposed by its creators. Conclusions call for the redirection (rather than abandonment) of audience‐based research away from general‐trend audience consumption and towards more specific cultural interaction of people with media.