An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis of Digital Media Gratifications: Re-Examining Uses and Gratifications Theory in the Contemporary Media Environment (2015–2025)

We present a qualitative re-examination of Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) within the current and evolving digital media landscape through the timeframe of (2015-2025). UGT has long guided scholars and researchers in understanding what audience motivations entail while we find that the initial assumptions face an onslaught of challenges in the current age of curated algorithmic media, swirling interactivity, and converged platforms. Accessibility to growing and ever-changing social and mobile media requires an emergent deeper understanding into the ways that users are seeking and obtaining gratification in ways that will traverse past the previous understanding of the theory and considerations. This study aims to address a gap in contemporary UGT literature by shifting from a quantitative analysis of survey data on audience gratifications to a qualitative exploration of individuals lived experiences with media consumption.Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) design, we define lived experience through in-depth semi-structured interviews and media diaries that capture rich, contextualized narratives from digital media users. Ultimately, the qualitative approach provides us the ability to dig deep into the agency of the user and media environmental structures, whereby both began to feel paradoxical (Ullah, 2025). Findings of the study reveal expectations of also emergent gratifications related to curated-self-expression, algorithmically defined connections and relate through various seamless transports between information consumption and meaningful escapism.The analysis points to the knowledge that gratifications are still definitive for the users and specific to the platform consumed. The relationship between active audiences and the shaping, powerful space of the digital ecosystem warrants an inclusive perspective of a robust and current UGT. Through a new way of knowing, in including a media ecology perspective, we present a new/internal UGT lens with salient components of meaning-making and sustainability in a dialectical relationship with digital media. The implications of this study present a greater opportunity for scholars to develop thoughtful and robust UGT framework and suggests that the study be of critical interest to platform designers. The study also holds importance for media literacy and how digital media literacy is developed, implemented in practice, and researched.