Building from the social constructivist view, this paper provides evidence that audience members create specific and sometimes elaborate practical actions involving television in order to gratify particular needs in the context of family viewing. The ethnography of mass communication is recommended as a methodological framework suitable for discovering and documenting these behaviors. Based on findings from systematic participant observation research, and from the pertinent uses and gratifications literature, a typology of the social uses of television, with emphasis on their communicative value, is presented. Mass media are found to be valuable social resources, not unlike language or the occasions for talk, which are particularly useful to the imaginative social member for the construction and maintenance of desired relations at home.Elihu Katz, director of the Hebrew University's Communication Institute, recently told the British Broadcasting Corporation that he would give "a large prize to anybody who succeeded in developing a method for the sampling of everyday conversation to supplement the probing of survey research" on mass communication (Katz, 1977). He described the potential advantages of these data in the analysis of the media's role in setting conversational agendas, television's place in the development of interpersonal interaction patterns within families, the socialization effects of media, and the consequences of media programming on the use of language, patterns of speech, and thought.The purpose of this essay is to elaborate theoretically and practically on Katz's recommendation for James Lull (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1976) is assistant professor of speech at increased sensitivity by mass communication researchers to the nature of the social uses which audience members make of television. This will be accomplished by first suggesting that audience members create specific and sometimes elaborate practical actions involving the mass media in order to gratify particular needs in the social context of family television viewing. Second, a research method (ethnography) will be presented which allows for investigation of these media-related behaviors. Finally, evidence will be presented from ethnographic research in conjunction with pertinent findings from the uses and gratifications literature in support of a typology of the social uses of television. MASS MEDIA AS SOCIAL RESOURCESSocial actors can be thought to actively employ the tools of communication in order to purposively

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Audience members "use" television in a variety of ways. The social environment in the family home is a major contributor to differential uses of the medium by individuals. Previous research on family communication patterns, for instance, has demonstrated that families which stress harmo nious social relations at home (socio orientation) differ in many attitudes, activities, and media habits from families which stress the independent expression of ideas (concept orientation). This survey research explores the ways in which socio-oriented and concept-oriented audience members differ in their uses of television as a resource for the accomplishment of interpersonal objectives at home. Differences were found for behaviors which range from structuring daily activities and talk patterns to more complex interpersonal goals such as communication facilitation, affilia tionlavoidance, social learning, and demonstration of competence/domi nance.

Music plays a variety of roles as an agent of social utility and source of entertainment. For young people in particular, music helps unify social collectives, introduces new topics, teaches society's norms and rules, and creates new symbols. Because active use of a medium increases its effect as an agent of socialization, music has an impact at physical, emotional, and cognitive levels. The modern rock movement is especially important when considering the activities of adolescents in the U.S. and Europe.