The Social Uses of Television

Abstract

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

The Social Uses of Advertising: An Ethnographic Study of Adolescent Advertising Audiences

“…Advertising, as Scott (1994, p. 477) reminds us, is not like other texts, and a comparison between the social uses discovered in this study and those derived from Lull's (1980) exploration of the social uses of television, for example, reveals that very different social practices emerge from these different genres. Just as the advertising text differs from the program material that surrounds it, so too the kinds of social interactions that use advertising meanings are different from those observed in the audiences for television programs or the readership of a particular genre of the popular press.…”

“…In stark contrast to the uses and gratifications approach, however, reader response theory has emphasized the social role of these mass-communicated meanings rather than the individual, psychological uses of the text. Lull (1980), for example, developed a typology of the social uses to which television meanings are put in everyday life. Radway (1984) described how a group of midwestern American homemakers used their shared interpretations of romance literature to build and strengthen their social group.…”

Shedding light on the dark social: The connective role of news and journalism in social media communities

“…For instance, the integrative role that television has traditionally played within domestic settings, supporting the relational structure of the family, has been widely discussed (e.g. Jensen, 1990;Lull, 1980;Silverstone, 1994). Similarly, newspapers have been found to serve as "a catalyst for conversation and human contact" (Bogart, 1989: 169) within social groups, particularly in local communities (see Hoffman and Eveland, 2010 for an overview).…”

Networked Media Collectivities. The Use of Media for the Communicative Construction of Collectivities Among Adolescents

“…To display a shared preference for specific media content, to give an example, is one of several possibilities to express a sense of belonging and distinction from others (Hepp 1998). It has been shown that conversations surrounding mass media content can be an instrument to constitute hierarchy in relationships (Lull 1980). On a more general level, media content can also provide a starting point for the negotiation of norms and values in groups (Hurrelmann 1989) and in this way serve as one foundation for the construction of collectivities .…”