While mainstream research on television use concentrates on how television affects or shapes everyday life, this research explores the ways in which family life shapes the use of television. By exploring how people make decisions about their television use, this study is an attempt to break the boundary of media-centeredness and to put media study in a wide social context.;Employing an ethnographic approach involving in-depth interviews and participant observation, the researcher studied five white, middle-class American families over a period of four months. Focusing on the four families who watched considerably less television than typical American families and using the fifth family heavy-viewing family as a comparison, the researcher explored the common characteristics of the light-viewing families and how these characteristics influenced their use of television. Three dimensions of their daily life were drawn to represent their characteristics: (1) These families have strong family relations. Characterized by respect, care, sharing, understanding, good family communication and cooperation, these families value relations within the family and have little attachment to television. (2) These families live full and active lives. In addition to work and house chores, these people have wide interests and rich activities. They are families with full plates and are too busy for television. (3) These families are traditional, value-oriented and skeptical about television. Strongly believing in family, religion, education, and discipline, these people make conscious efforts to control the choice of programs and the amount of television viewing.;It is concluded that the interactions of these characteristics help form the pattern of television use by the light-viewing families.;The research proposes a new approach to studying television use: by studying the context of the family. It suggests the introduction of ethnographic approach in the study of television usage as an invaluable alternative to quantitative research methods characterized by variable analysis.
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