Family Conversations About Television

Messaris, Paul

doi:10.1177/019251383004002003

Cited by 20 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Similarly, Palmer (1986) studied the way Australian children watched television in their homes. Brody and Stoneman (1983), Messaris (1983), and Leichter et al, (1983; employed ethnographic approaches to observe interactions among viewers and their effect on the way television messages are interpreted. Press (1990) interviewed American women to analyze the effects of class and generation on the uses and interpretations attached to television.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Methods, metaphors, and media messages: the uses of television in conversations about the environment

Carpini

2006

Caligrama (São Paulo. Online)

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A cornerstone of media studies is that the content of communication, and the understanding derived from it, cannot be divorced from the medium through which it is transmitted: in the extreme, the media is the message. In this paper we use this insight once removed: not only as a way of thinking about the media, but also as a way of thinking about how we study the media. More specifically, we argue that the methods we use as researchers are "our media," the means by which we observe, make sense of, and communicate about, media and politics. These methods, therefore, are intertwined, often in unexamined ways, with our assumptions about politics, participation, communications, and so forth. They are also intertwined with what we find, and how we interpret those findings. In short, the method is the message.Our purpose in this paper is threefold: to make explicit the implicit "metaphors" underlying mainstream media research and their relationships to the methodologies employed; to offer an alternative metaphor for the relationship between television and politics; and to present some findings from our initial attempts to empirically investigate this relationship. In the first section we examine the relationship between methods and interpretation, focusing on the dominance of survey research in mainstream media studies. We argue that this dominance both results from, and reinforces, the implicit metaphors of citizens as "political consumers," and media messages as "hypodermic injections." We then present an alternative metaphor for television and politics, one that emphasizes the role of discourse in the formation of public opinions, and that conceptualizes television and viewers as participants in an ongoing "conversation." The third section is a discussion of focus group methodology, pointing out its strengths (and weaknesses) as a means of observing the ways in which citizens and television "converse." We then describe our own focus group project, and present some initial findings. These findings, while tentative, support the utility both of focus groups as a method of inquiry, and of our "conversational" metaphor. We conclude with a brief summary, and an appeal for a more self-consciously multimethod approach to the study of media and politics.ethods, metaphors, and media messages: the uses of television in conversations about the environment M

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confidence: 99%

Methods, metaphors, and media messages: the uses of television in conversations about the environment

Carpini

2006

Caligrama (São Paulo. Online)

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“…Bower found that in his national sample, 80% of respondents with two television sets viewed at least some of the time each day with their children, and, if families owned three sets, the figure was 66 % . When Messaris asked mothers of elementary school children how much co-viewing they did, mothers estimated that 1.3 hours of their 2.5 total hours of daily viewing was in the company of their children (Messaris, 1983). Clearly, these estimates from samples are high enough to indicate the importance of co-viewing in the family leisure spectrum.…”

Section: Methodological Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clearly, such reports are subject to bias, in the sense that parents may inflate the frequency of such behaviors, and when queried by researchers, children themselves report the existence of such rules about television (Rossiter & Robertson, 1975). There are indications that parents also actively discourage the imitation of television portrayals by their children, and that they typically attribute undesirable activities to television (Messaris, 1983).…”

Section: Rule Making and Disciplinary Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family Mediation Patterns and Television Viewing.

Desmond

Singer

et al. 1985

Human Comm Res

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A sample of kindergarten andjrst-grade children was studied in a research center and at school to determine the extent to which family communication mediated their comprehension of television, as well as a series of cognitive skills necessary for such comprehension. Results indicate that, even when intelligence is controlled for, several cognitive and imaginative skills and particular family interaction styles such as establishment of rules about television or explanation rather thanprescription are related to the ability to understand television.The study of television in the lives of young children has passed through three major stages. The first stage, beginning in the 1950s, centered on the role of television in the leisure spectrum of children and adolescents (Himmelweit, Oppenheim, & Vince, 1958; Schramm, Lyle, & Parker, 1961). Such investigations have typically adopted a global approach, Roger Jon Desmond (Ph.D., University of Iowa, 1977) is an associate professor of communication at the University of Hartford and a visiting fellow in psychology at Yale University. Jerome L. Singer (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1950) is a professor of psychology at Yale University. Dorothy G. Singer (ED.D., Columbia University, 1966) is o 1985 International Communication Assn. 461 a professor of psychology, University of Bridgeport, Connecticut. RacheZ CaZam (Ph.D., University of Liverpool, 1981) is a research associate in psychology, University of Manchester, England. Karen Colimore (B.A., University of California at Santa Cruz, 1983) is a research associate at

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“…Die Aspekte dieser Typologie variieren mit je spezifischen interpersonalen Kommunikationsstilen in den Familien. Methodisch findet bei Lull das Verfahren der Ethnographie Verwendung (s. auch : Messaris 1983). Sie wird z.B.…”

Section: Rezeptionssituationunclassified

Massenkommunikation als Dialog. Zum aktuellen Diskussionsstand der handlungstheoretisch orientierten Rezeptionsforschung

Neumann¹,

Charlton²

1988

Comm

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Family Conversations About Television

Cited by 20 publications

References 10 publications

Methods, metaphors, and media messages: the uses of television in conversations about the environment

Methods, metaphors, and media messages: the uses of television in conversations about the environment

Family Mediation Patterns and Television Viewing.

Massenkommunikation als Dialog. Zum aktuellen Diskussionsstand der handlungstheoretisch orientierten Rezeptionsforschung

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