Television and the Quality of Life: How Viewing Shapes Everyday ExperienceEmploying a unique research methodology that enables people to report on their normal activities as they occur, the authors examine how people actually use and experience television -- and how television viewing both contributes to and detracts from the quality of everyday life. Studied within the natural context of everyday living, and drawing comparisons between television viewing and a variety of other daily activities and leisure pursuits, this unusual book explores whether television is a boon or a detriment to family life; how people feel and think before, during, and after television viewing; what causes television habits to develop; and what causes heavy viewing -- and what heavy viewing causes -- in the short and long term. Television and the Quality of Life also compares the viewing experience cross-nationally using samples from the United States, Italy, Canada, and Germany -- and then interprets the findings within a broad theoretical and historical framework that considers how information use and daily activity contribute to individual, familial, societal, and cultural development. |
Contents
CHAPTER 1 A Way to Think About Information Reception | 1 |
CHAPTER 2 The Problem of Leisure | 12 |
CHAPTER 3 The Limits of Television Research | 23 |
The Experience Sampling Method | 42 |
CHAPTER 5 The Use and Experience of Television in Everyday Life | 69 |
CHAPTER 6 Television and the Quality of Family Life | 108 |
CHAPTER 7 Viewing as Cause as Effect and as Habit | 119 |
CHAPTER 8 The Causes and Consequences of Heavy Viewing | 149 |
Reclaiming the Idea of Media Effects | 171 |
CHAPTER 10 Television and the Structuring of Experience | 181 |
Appendices | 223 |
References | 244 |
| 269 | |
| 277 | |
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Common terms and phrases
A. C. Nielsen adolescents adults affect amount of viewing analysis attention audience behavior Bryant challenge chapter cognitive com complex con concentration concluded consciousness correlation critical Csikszentmihalyi culture demographic eating emotional ence entropy ESM studies example film findings Frankfurt School goals gratifications groups HDTV heavier heavy viewers human interaction intrinsic motivation involvement Kubey leisure activities less light viewers live mass communication mass media means medium messages Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi moods negative negentropy night one’s passive people’s person primary pro psychological reading Reed Larson relaxation report feeling respondents result sample screen secondary self-reports signals significantly sion skills social spent structure subjects talking television program television viewing television watching television’s things tion TV viewing unstructured variables view view television viewing experience watching television watching TV week z scores Zillmann