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01Consuming Media 10/4/07 11:17 am Page 137

changes in social practices. Memories and expectations of now-being unlock the
doors to historical time, which gives a sense and meaning to abstract and concrete
time but cannot be approached without the mediating role of media narrative. It is
narrative and media that give the ‘time arrow’ of history a double direction, pointing
both backwards to the past and forwards to the future. The embodied now-time
opens itself up to the remembrance of the past and the expectation of the future.
Attention to the present ‘here and now’ is a corporeal time perception, but always
filtered through memories of the past and expectations of the future.
Whereas media time – the temporal processes of media use – is primarily related
to the concrete and abstract time, mediated time – the temporalities represented in
media texts – is mainly related to the historical time layer. Whether based on facts or
fiction, media narratives are the main contemporary entrances to history, but also
give a direction to the future course of history, which in a sense is always fictitious
since it is genuinely unknown.
Mediated time is related to the material, technical and syntactical traits of different
kinds of media. These traits primarily work on the immediate experience of the
embodied now-time that may be perceived as ‘long’, ‘short’, ‘slow’ or ‘fast’. Raymond
Williams has given a good example of this capability of media to influence the ex-
perience of time by pointing to the flow created by broadcasting and especially tele-
vision. 28 Altering the temporal sequence from an emphasis on programme to flow,
which became a common feature with the start of MTV in the early 1980s, brings
the time-experience of television close to some aspects of the conception of abstract
and concrete time. De-emphasizing the discrete time units of programmes gives the
time-experience of television approximately the same flow as the perception of pure
abstract time, passing without being punctuated by qualitatively changing contents.
But contrary to the slowness and emptiness of abstract time, the television flow rather
speeds up and fills up time. This makes the viewing of television less dependent of
any single time layer, since it is possible to join in and float with it at any time, day
or night.
In summary, there are at least five important ways to approach the relationship
between time and media. First, media contribute to the coupling and uncoupling of
time and space. Second, abstract time works as a steering-medium for when and
where media are used. Third, concrete time concerns the way media time is correlated
to other time structures in everyday life, for example the alteration of work and
leisure. Fourth, media narratives are used to refigure historical time. And fifth, the
material, technical and syntactical traits of the media shape the experience of corpo-
real time.

CONSUMPTIVE AND MEDIATED TIME
Consumption and media use belong to the routines of everyday life. Habitual
routinization underpins a cyclical notion of time, grounded in the repetition of activ-
ities or events. Although basically linear, both abstract and concrete time can easily
be adapted to cyclical notions, for example through the way clock time repeats itself

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