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52 Consuming Media

media that tend to be neglected. As will be discussed in later chapters, phenomena
like gift-giving and collecting indicate that media use cannot be reduced to interpre-
tation and reception.
By using media, people constitute various kinds of collectivities. As readers, spec-
tators, or listeners, they form different kinds of audiences and publics, where the
latter usually demand some kind of activity, performance and self-identification. 12
People’s ways of selecting and structuring the media flow is both a precondition for
and a constituting part of their media use. This structuring starts already in the selec-
tion and purchase of the media hardware and software, for instance by subscribing to
cable channels or piling up CDs on the store counter. A record collection structures
the media flow in a private home, framing the selection process that precedes every
use of CDs, leading to a specific reception situation.
The key questions about media use can be summed up in the issues of when and
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where, why, how and to what purpose people use different media. The questions of
when and where have to do with the ways in which and to what extent media use
depends on time and space coordination in contemporary society. For example, is
everyday media use routinized – located at recurring times and identical places – or
does it take place at shifting times and places? The ways in which people use media
interact with the social relations in which this media use is embedded – the specific
time, space and social context of media consumption. Drotner et al. distinguish
between ‘time-in’ and ‘time-out’ culture, i.e. cultural practices that are integrated into
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everyday life versus those that stand out as separate events in time and space. This
distinction can also be made for media practices, though mediation tends to blur the
distinction somewhat, since it might for instance be hard to know if watching tele-
vision or listening to CDs is experienced as a background to home life at large or as
sacred moments of reception. In any case, media use is framed by its social context,
but it also actively co-constitutes this context. For example, watching television
alone, together with the family or with colleagues may reflect one’s lifestyle, but these
media practices also contribute to the creation of a personal identity and social
context for other activities. In this way social acts (for example, by having a ritual
character) and social groups (for example, by being single gendered) contribute to
determining the social context of media reception.
Statistics show that an average person in Sweden attends to mass media almost six
hours each day. This figure excludes telephones and still images in the form of paint-
ings, photos or posters, the ‘use’ time of which would be extremely hard to measure
empirically. Sound media take 40 per cent of this time, followed by moving images
(33.33 per cent) and print media (20 per cent). Television, radio and papers were part
of almost everyone’s average day, while books, CDs and the Internet were each used
by roughly one-third of the population on an average day. 15 These figures vary
considerably between countries, ages, classes, genders and ethnic groups. Since
different media demand and invite differing use modes, it is always important to
compare both number and length of uses, and to acknowledge that some media are
used marginally each day while others may be used in a much more focused way on