Page 87 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

78 Cultural change and ordinary life

violence. I will briefly consider these findings with the aim of building up the
picture of the patterns of ordinary life, which is a key aim of this chapter.
With respect to everyday life, or as I have preferred to name it ordinary
life, the diaries analysed by Gauntlett and Hill show that there is an organized
schedule or pattern to everyday life and that TV programmes can provide
important markers to the day. However, the schedule is not fixed and it can
vary by, for example day, week and season. While some people planned their
viewing in detail and others did not, all had awareness of what was being
shown on television. Television acted as a focal point for households and
because of this it could be a locus of dispute within the household. A final
important point that emerged was that hobbies or what can best be termed
enthusiasms were important for a number of people, especially those who
communicated that they had the spare time to enjoy them.
Gauntlett and Hill (1999) specifically report on the consumption of
news by the diarists. While this is less important for my overall argument than
some of the more general points concerning everyday life, it is resonant
because of the general argument that Putnam (2000) makes about the effect of
TV viewing on social capital and the points made by Norris (2000) in return
that it surely matters what and how people watch. Thus, if people are engaging
with news this could potentially be helpful for knowledge of current affairs
and so on. Thus, Gauntlett and Hill found that watching the news was a social
activity and that like other aspects of TV viewing, it related to the patterns of
everyday life and was affected by life course changes, and so on. Importantly,
men and women both stated that they liked to watch the news, although
women were more constrained by time.
The importance of the life course was brought out by their data on life
transitions. Young adults were aware of TV’s role at transitional points in life,
and major life transitions (such as marriage, divorce and having children)
affected TV viewing to a significant extent. Adults were more likely to have
established patterns of viewing than younger people and TV could be used in
specific ways at times of emotional crisis (Gauntlett and Hill 1999: 103):

For some respondents, television is a distraction, or an opportunity
to avoid confrontation. For others, television is a means to build up
strength, in a similar way that one might build up one’s energy after
an illness. This is admitted, in general terms, by this respondent:
During major emotional crises (i.e. bereavement, separation) I find
I watch a lot more TV, for hours at a time. When you have no
emotional energy left it’s very easy to watch anything. As my
energy returns I become more selective in my viewing again.
(33 year old female office manager)

Television also had a variety of different meanings to people. For some it
offers companionship and can act a ‘friend’ to them. People were sometimes
‘guilty’ about their TV viewing and this was especially the case with the watch-
ing of TV during the daytime. Talk about television was a part of many people’s
lives and television had a role in people’s identities but even within a detailed
study such as this, this was difficult to pin down.