Page 238 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Representing outcomes 227

ment media) and informational (in the case of the Internet). Her tastes,
values, and instincts in media give her the basis she needs to make these
judgments, though she does report depending a bit on others for advice
and evaluations of television and the Internet. The significant point,
though, is that her evaluations are important to her, and that she describes
them as necessary and more or less constant. At least on the level of
“accounts of media,” most people seem to want to say that they will regu-
larly accept, reject, and contest media in ways that are relevant to their
values and their beliefs.

“I use it to talk with my kids or others about values and
morality”
Parenting is one of the central contexts of discussion and understanding
surrounding media use. In Media, Home, and Family, my colleagues and I
engaged in a thorough discussion of the ways the people we interviewed
came to understand and use television and other media in the context of
household life. It is a commonplace to think that parent/child interactions
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about the media are one of the major themes of contemporary home life,
and a major challenge to creative parenting today, and that notion was
supported by our research. Thus, it is not a surprise to find many of our
interviewees reflecting on the ways that media come into parenting and
family life. Often, these accounts are about how the media convey values
that are at odds with values parents wish to maintain as normative in their
homes. In other cases, there are compelling accounts of families using
media as valuable and even positive occasions for family togetherness and
interaction. Many of the categories of media use we’ve talked about in this
chapter so far relate to one or the other of these occasions.
However, there is a third category of parental use of media that also
appears large in our interviews: the fact that the media – as compelling
cultural products – convey cultural and values messages that are tailor-
made for parent–child interactions, discourse, and teaching. In a way, the
media are seen by many parents as providing the “curriculum” for values
and ethics education. Some parents are quite intentional and systematic
about this, others more informal. For nearly all of them, though, this
capacity of the media seems to be an obvious opportunity. Megan Sealy
describes this in reaction to a question about seeking out things related to
religion or spirituality on TV or in film.

Interviewer: Do you guys ever seek out anything related to religion or
spirituality on TV or in the movies?
Megan: Ahhh . . . sometimes some of those shows on TV, if they show a
lot of immorality and stuff like that, I like to make a point of letting
Dell know according to my belief system that that’s not appropriate.