Page 99 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

88 Articulating culture in the media age

direct reactions to the media they consume, and on this level that they are
most comfortable talking about their news viewing and reading, for
example.
The second level of engagement is interactions about the media. These
are those occasions and practices through which we bring our media expe-
riences to bear in our social relationships. This category is familiar in the
media studies literature as the kind of material detailed in the work of
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James Lull, David Morley, and Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes. In impor-
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tant ways, as these and other scholars have shown, media became
important cultural “currencies of exchange” in daily interactions with
peers and other groups. While this is most obvious in relation to youth, it
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is also a common experience with adults. As David Gauntlett and Annette
Hill observe in their book,
Ann Gray previously found that “a very important part of the pleasure
of television serials is to gossip about them the following day,” and in
the present study we similarly identified the social activity which
derives from watching television as an important aspect of TV’s place
in everyday life. When some respondents consider what they would
miss about watching television, being able to talk to other people
about what was watched last night is high on the list. 12

Thus, the “interactions about” level of engagement functions along at least
two dimensions. First, there is the direct sharing or “passing along” of
information, anecdotes, and stories, the sort of thing that the classic
“multi-step flow” theories of media influence used to concentrate on.
Second, there is a social salience in the relationship formation and mainte-
nance that media knowledge allows. Knowing about media provides the
occasion for social interaction, almost regardless of the original “experi-
ences in” media on the part of the individuals involved.
Finally, the third level, accounts of the media, is a category unique to
our work. These are the received public scripts according to which we
position ourselves as media audiences. These scripts are – in the area of
media – what James Carey has called the “publicly available stock” of
images and ideas through which we understand ourselves in our social and
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cultural contexts, and what Ellen Seiter has called “lay theories of media
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effects.” Television is bad for children. It is better to watch public televi-
sion. Too much time spent on the Internet or playing video games is bad.
Learning to use a computer is good. The media are anti-religious or at
least ir-religious.
We first encountered these “accounts of” media in the form of what
seemed to be a mismatch between people’s descriptions of their media
behaviors and their actual behaviors. This personal anecdote is illustrative.
Several years ago, in a ski-area hotel, I had to knock on the door of the