"DISGUSTING TELEVISION" AND OTHER NARRATIVES ON MEDIA USE - How young adults living in St. Petersburg tell about their media environment
LEINONEN, ANNA (2008)
LEINONEN, ANNA
2008
Tiedotusoppi - Journalism and Mass Communication
Yhteiskuntatieteellinen tiedekunta - Faculty of Social Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2008-06-24
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uta-1-19177
https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uta-1-19177
Tiivistelmä
The topic of this study is the patterns of media use among young adults who live in St. Petersburg. The central research question is how the societal macro context appears in the narrative on media use. The participants in the study are young adults who were teenagers at the time when the Soviet Union disintegrated. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russian society and the media system changed dramatically in a short time. Therefore, Russia is an interesting context in which to study people’s relation to their media environment.
The research material was collected in May-June 2006 in St. Petersburg. The material consists of eight qualitative interviews. The participants in the study were 25–30-year-old men and women with a university education. The analysis was based on a narrative approach. As a result of the analysis, three different orientations were recognised. The orientations are combinations of different relationships with the media environment and media use and inner narratives. The concept of inner narrative refers to understanding of oneself.
The recognized orientations are Societal, Instrumental and Private. Characteristics of the Societal orientation are strong criticism of the political circumstances of contemporary Russia and a clear division of the media environment into the organs of the ruling power and its opposition. The Instrumental orientation emphasizes the usefulness of information as a factor directing media use. The Private orientation, in turn, represents media use in the context of everyday life. The narrators with this orientation evaluate media content based on its emotional effects on people, which differentiates this orientation from the two others.
Additional questions for the analysis were the participants’ relation to reading and the print media and how the dual characteristic of the media as technological objects and the mediators of social meanings appeared in the narrative. Based on the analysis, one can conclude that reading and the print media are still culturally valued among young adults, even if in everyday use the printed format has been replaced by the Internet, especially in relation to informational needs. The dual character of the media was analyzed in relation to mobile phones. The material contained gender-based variation, so that the female participants emphasized the function of mobile phones as a mediator of social relations. In the narrative of male participants, the mobile phone was also represented as a technological object, which is desired because of its status value.
The qualitative approach that was applied in the study revealed the participants’ own signification processes. The analysis proved that societal conditions appear in the narrative as a factor affecting media use. To be able to cover the participants’ own views of everyday media use, it was important to include all the media formats in the same analysis.
KEYWORDS:
Media use; Russia; Society; Young adults; Television; Reading; Mobile phones; Narrative research; Qualitative analysis
The research material was collected in May-June 2006 in St. Petersburg. The material consists of eight qualitative interviews. The participants in the study were 25–30-year-old men and women with a university education. The analysis was based on a narrative approach. As a result of the analysis, three different orientations were recognised. The orientations are combinations of different relationships with the media environment and media use and inner narratives. The concept of inner narrative refers to understanding of oneself.
The recognized orientations are Societal, Instrumental and Private. Characteristics of the Societal orientation are strong criticism of the political circumstances of contemporary Russia and a clear division of the media environment into the organs of the ruling power and its opposition. The Instrumental orientation emphasizes the usefulness of information as a factor directing media use. The Private orientation, in turn, represents media use in the context of everyday life. The narrators with this orientation evaluate media content based on its emotional effects on people, which differentiates this orientation from the two others.
Additional questions for the analysis were the participants’ relation to reading and the print media and how the dual characteristic of the media as technological objects and the mediators of social meanings appeared in the narrative. Based on the analysis, one can conclude that reading and the print media are still culturally valued among young adults, even if in everyday use the printed format has been replaced by the Internet, especially in relation to informational needs. The dual character of the media was analyzed in relation to mobile phones. The material contained gender-based variation, so that the female participants emphasized the function of mobile phones as a mediator of social relations. In the narrative of male participants, the mobile phone was also represented as a technological object, which is desired because of its status value.
The qualitative approach that was applied in the study revealed the participants’ own signification processes. The analysis proved that societal conditions appear in the narrative as a factor affecting media use. To be able to cover the participants’ own views of everyday media use, it was important to include all the media formats in the same analysis.
KEYWORDS:
Media use; Russia; Society; Young adults; Television; Reading; Mobile phones; Narrative research; Qualitative analysis