Alasuutari to Speak on TV Viewing Habits

Professor Pertti Alasuutari, Director of the Research Institute for Social Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland, will present "TV Viewing and the Civic Religion of Everyday Life" on Monday, January 9, 11:30 am–1:00 pm, in 116 Aderhold.

Dr. Alasuutari's visit to UGA has been sponsored by the Qualitative Research Program, and the Department of Lifelong Education, and Policy. We gratefully acknowledge financial support provided by The American-Scandinavian Foundation. This presentation is supported by the Language and Literacy Faculty/Student Forum.

If people's TV viewing habits primarily consist of watching light entertainment, do they tend to be critical of the public service ideology, according to which TV programs should be informative and fiction should consist of artistically ambitious, “high brow” programs? More broadly, in what ways are people's own media use habits related to their opinions about media policy and their attitudes toward public broadcasting? To address this question, we conducted qualitative interviews in which individuals were asked about their TV viewing and other media use and about their media policy opinions.

The question is particularly interesting in Finland because the state-owned public broadcasting company is trying hard to defend its market share against increasing competition from commercial broadcasting companies. Because the state-owned public broadcasting company gets its funding from license fees, its existence is dependent on both individuals, who may choose not to pay the fee even if they watch TV, and the parliament, which decides how much the license fee costs. For the public broadcasting company the question is, should they increase entertainment and other popular programs to attract large audiences and therefore prove that they are needed.

The analysis showed people's viewing habits and their opinions about the public service ideology are not strongly dependent. Individuals who report on primarily watching TV serials from commercial stations would still defend the position of the public broadcasting company YLE. By supporting the public service ideology they want to preserve the diversity of programme supply and in that sense the possibility to watch something else than, say, an American serial. Although people may openly report on watching light entertainment, the way in which they talk about watching different programs shows that they value informative programs and quality films: they are the types of programs that they should watch more.

I suggest that is because media use in people's everyday life is a moral question over the use of leisure time. The time used watching television, using a computer or reading newspapers or magazines is weighed against other possible uses of one's free time. That is why one needs to justify the choice to spend time on media use instead of, say, playing with the children, doing the necessary household chores, spending time with one's spouse or going out for a hobby. In that sense, people's accounts about and reflections on their media use reflect a fundamental question as to what one does and what one should do with one's life. They reflect a modern civic religion.

In this instance, by the modern civic religion I do not refer to any directly religious ideals. Instead, it depicts the common conviction internalized by people living in modern complex societies, according to which our task in – even the whole meaning of – life is to continuously develop ourselves, to learn new things and to be open to changing conditions and practices.

Thursday, December 8, 2005