TV Media and Reality: An Observation
Each student will observe 2 hours of TV in during the week and 2 hours of people during the week. Almost any show is appropriate, but emphasis is placed on human behavior. Do not watch sporting events, news, or documentaries.
Take detailed notes as you observe the characters.
• How are they dressed?
• What are their bodies like?
• Their faces?
• What do they do for a living?
• Are they rich, poor, or middle class?
• What race or ethnicity are they?
• How do they refer to themselves?
• What is their age?
• Make at least 2 additional observations (identify what these are)
Do this for two hours. Next, take two hours for real-life observation. This will be a simple exploratory nonparticipant observational study in which you will spend 2 hours in a social public environment and document the norms of behavior that you observe. Pick out several people to watch and make the same observations
as you did for the media characters. You can choose any public space where there are sufficient interactions happening to provide you with data. Examples include dining halls, sports bars, salons, food court at a shopping center, the grocery store, coffee shops/houses, etc. Examples of norms include personal space norms; norms about waiting in line/waiting one’s turn; norms about speaking with strangers and appropriate topics of conversation and conversation length; etc. (Be creative!) You can choose a site you expect to include a subcultural group, or you may simply observe the public in general. Just be sure you are not putting yourself or others in any danger or risk of distress by choosing an inappropriate space (e.g., don’t go to a child’s playground and hang out) or by engaging in agitating or risky behaviors. Your task is simply to be there and observe. Summarize the location you choose (e.g., What/where was your site? What time of day was it? How crowded was it? How homogenous/heterogeneous was the crowd?); your observations/the norms you
observed; the patterns you notice for potential future work; and your conclusions.
When you have completed your observations, look over your notes and draw comparisons between the media characters and the real people that you observed. How does media distort images of real people? Does media influence our sense of reality? In what ways?
