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Table of contents
1. Adolescent room culture: Studying media in the context of everyday life.................................................... 1
Bibliography...................................................................................................................................................... 18
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Adolescent room culture: Studying media in the context of everyday life
Author: Steele, Jeanne R; Brown, Jane D
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Abstract (Abstract): Steele and Brown have discovered that the bedroom is an important haven for most
teenagers. They have come to see adolescent media use as a dialectical process played out through everyday
practices.
Links: Linking Service
Full text: INTRODUCTION
In Rachael's room the bed is covered with clothes, cassette tapes and magazines, a red phone, and the
cassette player. The walls are plastered with posters of the Beatles, the B52s, and a leering rock musician with
his hand stuck down in his pants. The posters cover over an Impressionist art print of a little girl with flowers.
One wall is full of advertisements torn from magazines featuring muscular men and thin women modeling the
latest fashions. A bulletin board is crammed with snapshots of friends and a poem illustrated with a red skull
and crossbones.
This is the bedroom of a 14-year-old girl who has projected into the space of her bedroom her fears, desires,
and fantasies about herself in relation to others and the larger culture. It tells a lot about who she is and what
she cares about.
Sixteen-years-old and a sophomore in high school, Jack also safeguards an eclectic mix of childhood artifacts
and teenage fantasies and aspirations in his bedroom. On one wall a wooden shadow box displays a fleet of
multihued model cars, painstakingly crafted during grade school. A shelf is piled high with the audiotaped
"mixes" that now occupy his time. Perched on top is a teddy bear dressed in a white sailor suit, and behind the
portable TV are a handdrawn "drugs kill" poster of a rising cobra, GI Joe cutouts, and a pen-and-pencil
rendering of Lady and the Tramp, the flotsam of earlier years. On the wall next to his bed are more current
concerns: a Ferrari Testarossa poster, a "my child is an honor student at..." bumper sticker, and pictures of girls
clipped out of magazines. "If they look good," Jack explains, "I just put them up on the wall."
Rachael's and Jack's bedrooms underscore an important commonality between these two teenagers--one
white, female, and from a city in the Southeast, the other black, male, and from a small Southern town. That
commonality is the mass media from which they both draw as they fashion their emerging identities.
Over the past several years we have been investigating the bedrooms of adolescents like Rachael and Jack in
order to learn more about the relationship between teenagers and the media. Why are the media such an
essential part of so many adolescents' everyday routines? What do they take from the media, and why? Are
some teens more susceptible to media influence than others? What mediates the impact of media choices and
effects? These and related questions have guided our room culture project. They are stimulated by the ongoing
debate among social critics and media scholars about the extent to which young people can and do resist the
dominant and often potentially harmful messages presented by the mass media.
Much of the public's concern about the effects of the mass media on children and adolescents centers on
unhealthy behaviors, such as early and unprotected sex and drug use. The media are seen as especially
powerful for at least three reasons: (1) children and teens spend more time with the mass media than they do in
school or with their parents, (2) the media are full of portrayals that glamorize risky adult behavior such as
unprotected sex with multiple partners and drinking; and (3) parents and other socialization agents have shirked
their responsibilities to direct youth toward less risky behavior (Gore, 1987).
Some researchers who theorize about and study the effects of the mass media have moved away from a
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powerful effects model and instead point to an active audience that engages in selective behavior at each step
in the process of being affected by the mass media (Levy and Windahl, 1985). They suggest that adolescents
will make choices about which media and genres to attend to, will pay attention to some kinds of content and
not others, will identify and model some media characters, and may create new meanings and uses for what
they do select. These scholars argue that the process of media effects must be seen as interactive, rather than
unidirectional.
However, other scholars argue that the media do not provide the full array of life possibilities and are not
completely open texts, subject to an infinite number of meanings (Biocca, 1988). Rather, the media present a
certain set of messages or ideas about how the world works, and although some differences in interpretation
and sense making are possible, the dominant meanings will prevail. At the least, it is unlikely, given the
hegemonic nature of most media content, that audiences will be stimulated to resist or create politically vital
opposition to the existing world view (Gitlin, 1991).
In the context of this theoretical discussion, we propose a model that emphasizes a dialectical process in which
the media are important cultural agents whose influence on audiences is both amplified and restrained by active
individuals who interact with the media from "where they live" (Schwichtenberg, 1989, p. 293), developmentally,
socially, and culturally. The model does not diminish the importance of media content, but it recognizes that
individuals shape and transform media encounters in a continuous cycle of meaning making. The difference
between amplified or restrained effects lies in individual (the focus here) and group practices--the everyday
activities, gestures, and routines that define social relations.
The model is grounded in empirical work on adolescents' "room culture," a term used to refer to both the
material artifacts contained in teens' bedrooms and the activities teenagers engage in when they are in their
rooms. In the interest of seeing just how active adolescents are in sorting through and making use of the cultural
"tool kit" provided by the mass media (Swidler, 1986), we have been looking closely at how teens use the mass
media and related materials from popular culture in their daily lives. Daily journals, in-depth interviews
conducted in teens' bedrooms, and a technique called "room touring" have allowed us to see and hear the
variety of ways adolescents use the media in creating a sense of themselves.
The bedroom is an important place for most adolescents, a personal space in which they can experiment with
"possible selves" (Larson, this issue; Markus and Nurius, 1986). Even adolescents who share a room typically
have designated some space as their own. In the late 1970s, Csikszentmihalyi and Larson (1984) found that
teens spent about 13% of their awake time in their bedrooms (second only to the 20% of time spent at school).
At least some of that time is spent on identity work (McRobbie and Garber, 1975; Moffatt, 1989; Willis, 1990).
Adrienne Salinger's photographs of teens in their bedrooms (1995) capture the idiosyncratic, creative ways
adolescents draw from the media as they work to express and define themselves.
Room culture data, analyzed in the aggregate, generated the theoretical connections that ground the
Adolescents' Media Practice model presented. The model posits a process of media Selection, Interaction, and
Application that is constantly shaping and being shaped by Identity. As media researchers, our primary focus is
the media components rather than the identity component of the model. However, this foregrounding of media
should not be interpreted as diminishing the relative importance of identity. Identity anchors the model,
explaining more variation in practice than any other component.
FIELDWORK
Our room culture project began in spring 1987 when we worked with 19 white, middle-class girls, 11-15 years
old from North Carolina and Michigan(3) to learn about their use of the mass media in constructing a sense of
themselves as sexual human beings. In order to learn what these girls saw as "sexual," they were asked to
record in personal journals whatever they saw or heard in the media about "sex and relationships." Then, after a
month of journal keeping, each girl was interviewed in her bedroom. She first completed a short, self-
administered questionnaire about typical patterns of media use and sexual experience, and then the journal was
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used as a catalyst for an open-ended interview about use of the media. Pictures of each girl's room also were
taken to facilitate communication between researchers working in two different states. These photos and the
bedroom culture they captured opened up an unexpectedly rich vein of information about adolescent identities
and media use.
In summer 1991, another six teenagers, aged 13-15, including another white girl, one black girl, two white boys,
and two black boys, were interviewed, all but one in their rooms.(4) Four of these teens were interviewed again
in spring 1992, along with two more white girls who were acquaintances of one of the authors. During this phase
of research, a version of "autodriving," a technique borrowed from consumer research (Heisley and Levy, 1991;
Rook, 1991), was used. Each teen, holding a tape recorder, took the interviewer on a tour of his or her room,
describing everything that held special meaning or significance for them.
In July 1992, 20 rising high school seniors from across the country (11 males and 9 females, including three
blacks, two Native Americans, and two students of Hispanic origin) who were attending a three-week course on
the university campus were asked to interview each other about their bedrooms at home. Provided with a
loosely structured interview guide, they focused on how their interview partners used mass media in their
rooms, assessed how important the room was, and described how decorations and artifacts reflected personal
identity.
In spring 1993, room tours were conducted with five college students (two white males, one black and two white
females) in their dorm rooms. The focus this time was on the media and alcohol. During the month preceding
the scheduled interviews, each student had completed a 10-day journal recording drinking behavior, attitudes
toward alcohol, and observations about alcohol messages in the university environment.
DEVELOPING A MEDIA PRACTICE MODEL
In our initial analyses of these data, we stayed close to mainstream communications and socialization theories,
looking for empirical confirmation that teens are selective in their media choices, creative in their interpretations
of media content, and active users of media material as they move through adolescence. We found ample
evidence to support those assertions, but our analyses lacked an integrating theory.
After several waves of adolescent room culture studies and secondary and tertiary analyses of the data, we
began to see connections between what the data revealed and the stream of work coming from the Birmingham
Center for contemporary Cultural Studies (Lave, et al., 1992; Johnson, 1987), practice theorists like Bourdieu
(1977, 1990) and Willis (1977), and the neocultural-historical school of psychology (Holland and Valsiner, 1988;
Valsiner, 1991, 1993). The combination of our qualitative methods, persistent focus on room culture over time,
and interdisciplinary orientation led to formulation of the Adolescents' Media Practice Model (Fig. 1).(fig. 1
omitted) The model contributes three important dimensions to the traditional conceptualization of mass media
uses and effects.
1. The model takes a practice perspective (Bentley, 1987; Bourdieu, 1977, 1990; Lave et al., 1992) and focuses
on the everyday activities and routines of media consumption. Instead of worrying about where the power lies--
with a powerful media or an active audience--practice theory sees media as an integral part of the continuous
process of cultural production and reproduction that characterizes everyday life. Typical adolescents interact
with media all day long. They wake up to the radio, they talk with their friends about last night's episode of
90210, and they flip through the latest issue of Sports Illustrated or Seventeen while lying around after school. It
is through these everyday activities that the media's influence is realized--not in a vacuum, but through the
moment-to-moment interface between media and teenagers who come already armed with a sense of how the
world is. Connell (1983) underscores the dialectical nature of this production/reproduction process by pointing
out that "
I
t is not a relation of similarity between the structure today and the structure yesterday that is the point, but a
relation of practice between them, the way one was produced out of the other" (p. 149).
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2. The model factors in "lived through experience" (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991), a theoretical perspective
that accounts for developmental stage, the sociocultural influences of race, class, and gender, as well as many
other socializing factors, including religious background and beliefs, neighborhood influences, family life,
encounters with the legal system, friendships and peer culture, success or failure in school. Not to be confused
with experience in the simply historical sense (e.g., attended St. Mark's Grade School, repeated sixth grade,
lettered in basketball), Vygotsky's "lived through experience," or "lived experience" as it is labeled in the
model,(5) is a complex sociogenetic construct that sees the process of development as a constant bridging--
accomplished through activity and communication--between the known and the new in specific contexts
(Valsiner, 1991). The term is used to position adolescent media practice in what Rogoff (1990) terms the "social
sea" in which we all live.
Whether listening to music alone in the privacy of their rooms or slam-dancing at warehouse parties,
adolescents carry with them their particular life histories as well as the knowledge of their peer cultures
(Corsaro, 1992).(6) It is with this embodied knowledge that they build on and transform the shared sociocultural
knowledge available through the media.
3. The model incorporates identity formation, the central task of adolescent development, as a key component.
(See Larson, this issue, for
more comprehensive discussion of identity.) Teens' sense of who they are shapes their encounters with media,
and those encounters in turn shape their sense of themselves in the ongoing process of cultural production and
reproduction. Informed by Johnson's (1987) conceptualization of the production, circulation, and consumption of
cultural products, the model is represented as a circuit to illustrate the interrelatedness of adolescents' identities
(both the "me as I am" and the "me I am in the process of constructing") and three key aspects of adolescent
audience activity: Selection, Interaction, and Application. We argue that the relationship between these four
circuit components is best understood as a dynamic, dialectical process that occurs within the boundaries of
"lived experience." Lived Experience governs--holds the potential for amplifying or restraining-what is possible
when specific adolescents and particular media come in contact. But it is through everyday activities and
routines--in other words, practice--that the difference is played out.
Hall (1990) has written of the dialectical nature of this process: "Instead of thinking of identity as an already
accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we should think . . . of identity as
'production,' which is never complete, always in process" (p. 222). From this perspective, here are some
working definitions of the model's media components.
Model Components
Selection
Selection is the act of choosing among media-related alternatives (e.g., reserving Top Gun at the video store,
tuning in the Power Pig, a favorite teen radio station in one area where we worked, or purchasing Ebony at the
newsstand). Selection is influenced by motivations such as those described in the "selective exposure" and
"uses and gratifications" literature (Donohew and Tipton, 1973; Levy and Windahl, 1985; Rubin, 1994). The fit
between motivation and selection in turn affects attention, how attuned or focused the teenager is in relation to
the media selected.
Interaction
Interaction is the cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement with media that produces cultural meanings.
Frequently, these meanings evolve from teens' evaluation and interpretation of media content. Conceptualized
in terms of practice, interaction is what is actually happening at the moment teens interface with media.
Cognitive interaction includes framing (an activity that can also be a subcategory of application), processing,
and psychological involvement. Affective interaction includes simple arousal or "shutting off the self" (Larson,
this issue). Behavioral interaction includes dancing, channel surfing--sampling television programs at lightning
speed with the remote control--or flipping through the pages of a magazine in search of certain ads, articles, or
07 January 2015 Page 4 of 18 ProQuest
"how-to" tips.
These last few examples are indicative of the slippery slope we climbed in search of definitions. Typically
categorized as components of selection, which indeed they are when seen as discrete motivation or attention
variables, dancing, channel surfing, and flipping through a magazine are included here because they also play
an integral role in the moment-to-moment process of making meaning. In experimental situations it may be
possible to pull out or control for differing types of interaction, but in real time, the style of interaction (e.g.,
channel surfing) and the interaction itself (seeing and understanding a rapid succession of sounds, words, and
images) are so closely related that they must be studied as one.
Application
Application is the concrete ways in which adolescents use media--how they make it active--in their everyday
lives. Two types of application, appropriation and incorporation, are specified, along with several subcategories
in each. Appropriation is an active use of media that is frequently visible in room decorations, media-related
activities, or teens' own accounts of why specific media content is important to them. Our data contain
numerous examples of adolescents using media for mood enhancement, cultural and social integration, self-
expression, role modeling, and fantasy. As Lindloff and Grodin (1990) note, "all manner of innovations in social
action come about through media-derived improvisation...." (p. 14).
Incorporation, in contrast, is an associative use of media that often builds on existing attitudes, feelings, and
prior learning. The heading incorporates media effects traditionally categorized as framing (Gamson and
Modigliani, 1989; Graber, 1989; Iyengar, 1991), cultivation effects (Gerbner et al., 1994), and emotional
conditioning (Thorson, 1989). All of these effects are placed under the umbrella of incorporation because they
literally become part of the self, often in relatively automatic, not consciously intended, ways.
Arrows in the diagram indicate the flow of activities or practices to underscore the connections between circuit
components rather than causal relationships. The subcategories of practice (i.e., motivation and attention;
interpretation and evaluation; appropriation and incorporation) identified along the perimeter are not exhaustive.
They simply signal practices that stood out in our data. Other researchers may focus on other aspects of the
process, depending on their research interests, theoretical orientations, and goals.
In the following sections we further illustrate the media components of the model with examples drawn from our
room culture data.
SELECTION
Teens do make choices about which media and media content to attend to. This selection is sometimes quite
conscious and motivated by a need to learn something or to maintain a mood--all uses discussed in greater
depth by Arnett et al. and Larson (this issue). In our first study of 19 white girls and their use of sexual media
content, we discovered skilled media users who attended to media that spoke to their developmental stage and
sexual experience. The girls differed dramatically in their use of sexual media content (Brown et al., 1993). We
called one group of girls "Disinterested" because they simply were less interested and tended to ignore sexual
content in the media (see Ward, this issue). Even with prodding, these girls preferred not talking or thinking
about sex and relationships. The rooms of these girls were filled with stuffed animals and dolls and drawings by
them and friends; the media were not yet in great evidence.
In contrast, the girls we labeled "Intrigued" often had surrounded themselves with sexual media content; their
rooms were full of images of popular media stars and they frequently had access to a range of media, including
magazines, music, and television. A third group of girls also had access to a number of media channels in their
rooms, but they were most likely to have chosen images from less mainstream media. They also were the most
physically mature and sexually experienced of the girls. Drawing on the work of Carol Gilligan and her
colleagues who are teaching girls psychological resistance skills (Brown and Gilligan, 1992), we called these
girls "Resisters" because they most consistently offered critiques of sexual media content.
"Lived Through Experience" Factored In
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In subsequent studies, we again found that media selections were influenced by gender, and also frequently by
race. For many boys, an interest in sports guided choices. Not only did many of the boys report a preference for
sports programming and magazines, they also made heavy use of sports figures and memorabilia in decorating
their rooms. One summer school student wrote of her Hispanic interview partner,(7) a rising high school senior:
When I chatted with Joe earlier this evening, I got the feeling that he was taking me through a tour of a Sports
Illustrated office or a studio at the ESPN network.
Joe likes sports. A lot. All of the various media in his bedroom that are important seem to be a part of his
admiration for professional sports.
Arrayed on the walls of Joe's bedroom were a collage of magazine and poster cutouts of his favorite players
and teams, a portrait of baseball great Don Mattingly that "reminds him of his goals in life," and a Burger King
poster featuring one of the Harlem Globetrotters. Joe said he did not have a TV in his room, but that he did not
really need one because the only thing he watched was sports and he could do that with his father in the living
room. Joe also kept a pair of headphones hidden behind his bed so he could listen to baseball games when he
was supposed to be sleeping, "something his mother doesn't approve of."
It would be unfair, though, to stereotype an interest in sports' media as a "boys only" phenomenon. Tanya, an
African-American high school student from New York, said she watched sports on TV "most days" and
displayed just three posters in her room: Spud Webb, Dominique Wilkins, and Karl Malone, all National
Basketball Association stars. Still, she reported liking nonsports fare as well. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air was
her favorite sitcom, and she watched game shows like Family Feud more regularly than she watched sports.
Racial identification was also evident in Tanya's media choices. In addition to Basketball Digest, the stack of
magazines on her bedstand included Jet, a black news magazine, and Ebony, a black fashion magazine.
Interest in her ethnic heritage was also reflected in her t-shirt collection that included a few NBA teams but
mostly "Black Pride-type shirts." Some racial identification could be seen in her music preferences, too, which
included rhythm and blues, reggae, rap, soul and gospel.
Music Motivators
Although many of the adolescents had television sets in their rooms, most considered music systems and
telephones, not TV, essential to well-being. Sixteen-year-old Emily's comment was typical for girls: "I can't be in
here
her bedroom
without music. I always have music on." Boys, too, said they liked to listen to music. Willy, 17, called his stereo
his "most prized possession" and like Emily, admitted to having the radio on almost all the time he was in his
room (about 1 1/2 hours daily). Jack said he listened to music "every chance I get," including during Mr. Snow's
tenth grade biology class. He said he was "makin' about a 95" in that class despite the fact he would tune in his
portable radio (slipped into his pocket with the wire hidden underneath his sweatshirt) whenever things started
to get boring.
Motivation: Sometimes Conscious, Sometimes Not
Some teens were quite clear that they turned to specific media content to satisfy instrumental needs (Rubin,
1994). When probed about why he liked violent films like Terminator II and Boyz n the Hood, Jack said he
"might want to try some moves on somebody next time you get in a fight. You learn stuff that might help you
some time." Jenny, 16, like women several years her senior (Illouz, 1992; Radway, 1984), said she read
romance novels "all the time" because "I just like to know, to read about other people's lives and times. And
forget mine." A high school junior was quite matter of fact about why he had bought a Sports Illustrated swimsuit
calendar to hang up in his room: "To know the date and because of the girls."
At other times, media selection was habitual--e.g., "I turn on my tape player first thing in the morning to get my
blood flowing correctly" or "I always watch TV after doing my homework." Our data suggest that the difference
between instrumental and habitual motivators feeds directly into the quality or intensity of teens' interactions
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with media. But the relationship is not a quid pro quo. Even habitual media use can have an impact over time,
and a strongly motivated choice can fall flat. This was the case for Suzanne, 17, who said she had always relied
on her older brother's movie recommendations until she went to see Medicine Man. "It was one of the worst
movies I've ever seen," she exclaimed, puzzling over why her brother had loved it. "Maybe it was a male
movie," she concluded offhandedly. It would be interesting to know if the contrast between her expectations and
actual response to the film caused Suzanne to pay closer attention--potentially amplifying the film's impact on
her.
INTERACTION
Identifying with characters in TV shows, movies, or song lyrics; comparing, interpreting, and critiquing the
physical appearance, actions, and motives of media figures; reading themselves into songs (Willis, 1990) or
moving in and out of the life of a favorite romance novel heroine (Moffitt, 1993) are examples of what we
categorize as media "interaction." Larson (this issue) talks about teens reflecting on life in the personal space
they sometimes create through engagement with music. That engagement, we maintain, is a subcategory of
interaction. Drawing on Hall's (1986) articulation model, Moffitt (1993) makes a convincing case that the "media
experience, for some receivers, serves as an immediate reality... blurring the lines between the fantasy of the
text and the 'reality' of lived experiences" (p. 232). Suzanne provided an apt example of this type of interaction
when she described the kinds of books she liked to read:
I like to read stuff that really happens... that makes you feel like it's still going on. Like if I stop reading, it will
keep ... the story will keep going. Like Question of Survival. I could really identify with that.
Interpretation or sense making (Dervin, 1980) are other aspects of media interaction that are particularly
important for adolescents actively engaged in "identity work" (Snow and Anderson, 1987). Teens frequently told
us they liked characters or images that fit with who they were or wanted to be. For example, Danny, 15, one of
the boys we interviewed twice, said he liked the TV show Growing Pains because there was a boy (Ben) his
age in it, and "he's always into somethin'. He be doin' crazy stuff," thus suggesting both identification and
motivation. Even with favorite characters, however, adolescents frequently grapple with sometimes conflicting
and contradictory messages. They compare what they are seeing and hearing in the media with what they
already know or thought they knew, then apply their new understandings to their lives.
As Bandura's (1994) social learning model would predict, favorite actors and characters often are points of entry
for further analysis of associated beliefs, norms, and values. Such analytical and sometimes critical interaction
with media and media characters occurs within limits, however, imposed both by the ideas and frames of
reference brought by the teen and the relatively conventional world view offered by the media teens attend to
(Gitlin, 1991; Wolf, 1991).
Interpreting and Evaluating Media Content
Our initial study of early adolescent girls provided illustrative data on the "symbolic work" (Willis, 1990) girls
engaged in (Brown, et al., 1993). The girls worked hard at understanding and maintaining their own standards in
the face of apparently contradictory expectations. Some came to media use with clear "frames" (Graber, 1989)
or "worldviews" (Kosicki and McLeod, 1990) that helped guide their interpretations of content, making them
more sophisticated and consistent critics than others.
For example, many of the girls said they frequently used magazines for guidance about makeup and clothes.
But some also had begun to realize that the looks projected in the magazines rarely are achieved. Maggie, 12,
who, when asked if appearance is important to girls her age, replied, "Majorly]" also knew she could not look
like the people in commercials: "I think most advertising is (puts on voice), "If you use this mascara then you'll
look like this, oh boy]" Audrey, 14, similarly critiqued beauty aid commercials:
I think that they use these beautiful people to sell their products because they want fat old ladies sitting at home
with curlers in their hair watching the soaps to think that if they buy Loreal's (sic) 10 day formula they'll end up
looking that beautiful. I think that that's really stupid because for one, I know perfectly well that I don't look like
07 January 2015 Page 7 of 18 ProQuest
Sybil Shepard and Loreal's
sic
10 day formula's not going to change that.
But such critiques didn't necessarily mean that the underlying premise of such advertising was dismissed. A
couple of days later the same girl reported in her journal that she had spent the afternoon at the mall buying
"basically cosmetics]"
This same kind of identification, evaluation and critiquing was evident in the room interviews and alcohol
journals kept by college students. Nathan, 19, evidencing a clear sense of self, wrote that he found himself
feeling "really targeted" by a Heineken beer commercial:
The scene was some people in their early thirties relaxing on their porch. Even though I'm much younger, I felt I
related well in the sense that I would enjoy relaxing, conversing, and drinking on a nice, open porch. I found this
ad interesting because it didn't involve girls in bikinis, big parties, or any of the other typical "fantasy" aspects of
beer advertising.
Because the college students kept journals during basketball tournament season, they had ample opportunity to
see beer ads. Jason, 20, objected, concerned about the potential influence of advertising on behavior:
I realized that during the ACC tournament, every commercial timeout had at least one beer commercial on it. I
mean, it was ridiculous. I must have seen 50 beer commercials during one night of games. So I suspect that
alcohol intake will rise substantially this month across college campuses and with other lovers of the NCAA
tourney.
Bradley, 19, took an even more cynical view, writing, "So what if I drank a 40 oz.
beer
at 1:30 this afternoon after my exam. All the commercials during the NCAA tournament are telling me to do so
all day. And you know the psychological forces a TV can have over a person."
Just as we found with selection, racial understanding was another frame through which some teens interpreted
and understood media content. "I was more bothered by the unequal advertising and availability of alcohol to
African-Americans," a white college sophomore wrote in his journal, dispelling the temptation to categorize
ethnic frames as a same-race phenomenon. "It seems that the cheapest, most potent alcohol is targeted toward
them."
Class and gender also affected how media content were interpreted. A sophomore who belonged to a sorority,
said, "For my dad to drink a glass of scotch every night is very different from somebody who'll come home and
drink a six-pack of beer . .. . Scotch is a serious drink. I mean, it's not like a run around and get rowdy drink."
APPLICATION
Our analyses suggest that adolescents' bedrooms are important spaces where they can apply "media matter"
(Rosengren and Windahl, 1989) in their everyday lives. Frequently, the adolescent is an active agent who
consciously draws on the media to achieve specific purposes. We call this type of intentional, goal-oriented
application appropriation.
Appropriation
Some typical examples of appropriation include using media to do the following:
--Enhance a mood or cope with feelings: "When I need to get pumped up, like before a party, I listen to wild,
loud music." (white female, 16)
--Sort through cultural values and norms: "Sometimes I try to figure out what I would have done.... " (white
female, 13)
--Make a statement about identity: "I like it just cuz it's weird and not many people have stuff like that. I like to be
different. It's just me." (white female, 16)
--Emulate admired behavior: Asked why she had dyed her hair, Asta replied, "Because that's what you got to do
today, Mama." (black female, 13)
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--Fantacize about possible selves or situations: "I would love to meet David Lee Roth one day. He would be a
snob but I think it would be neat." (white female, 14)
Mood Enhancement
Both Arnett and Larson (this issue) have provided convincing evidence of teens' appropriation of media to
enhance a mood or cope with the confusing emotions that teenagers must deal with. Our data, too, held
numerous examples of this type of application. Suzanne, 17, told us when she had "real problems" she liked to
turn on her stereo and "just wallow in it. When I feel that way I just want them
her parents
to leave me alone." Jenny said she liked "to find songs that are like the same as whatever kind of mood I'm in."
Emily echoed a similar pattern:
When I'm sad I tend to listen to sad music, which doesn't exactly help in cheering me up. I listen to it much
louder when I'm happy.
Cultural and Social Integration
Movies and TV shows were often the takeoff point for reflecting on relationships and how to sort through the
challenges of everyday life. Chelsea, 15, said the television show Growing Pains, was one of her favorites
because
... it has a teenager in it, and there are typical problems that you would have every day. It kinda helps you look
at it and say, 'Oh yeah, that's a different way to solve that problem.'
Maggie, 12, said she liked to read the "Dear Jack and Jill" letters column in Teen magazine:
... because like some of 'em are my problems and they have the answers there. Or like what kinds of clothes
are gonna be in fashion this summer or stuff like that.
Several girls said they sought television shows, movies, and magazine articles that reassured them boys do
have feelings and girls can refuse boys' unwanted sexual advances. Two girls said the movie Stand by Me was
one of their favorites because "it brings out guys' feelings about how they feel about certain things.... Normally,
they don't show guys' feelings."
Collages made from words, phrases, and images gleaned from a variety of media were found in both boys' and
girls' rooms. Often, they served as visual links to the larger culture. Suzanne, 17, who described herself as a
"real junk person," said she had "picked out things that have meaning to me--things that I wanted to look at and
remember" to create her bulletin board collage. Sixteen-year-old Matthew, a classical music lover, had tacked
ticket stubs and playbills to his bulletin board to remind him of concerts he had attended.
Amy's room reflected the identity of a girl in developmental transition with movie posters of Top Gun, Gone with
the Wind, and a picture of movie star Tom Cruise torn from a magazine, displayed alongside a poster of cartoon
character Garfield the cat and posters of kittens, peacocks, and horses. Almost every room we visited, including
the boys', included a cluster of stuffed animals or some other link to the security of childhood. Matthew had
tucked away in a file cabinet copies of children's magazines he "never had the heart to throw away."
In a number of the girls' rooms the transfer of emotional ties to males was evidenced by the juxtaposition of
animal images, flowers, or pastoral scenes with pictures of idolized media males. Both Nola, 15, and Paulina,
13, who had had boyfriends and had "necked," had covered entire closet doors with pictures of male models
and media stars torn from fashion and fan magazines. The rooms of younger males reflected a similar transition
from childhood into the world of sexual relationships. Jack's room was filled with images of both black and white
women, most in provocative poses. But the images of young women were interspersed with his own drawings of
GI Joe done when he was 10 and "GI Joe crazy," and drawings of the movies Lady and the Tramp ("I just seen
that in a magazine and I drew it"), and Star Wars.
Media also were frequently used as standards for comparison with the larger consumer society. Teens looked
to the media for guidance on how to dress, style their hair, or select perfume and makeup. Alongside brand-
name labels from clothing he had purchased, Jack had posted a picture of Arsenio Hall because "he dresses."
07 January 2015 Page 9 of 18 ProQuest
Sometimes, media images were appropriated to make counterstatements, to resist mainstream values.
Suzanne had posted a magazine photo of a young woman who had cemented her hair into a 7-inch high
"mohawk" with the help of gel, hairspray, glue, spray starch, eggs, and cornstarch. Proud of the picture's shock
value, she nevertheless asked, "Why would anyone want to look like that?"
Alyssa, a college sophomore, delighted in a Calvin Klein ad featuring Marky Mark in his underwear.
It's kind of fun to have a poster of a dumb boy, 'cause guys get really offended when they come in here. They're
like (lowers voice to imitate), "Aw, man, he's just good looking. He's an idiot. I don't know why you have that."
Media applications like these reinforce identification with the youth culture of which teenagers are members
while at the same time reproducing the adult culture that makes money from their tastes and spending power,
estimated at $89 billion in 1994 and growing (Zinn, 1994).
Expression of Self
Often, the bedroom was used to showcase possessions that reflected self-concept. Media and other artifacts
remind teens of who they are, while at the same time telegraphing to parents and friends the selves they are
constructing (Wallendorf and Arnould, 1988). Emily displayed a book of photographs, The Family of Woman
(Mason, 1983), on her bookcase "so that everyone can see what a cultured person I am and what a neat mom I
have who gives me books like that." Jenny, 16, had covered an entire door with cutouts of perfume bottles
because "I think you can express yourself through, like fragrances and music." Nathan, a college sophomore
when we interviewed him, was disappointed that no one paid any attention to the book collection he brought
with him to college his freshman year.
Like no one ever came in here and said like "Wow, neat]" So, this year, I decided that I couldn't possibly reread
them or whatever, so it really wasn't much point in bringing them.
Emulation/Modeling
A majority of the teens we interviewed had at least one image of a movie star, fashion model, musician, or
famous athlete on the walls of their rooms. Occasionally, older adolescents included political figures. Still,
images such as the posters of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X that were in the college dorm rooms of both an
African-American girl and a white boy were relatively rare even among the older teens. Males and females
typically included images of both sexes on their walls, and although both whites and blacks were more likely to
include images of their own race, images of other races were displayed in a number of rooms. For example,
Jack, 15, an African-American, had posters of both Joe Namath, a white football star, and Michael Jordan, a
black basketball player on his bedroom walls. Sigourney Weaver, the bald commando of Alien III fame, shared
space with Led Zeppelin and basketball players from both the University of Tennessee and Duke University on
the back of George's (17, Native-American) door.
Explanations for why an image was selected frequently centered around either emulation or fantasy, and
sometimes both. Jenny, a 16-year-old white girl, preferred Johnny Dep from the movie Cry Baby because "he's
tough, but gentle." A Native-American high school girl's room was decorated with 11 Marilyn Monroe posters
because of Monroe's "beauty and accomplishments." Nathan had posted a Martin Luther King cutout because
he'd "like to be a leader like that." Joe relied on a collage of sports heroes and related magazine clippings to
provide "athletic inspiration." The stern looks on the athletes' faces reflected the tough, determined attitude he
liked to imitate when playing baseball or basketball, he explained.
Fantasy
Many teens' bedrooms offered a safe haven in which fantasies--not always media related--could be spun out.
For instance, Danny, a working-class rural youth, had tacked up a velour wall hanging featuring an outdoor
scene of snow-capped mountains and a moose grazing at the edge of a lake. He said he had never been to the
mountains (even though they are only an hour or two away from where he lives) but would love to. His sister,
Asta, meanwhile, had selected a plastic replica of a Victorian house to hang in her room because it resembled
"the kind of house I wanna live in some day." Expensive model cars, pictures of beaches, ski resorts, and
07 January 2015 Page 10 of 18 ProQuest
romanticized cities like Paris, London, and Rome were also popular.
In our first study we found that the least sexually experienced girls tended to choose less "dangerous" male
media stars who spoke more to the possibility of love than sex. Audrey, 14, wrote,
I also thought River Phoenix (Chris Chambers) was gorgeous] He was so sweet and sensitive too, with his best
friend, Gordie. Gordie reminds me of what my dad used to be like when he was a little boy.
In contrast, a more sexually experienced girl included a picture of John F. Kennedy, Jr., in her journal and
wrote, "I'm in love with him. He's so sexy and good-looking." Suzanne, a high school junior when interviewed,
had cut out a Masimo ad (for eyeglasses) featuring a bare-chested man because she
thought the guy was cute ... maybe because I don't know him. That makes him more mysterious, and you don't
need to worry about whether he's a jerk.
Incorporation
Incorporation, the other subcategory of media application, is harder to discern because it is less visible, more
internal. Difficult to tease out of self-report data and not readily apparent in room decorations, incorporation is
the embodiment of the sense making or "symbolic work" that Dervin (1980) and Willis (1990) discuss.
Incorporation is a "way of taking" meaning (Heath, 1982) from the media, often unconsciously, and making it
part of the self.
Framing
One of our best examples of incorporation is the way Mary, 15, used media to reinforce the strong moral
convictions she held. The most religious girl we interviewed, Mary had had relatively little experience in sexual
relationships. Her sense of right and wrong apparently had kept her from stepping in where most of her cohorts
already had been. Mary described portrayals of women in advertising as "degrading" and in response to news
reports that U.S. Marines had exchanged political secrets for sex with Soviet women, wrote,
Having sex is something you do when you misuse the systems God gave you. When you make love you
completely give yourself to your partner, but in making love you must be with the person you should live with for
the rest of your life.
By framing the news story this way, Mary was able to reinforce her own moral standards.
Girls who brought a feminist frame to such media content critiqued similar material but from a different point of
view and we deduce from their room decorations with opposite effect. For Melissa, 13, and a few of the other
girls, one of the main problems with sexual content in the media was that it did not allow room for female sexual
desire or initiative. An advertisement for a diamond ring that featured a woman caressing a man as she sits on
his lap in a rocking chair was the catalyst for this journal entry:
For once they've got the positions turned around to show how things really are. The woman can be on top, too.
A woman has as many needs as a man believe it or not advertisers. It doesn't always take a diamond either to
"get in the mood."
Cultivation
Despite such strong feminist critiques, most of the girls we have interviewed have held an abiding faith in finding
true love, a cultural model (Holland and Eisenhart, 1990) they act on in their own lives. Girls at all stages of
sexual development and experience looked for and found reinforcement for a romantic myth in the media. Lang,
14, laid out the romantic fantasy script in eight pages in her journal with images cut from teen girl magazines.
The series began with an ad suggesting that girls have to compete with each other for men, included ads
depicting beautiful men and women in passionate embraces, and ended with the image of a happy bride and
groom getting into a convertible under the headline, "We've only just begun.... " In keeping with cultivation
theory (Gerbner et al., 1994), the romantic myth over time begins to seem real. (See Ward, this issue, for more
on sexual scripts.)
Emotional Conditioning
True to her words ("I can't be in here
07 January 2015 Page 11 of 18 ProQuest
her bedroom
without music"), Emily had the radio on during her room interview. At one point, she interrupted herself
midsentence, exclaiming, "That's David's and my song] I can almost smell his cologne when it comes on."
Identified by Thorson (1989) as a conditioned response stored in procedural memory, this type of media
association may help to explain the cumulative effects of media exposure over a lifetime. Although space
precludes a full discussion of Thorson's perspective, her insight that consumer attitudes and behavior may be
affected through an "inattentive mode of processing" (p. 398) that hinges on involvement, interest, or motivation
moves our thinking about adolescents' application of media messages in a useful direction. If, as her
"Processing Model of Viewer Response to Commercials" suggests, consumers often act using memory content
of which they are unaware, the implications for media effects research are important.
Asta's (14, African-American) use of music to connect with her father and her peer culture is another case in
point. "I likes to dance," she said, explaining that almost every day she would go out on the porch and dance--
"for exercise and cuz I like it." Asked if anyone ever danced with her, she replied, "My daddy do. We
Asta and her brothers and sister
teach him new steps." In light of Thorson's model, we interpret Asta's afternoon dancing routine as a practice
that allowed her to experience the physicality and sexual innuendo often associated with dance-one of women's
socially sanctioned outlets for sexual expression (McRobbie, 1984)--in the security of her own home on an
almost daily basis.
Some weeks after the interview, when we drove Asta and her older sister to the university for a campus tour
and trip to the bookstore (our way of giving something back in addition to the $10 she got as a thank you for
doing the interview), Asta scanned the radio dial for the local rap station the minute she got in the car. As she
moved in her seat to the music and rapped out the words in rhythm with the commercial artists on the air, it was
clear that rap was second nature to her--as much a part of who she was as her "black talk" (Smitherman, 1994).
CONCLUSION
This final example returns us to the model. Like all models, the Adolescents' Media Practice Model is a
"consciously simplified description in graphic form of a piece of reality" (McQuail and Windahl, 1993, p. 2). That
piece of reality is what we have learned from our room culture research with adolescents. To summarize:
1. Adolescents are active in much of their use of the media. They choose which media they will attend to, and
they choose favorite characters and models to emulate and lust after (Selection). They debate and consider the
meaning and significance of portrayals, images, and symbols (Interaction). And they apply those meanings in
their everyday lives, sometimes actively, but at other times unconsciously (Application).
2. Basic sociocultural factors such as gender and race as well as the multivariate conditions of their own lives
influence what is attended to and how media content is interpreted and applied by teens (Lived Experience).
3. Adolescents' sense of who they are and who they may someday want to become plays a central role in their
use of media--affecting what media are attended to, how intensely and to what effect--while at the same time
feeding forward and changing the sense of self in the process (Identity).
Taking all of these factors into consideration, we argue that traditional categories of media activity are
components of a continuous, dialectical process of cultural and social production and reproduction. The impact
of this process is at once constrained and amplified by what is available in the media and by what adolescents
bring to the media.
By foregrounding identity and taking a practice perspective, the model helps explain why media effects,
traditionally perceived as changes in attitudes, opinions, or behavior, have been so elusive. The media's
influence on adolescents' sense of themselves is complex and realized through everyday activities and routines,
making effects extremely difficult to measure--not because the media are weak and the audience strong, but
rather because they are intricately woven into the fabric of daily life. This view underscores the need for more
07 January 2015 Page 12 of 18 ProQuest
longitudinal, qualitative studies that explore the relationship between adolescents' everyday media practices
and identity.
Too little is known about the effects of repeated exposure to ever larger doses of media sex and violence, often
unaccompanied by the types of negative outcomes that might deter emulation. What happens, for example, to
children who start repeating gangsta rap lyrics from the time they are 2 or 3? What is the effect of middle school
students assiduously writing down the lyrics of songs like "Baby's Got Back" or dialing up 1-800-585-SEXX and
listening to "Hi, baby, I'm wet, wild and willing to do anything and everything to please you for only $3.99 a
minute. I want to make you scream," followed by the domestic and international pay phone numbers to call.
We may not be able to design experimental studies capable of explaining the cumulative effects of such
practices, but we know they exist and we know that they feed into the process of identity construction. Our data
demonstrate that as teens participate more in domains of the adult world, they tend to seek and pay attention to
relevant information from the media. And we have seen that even teens who come to the media with other
points of view may over time be influenced by dominant media messages (Gerbner et al., 1994; Greenberg, et
al., 1993; McRobbie, 1982).
More longitudinal work with teenagers will be necessary to substantiate the extent to which teens resist or at
least modify the life scripts presented by the media. Jo and Berkowitz's (1994) recent update on "priming"
suggests that the cumulative effect of media may be to set into operation "the related network of ideas and
motor programs
acquired over time..." (p. 55) through the media. This insight caused us to see Asta's dancing and preference
for rap in a new light. More importantly, it reinforces our conviction that as researchers concerned with the
challenges of adolescence we should work to ensure that the media contain a range of messages and cultural
models so that teens have healthy alternatives from which to choose.
Our work with teens in their most intimate space has shown us the value of qualitative work. Bedrooms
demonstrate that most teens draw heavily from the media, and bedrooms can say volumes about who teens
are. As one teen summed it up: "I guess it's really my room in general that's just really me."
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This analysis is based on an ongoing collaborative research project that, in addition to the authors, has included
Pam Deiter, Carol Reese Dykers, Lia Nikopoulou, Ashley Singleton, Kim Walsh-Childers and Anne Barton
White. Thanks to each of them for excellent work and stimulating partnership. Thanks, too, to editors Jeff Arnett
and Reed Larson for their helpful comments as we worked to revise this paper. An earlier draft was presented
at the Society for Research on Adolescence conference in San Diego, California, in February 1994.
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An earlier draft was presented at the Society for Research on Adolescence conference in San Diego, California,
February 1994.
3 We used a snowball sampling technique, with each of three researchers recruiting one teenage acquaintance
who, in turn, recruited several of her friends.
4 These teens were recruited at the local swimming pool.
5 The shortened version is used for ease of comprehension by readers unfamiliar with the work of Vygotsky and
also because of its link to feminist standpoint theorists who emphasize the importance of recognizing
differences in the material conditions of women's lives See Hartsock, 1983; Riger, 1992; Smith, 1987; Haraway,
1988, for more on standpoint theory.
6 Although his work had been primarily with young children, Corsaro's insights (1992) about the role of peer
cultures in the cultural production/reproduction process can be applied readily to adolescence.
7 These were two of the 20 high school students who participated in paired room culture interviews in July
1992. The students interviewed one another and wrote accounts describing what they had learned.
Subject: Teenagers; Sociology; Mass media; Child psychology; Bedrooms;
Publication title: Journal of Youth and Adolescence
Volume: 24
Issue: 5
Pages: 551
Publication year: 1995
Publication date: Oct 1995
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Place of publication: New York
Country of publication: Netherlands
Publication subject: Children And Youth - About, Psychology
ISSN: 00472891
CODEN: JYADA6
Source type: Scholarly Journals
Language of publication: English
Document type: Feature
Accession number: 02632044
ProQuest document ID: 204642656
07 January 2015 Page 16 of 18 ProQuest
