How We Use the Media

This volume considers strategies, modalities, and styles of media use and reception. Dynamic changes in media technology and infrastructure have spurred important changes in media use. Looking at these developments within the common conceptual framework of reception strategies, modes and styles of media use and reception, this volume is highly relevant against the background of the changing media environment. When it comes to media use and reception, communication research has mainly dealt with two much-cited questions: What do the media do with the people? What do the people do with the media? In comparison, the discipline has devoted less attention to how the media are used, the modalities, patterns or configurations of the actual practices of media use. The volume features original contributions, both empirical and theoretical, on the key concepts and approaches in the field, covering old and new media and different types of media content. Offering a comprehensive overviewof existing research as well as promoting original findings and insights, the volume will be of interest to communication researchers, students, and scholars.

1. Praxeology of media use.- 2. Strategies of Media Use: Linking Television Use and Life, Social Structure and Practice.- 3. Modes of multi-screening. A qualitative approach to practices of combining various screens.- 4. The strategy of mystification in art-house movies.- 5. Interdisciplinary Research On modes of Listening to Music and Sound.- 6. Socially Shared Television Viewing. Preconditions, Processes, and Effects of Co-Viewing and Social TV.- 7. The Nano Level of Media Use: Situational Influences on (Mobile) Media Use.- 8. The methodological intricacies of measuring strategies, modes and styles.- 9. Postface: Sex, drugs and Innerlichkeit.