The Portrayal of Family On Television

ASSIGNMENT 4: The Portrayal of Family On Television
Images of family surround us every day. Advertisements display a family of four eating at McDonald’s, news programs depict gay couples lining up to get married in San Francisco, magazine covers happily announce a celebrity’s fourth wedding, and signs at every college post the dates for “Parents’ Weekend.” Images of family are constantly changing, and our notion of family changes along with it. “Family” can be organized in many different ways—for example, “traditional” two-parent families, stay-at-home moms, the increasing visibility of gay families, the changing faces of adopted children, and the growing number of grandparents raising their grandchildren. Your job with this assignment is to examine the representations of family on TV from a sociological point of view.
Step 1
Pick two major television networks or shows streaming and a 1- or 2-hour time slot to view this network/shows for several days. This can also be done in a video game. Although prime time is ideal (8 p.m.–11 p.m.), depending on the networks you pick, alternative times or days should be considered.
Step 2
Develop a hypothesis about the depiction of families. A hypothesis is essentially just a the¬ory, or logical explanation, that you can actually test—in this case, a theory about what you think might be occurring on these shows. An easy way to do this might be just to compare one network with the other or to compare one time frame with another. For example, maybe you think one network may depict more diversity than the other, or perhaps you think shows that air earlier in the day might include more traditional representations of family than shows that air later in the evening.
Step 3
Create a simple tally sheet that allows you to collect some information about the shows that are related to your hypothesis. Although each television show you examine will have its own tally sheet, every tally sheet should be exactly the same. (Essentially, you are con¬ducting a quantitative content analysis.) If you were collecting information about diversity and were interested in racial diversity, you would create a column for every possible race that might be depicted and then just count the race of each family you see. Be sure to include every possible category—for example “biracial” or “multiracial” for families that consist of several races or “don’t know” for those incidences when you just can’t deter¬mine race.
Step 4
Collect your data in a way that makes the most sense for your hypothesis. For example, if you are comparing networks, you may want to pick one of the networks for the first week and watch it during the days and time slot you are examining. Then, during the second week, watch the second network during the same days and time slot. Overall, try to be logical and consistent.
Step 5
Add up your columns and create some basic frequencies. For example, if 20 total families were represented in the time you collected your data and only 2 of them were African American on the first network but 10 families were African American on the second, it would be safe to conclude that the second network has more (50%) representations of African American families than does the first network (10%).
Step 6
Speculate about what these representations teach us about families in the United States. Do they provide an accurate depiction of diversity? Do they fail to accurately represent certain groups of people? Why do you think this might be?
Step 7
Consider the limitations to your research. What do you think might have happened if you had picked different networks or a different time slot? What if you collected data for months instead of just days, would you expect the same results? Instead of col¬lecting data on how many families were depicted, what would you expect to find if you instead focused on how the families were represented? Every research endeavor has its limitations, so be sure to consider what you could do better if you were to continue this assignment!