engleski

“I Think I Couldn’t Live Without Television”: Older Persons’ Experiences and Meanings of Watching Television in an Institutional Context

Watching TV is one of the most popular leisure activities all over the world (Fedorak 2009). Numerous studies have refuted the widespread belief about the irrelevance of television (Bignell 2008) and its triviality as a research topic in the academia. Consumption of television content is a multi-dimensional, individual as well as social practice with far- reaching consequences and multiple meanings for its audiences in the domain of everyday life. This hypothesis has been confirmed by research focusing on the importance and meanings of television in the everyday lives of older persons. Namely, a series of studies have shown that watching TV is “an important leisure activity” for many older persons (Vander Goot, Beentjes & Van Selm 2012). The paper is based on an analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with older people – residents of the Home for Older Persons Maksimir in Zagreb. It has shown that watching television is an everyday (regular, habitual, taken-for-granted) activity (Felski 1999, Bennett 2002) with different meanings for participants. The importance of television and watching TV programs tends to change over time, and increased with most research participants when they moved into the Home. There are different motives, consumption forms, and uses of TV programs, as well as differences in the preferences of specific TV content and genres. Watching television takes place in a specific physical and social environment, whereby the experience of watching and the patterns of consumption of TV programs differ in particular among the participants who live in single vs. double rooms.

ageing ; television ; qualitative methodology

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