ABSTRACT
The children were asked to draw a picture portraying Sunday afternoon at home. The focal point in Anna's picture was the dominant father, sitting next to mother on the sofa with the three children in front of him, pressed up against his knees. The room in the picture exuded an atmosphere of security, warmth and intimacy. The situations in which the media are used also have a high emotional value. The media provide remedies for loneliness, they are used to create “good” feelings or to define human relationships. The attempt to develop an approach appropriate both to the methodological complexity of the problem and to the new conditions brought about by the advances in communication technology was made in the context of two research projects carried out between 1981 and 1986 at the University of Tubingen's Ludwig Uhland Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies, under Klaus Jensen's and my direction.
