ABSTRACT
If we were looking for an example of media consumption it would be hard to find one more compelling than television. Of course some might say, ‘Why use television as an example of media consumption? Surely it is an old technology?’ One reason to use it is that its consumption is still extremely high (Miller 2010). Although there is a great deal of talk about how social media is replacing TV, Toby Miller has no doubt that ‘television is becoming more popular, not less’ (19). Justin Lewis argues that people are actually watching more television than ten years ago (2013: 66). Miller gives the example of advertising expenditure in the 2008 US Presidential Election: ‘US$2.2 billion was spent on TV and less than half a billion on radio, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet combined’ (15). Such expenditure was undoubtedly related to informed perceptions of patterns of media consumption.
