This dissertation analyzes parent-child discourse about media technology in dual-earner family homes in Los Angeles. It aims to provide a comprehensive account of media use in the home and to investigate through videorecorded family interactions the social and discursive meanings of the home media environment and its impact on everyday family life. Chapter 1 situates the research within the scholarly literature on family media use and parenting strategies, and Chapter 2 presents the corpus and the ethnographically-informed discourse analytic methods utilized to conduct the analyses.

Chapter 3 examines the media practices of the thirty heterosexual families participating in the study, using the coding of videorecordings. It quantifies the amount of time they engage in media use as well as the proportions of time different family members spend with different media.

Chapter 4 analyzes interviews with parents to provide insights on their ideologies of media. This chapter reveals that parents frequently portray themselves as struggling to be morally upright and virtuous parents who try to keep their children away from media engagement. This chapter looks at multiple strategies that parents use to portray themselves as “doing the right thing”, adhering to an ideal moral image of parenthood.

Chapter 5 examines the discourse of negotiation surrounding children's media time use. It explores how children are socialized into thinking about prioritizing activities, when one of them involves media. This chapter examines how availability or unavailability of time with media is morally constructed in face-to-face interactions, and what roles participants play in those constructions, paying special attention to processes of negotiation, authority, and power through directive trajectories and response sequences.

Chapter 6 attempts to dispel some of the negativity attributed to media. It proposes that, despite parents' negative attitudes, media can enhance family relationships and prove to be positive resources in the home, fostering bonding and feelings of collaboration. This chapter investigates the range of enhancing possibilities that media can afford in family interactions.

Chapter 7 summarizes the findings and presents broader contributions of this study to the areas of media studies, family communication, and research on language and social interaction.