1. Escapism According to Watson (2008) we often use the media to ‘escape from routines’ or to escape our problems/stresses. Some people may use the media as a way of making up for the lack of something in their own personal lives.

2. Personal Relationships According to Watson, we tend to know more about the characters from soaps than we know about our own neighbours. The mass media can be used to compensate for the lack of community spirit in our lives

3. Personal Identity We may use the media to help us cope with parts of our identity which are unsure- for e.g. a teenage boy who suspects he is gay may turn to programmes such as Hollyoaks to seek help in making decisions.

4. Surveillance People may use the media to obtain information about the social world. The recent increase in online blogging and websites where people can add their own knowledge such as ‘ Wikepedia’ is a good example of this.

1.Escapism The audience become involved in the world of Eastenders, forget about your own problems and focus on the characters’. 3. PERSONAL IDENITY There are many problems that the characters on Eastenders face, therefore people will seek to watch the show to find answers to their problems and see how the characters deal with it, these problems could include, homosexuality, teenage pregnancy, drug addictions, mental health etc. There is also a help hotline showed at the end of the show where issues are portrayed by the characters to help ordinary people deal with the problems. 2. PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS The audience know more about the characters of Eastenders than they do about their neighbours, they know all of their problems and feel involved with the situations they are put in. 4. SURVEILLANCE The audience watch Eastenders to find out answers to their questions. The story line could be a question in itself to which the audience have a need to find out what happens next. They could also have problems about surrounding issues that they are interested in such as mental health for example.

1.Escapism The audience would watch Big Brother to make them distracted form their daily stresses and problems. For the length of time the show is on, they would feel as it they are a housemate and would have forgotten about their problems. 3. PERSONAL IDENITY If there are people in the house that are similar to your own, the audience would watch them to see how these people are coping. For example if there is a homosexual person in the house. On the other hand, the audience may want to be where the contestants are, they watch how they act and would try and be like them so they can get on the show next series. 2. PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS As the housemates are under 24/7 surveillance, the audience gets to know everything about them and follows the housemates as they reveal more and more to the audience each evening on the show. They would know more about these people’s lives and personalities that they would their neighbours. 4. SURVEILLANCE The surveillance camera’s are watching the contestants 24/7 and there is a show to watch them live all day. Therefore the audience will be able to watch and gain information from the contestants whenever they want and watch it to find out what will happen next under the stresses of the house.

1.Escapism The audience on Facebook will go on their to escape from their problems and read about other people’s. They want to be away from the problems that surround them and by going on Facebook they can immerse themselves in other people’s problems and then feel better about themselves. There are also games and you can look through other people’s photo’s which would take the audiences mind off their stresses. 3. PERSONAL IDENITY If a person is dealing with a problem, they can use Facebook as a means of finding others with the same issue. This way, they can communicate and get advice, helping them through their issues. 2. PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS A specific person would have ‘on average 245 Facebook friends’ therefore Facebook is a way for people to connect and find out about each other. People are more likely to chat on Facebook than face to face with certain people and everyone posts things about their lives including photo’s, status’, video’s, pages they like etc. Therefore a random person can find out pretty much everything about a person they haven’t even met. 4. SURVEILLANCE People use Facebook to share their own knowledge, they can write status’ which people can comment on, share news stories, post photo’s. It is a new way for news getting around and the audience would go onto Facebook find out specific information rather than asking people in person or watching the news for example.