The girls have grown up with the various discourses of television and have quite naturally learned to regard them as a normal and integral part of life. Along with the telephone, the radio, tape and CD player, and, to fluctuating degrees, the computer, television is both a device and a medium of communication that the girls have been exposed to and encouraged to use and interact with since birth. The girls illustrate a media literacy that is image-based. They are accustomed to the languages of several media at once. It is a literacy that is both similar to and distinct from reading, writing and other basic communicative modes and practices.
Television is representation, but what it represents are other forms of communication.
The physical presence of the television set itself is an issue central to the familiarity of television in daily life. A televisual literacy has developed largely due to the fact of television's omnipresence. Television is constantly available at home, at school, in airports, shopping stores and malls, hospitals, doctors' offices and most any place that people spend time. The place or the space where television is viewed is significant in a consideration of familiarity and literacy issues. The primary space in which viewers watch television is not always their place of residence.