Final answer:
Enculturation is the informal learning process that helps individuals absorb culture from family, friends, and media, distinguishing from formal education and closely linked to socialization.
Step-by-step explanation:
The informal learning process that helps individuals learn culture from family, friends, and the media is known as enculturation. Enculturation is the process where individuals learn their group's culture through experience, observation, and instruction. The values, beliefs, and norms of a culture are transmitted from one generation to the next, not only through explicit teachings but also through everyday interactions. It is different from formal education systems as it involves learning that occurs in everyday life, through practices, imitation, and shared activities within families and communities. Socialization is closely related to this concept and it represents the broader process through which people learn to function successfully in their social worlds, adopting the beliefs, values, and norms of their society. Other options like hegemony, structural functionalism, and the interpretivist approach are also sociological concepts, but they refer to different aspects of analyzing societies and do not specifically focus on the process through which cultural learning occurs in an informal setting.