Children, youth and media

Jeanne Prinsloo

Research into children’s TV fiction

Research into representaions of children and youth in advertising in popular magazines

Representations of young people in the print news media

Childhood as a construction

What is represented as appropriate is dependent on the space and time

Chlidhood as a time of innocence

Childhood as not adult

Childhood as period of becoming

• The media introduce children to worlds outside their immediate reality.

• They expand, interpret, highlight, judge, legitimize or exclude social phenomena that the viewer encounters in reality and in the other media. …

• [They] constantly reinforce certain ideological, mythical, and factual patterns of thought and so function to define the world and to legitimize the existing social order (Lemish 2007:101).

Why fiction?

Through processes of identification (Lemish 2007), children can take on the roles of the protagonists or other characters, and along the way learn lessons about what is constituted as heroic, as appropriate, as socially effective.

TV offers a peekhole to roles beyond their everyday reach, particularly to those highly prioritised and stereotyped in dramatic genres.

hours TV genres

64 fiction

124 game shows, documentaries, mixed format shows, trailers, etc

12 ads

198 Total recorded

Sex of characters: SA and international

sex number %

female 285 28%

male 674 67%

indeterminate 49 5%

sex %

female 30.9

male 65.1%

indeterminate 4.1%

What roles do the characters play?

Character roles Female: number & (% of female)

Male : number & (% of female)

Hero 78 195

Villain 25 114

Hero’s helper 93 187

Villain’s helper 6 30

Member of family 20 19

‘Princess’ 23 26

Infantilising females

Characteristic Categories Female Male

Age Baby 0 (0 %) 4 (1 %)

Child 89 (35 %) 148 (25 %)

Youth 100 (39 %) 207 (36 %)

Adult 57 (22 %) 196 (34 %)

Body weight Very thin 4 (2 %) ?? 12 (2 %)

Normal 255 (99 %) 491 (82 %)

Overweight 0 (0 %) 42 (7 %)

Hugely muscular 0 (%) 57 (10 %)

Race not gender

Characteristic Categories Female % Male %

Skin colour Asian 11 3

Black 12 7

White 70 86

Heroes and hypermasculinity

• males overwhelmingly in the majority

• more likely to be leaders of groups of helpers, or lone heroes, or villains

• act in public spaces

• enormously strong and athletic heroes

• physical strength frequently extended by cars, guns and machinery

Emphasised feminities

• Less frequent and so less visible (1 to 3)• Younger• Slighter• More often helpers than men proportionately• Not helpers to villains• Need rescuing more • More likely to use wit than technology to resolve

problems

Conclusion

Children’s TV fiction not a space of benign innocence

Precisely about violence and ways of becoming sexualised

Such hegemonic discourses are rehearsed constantly and form lessons that child viewers are likely to internalise.

This is their curriculum design.

Advertising in popular mags

Advertising is a genre that largely proposes a particular lifestyle of consumption

Gendered dimension• Male female proportion• Age difference• Gendered activities of children• Gendered activities of parents

Very blandNo teens

Advertising in popular mags

46 girls (30%), 56 boys (37%) (32%) whose sex is indeterminate

Advertising in popular mags

• boys are more populous than girls; • boys older and engage in a greater range of activities

and are depicted as more physical and adventurous • girls in those more intimate domestic spaces of

bathroom and bedroom• less frequently participate in the public domain. • mothers not father• mothers counselling and consoling them, making their

lives pleasant and happy• puzzle: the teenagers seemed to have left home

Young people in print news

Youth as in need of rescue

Youth as dangerous

Youth beyond rescue

Where were the youth as becoming?

youth as innocent?

Children making media

Why?

Critical multi-literacies paradigm

Young people as skilled producers and users of media

Need knowledge of the genre and need to be nurtured as critical thinkers?

What works against such critical media production and reception?

Masterman on practical media production

“All communication forms are not ‘innocent’, and transparent carriers of meaning. They are impregnated with values and actively shape the messages they communicate. Secondly practical [media production] work is not an end in itself but a necessary means to developing an autonomous critical understanding of the media”

‘Children are given a voice’

Where does that voice come from?

‘We must value our culture’

‘School uniforms are good’

‘We need to have media about schoolgirl pregnancies’ (13 yr old boy)

Need to factor in

The media world that has been naturalised

The kinds of literacies they have lead them to make particular judgements and to write about particular things

The notion of an authentic voice that is automatically of interest

Risks of celebratory approach:

Liberal approach that focuses on individual ‘growth’ and self development

Reproducing naturalised practices in relation to class, gender, culture, etc.

Lack of contextualising knowledge and lack of emphasis on research

Regurgitate agenda of concerned adults