Children in the avant-garde of media development

1
Changing Media

• Children in the avant-garde of media development
• Discussion Four dimensions
• Technologies
• Institutions
• Texts
• Audiences
• Power of media
• Interaction Relationships between them (four
  above)

2
Technologies

• Technologies do not produce social change
• Recent changes in media technology
• Proliferation
• Broader range of media means of delivery
• Convergence
• Commercially driven blurred distinctions
  between linear broadcast interactive narrowcast
• Access
• Reduced access distribution cost
• Boundary between production consumption
  breaking down

3
Implications

• Children parents as significant markets
• Growing polarization rich poor
• But still very few are exploiting the creative
  potential of digital media
• National centralized control undermined
• From public to private
• Internet Anyone publishing anything
• Production consumption boundaries blurred

4
Institutions

• Three institutional economic changes
• Privatization
• Free market, monopolization, commercialized
• Integration
• Vertical Horizontal
• fragmentation
• Production casual labor, outsourcing,
  independent
• Consumption specialized, fragmented audiences
• Media production amateur professional

5
Texts

• Changing characteristics of text
• The very status of texts is changing.
• Distinctions between video, games, movie
  becoming irrelevant Spin-offs of each other
• Intertextuality
• Interactivity
• Integrated phenomena Text and related
  commodities packaged marketed

6
Audiences

• Empowered audience vs. Commercially exploited
  Empowered vs. Surveillance
• Greater choice for consumers
• Repeated vs. new
• Greater activity
• Engaged committed vs. Casual distracted
• Childrens rights kids-only (Nickelodeon)
• Not a zero-sum game either Powerful or Powerless

7
Back to the Boundaries

• Two forces at play in the changes
• Centrifugal(??) fragmentation, differentiation
• Centripetal(??) centralized control
• Relations between adults and children
• Boundaries blurring adult content for young
  audiences
• Youth becoming an elastic category becoming a
  lifestyle choice trans-generation