Academic Research on Child Audience

1
Changing Paradigms

• Academic Research on Child Audience
• Childrens relationship with media (electronic
  media)
• Pursuit of scientific truth? Or determined by
  dominant discourses in public arena
• Politicians
• Journalists Popular press vs. Quality press
• Still two forms of sentimentality
• Vulnerable children need adult protection
• Active, media-wise audience deals with technology

2
Ongoing Action and Reaction

• Pendulum between powerful media and powerful
  audience
• Recently toward the latter but effects research
  has been dominant tradition (behaviorism)
• Increasingly studied Social factors and
  influences in childrens lives

3
Active Audience

• Research moving from behaviorism to
  constructivism Stimulus response to How
  children interpret what they encounter
• Micro, rather than Macro aspects
• Specific forms of mental processing, rather than
  media role in forming attitudes
• Attention, understanding narratives, interpret TV
  features

4
Active Audience

• Piagetian approach ages and stages
• Children come to know Realism vs. Illusion of
  realism
• Developmental psychology criticized
• Oversimplifying social contexts
• Individualistic
• The map of human mind toward matruity

5
Social Audience

• From psychological emphasis to sociological
  analysis From effects toward meanings and uses
• Social semiotic approach Social and discursive
  process of meaning construction
• Eg., Children define and construct social
  identities through talk about television.
• Social negotiation

6
Reality Revisited

• Eg.,Condemning programs as unrealistic
• Girls against action-adventure cartoons (boys
  childish taste)
• Boy against muscle-bound program (anxiety of
  masculine identity)
• Asking children about television
• Childrens critical judgment?
• Middle-class vs. working-class children
• Social phenomenon Seeking to define social
  identities

7
The Limits of the Active Audience Research

• Children are active, not to be influenced by what
  they watch and read?
• Can adults easily speak or act on behalf of
  children?
• Little long-term immersion (ethnography)