Media And The Make Believe Worlds Of Children

Media and the Make-Believe Worlds of Children offers new insights into children's descriptions of their invented or "make-believe" worlds, and the role that the children's experience with media plays in creating these worlds. Based on the results of a cross-cultural study conducted in the United States, Germany, Israel, and South Korea, it offers an innovative look at media's role on children's creative lives. This distinctive volume: *outlines the central debates and research findings in the area of children, fantasy worlds, and the media; *provides a descriptive account of children's make-believe worlds and their wishes for actions they would like to take in these worlds; *highlights the centrality of media in children's make believe worlds; *emphasizes the multiple creative ways in which children use media as resources in their environment to express their own inner worlds; and *suggests the various ways in which the tension between traditional gender portrayals that continue to dominate media texts and children's wishes to act are presented in their fantasies. The work also demonstrates the value of research in unveiling the complicated ways in which media are woven into the fabric of children's everyday lives, examining the creative and sophisticated uses they make of their contents, and highlighting the responsibility that producers of media texts for children have in offering young viewers a wide array of role models and narratives to use in their fantasies. The downloadable resources provide full-color images of the artwork produced during the study. This book will appeal to scholars and graduate students in children and media, early childhood education, and developmental psychology. It can be used in graduate level courses in these areas.

This essential volume brings together the work of internationally-renowned researchers, each experts in their field, in order to capture the diversity of children and young people′s media cultures around the world. Why are the media such a crucial part of children′s daily lives? Are they becoming more important, more influential, and in what ways? Or does a historical perspective reveal how past media have long framed children′s cultural horizons or, perhaps, how families - however constituted - have long shaped the ways children relate to media? In addressing such questions, the contributors present detailed empirical cases to uncover how children weave together diverse forms and technologies to create a rich symbolic tapestry which, in turn, shapes their social relationships. At the same time, many concerns - even public panics - arise regarding children′s engagement with media, leading the contributors also to inquire into the risky or problematic aspects of today′s highly mediated world. Deliberately selected to represent as many parts of the globe as possible, and with a commitment to recognizing both the similarities and differences in children and young people′s lives - from China to Denmark, from Canada to India, from Japan to Iceland, from - the authors offer a rich contextualization of children′s engagement with their particular media and communication environment, while also pursuing cross-cutting themes in terms of comparative and global trends. Each chapter provides a clear orientation for new readers to the main debates and core issues addressed, combined with a depth of analysis and argumentation to stimulate the thinking of advanced students and established scholars. Since children and young people are a focus of study across different disciplines, the volume is thoroughly multi-disciplinary. Yet since children and young people are all too easily neglected by these same disciplines, this volume hopes to accord their interests and concerns they surely merit.

In The Case for Make Believe, Harvard child psychologist Susan Linn tells the alarming story of childhood under siege in a commercialized and technology-saturated world. Although play is essential to human development and children are born with an innate capacity for make believe, Linn argues that, in modern-day America, nurturing creative play is not only countercultural—it threatens corporate profits. A book with immediate relevance for parents and educators alike, The Case for Make Believe helps readers understand how crucial child’s play is—and what parents and educators can do to protect it. At the heart of the book are stories of children at home, in school, and at a therapist’s office playing about real-life issues from entering kindergarten to a sibling’s death, expressing feelings they can’t express directly, and making meaning of an often confusing world. In an era when toys come from television and media companies sell videos as brain-builders for babies, Linn lays out the inextricable links between play, creativity, and health, showing us how and why to preserve the space for make believe that children need to lead fulfilling and meaningful lives.

From Internet censorship to sex and violence on television and in video games to debates over rock lyrics, the effect of media on children and adolescents is one of the most widely debated issues in our society. The Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media presents state-of-the-art research and ready-to-use facts on the media′s interaction with children and adolescents. With more than 400 entries, the two volumes of this resource cover the traditional and electronic media and their controversial impact—for good and ill—on children and adolescents. Key Features Provides cross-disciplinary coverage from the fields of psychology, education, media studies and communication, sociology, and public policy Offers a cross-cultural perspective with contributing authors from around the globe and entries on the media in Europe and Asia Includes entries covering television, film, video games, the Internet and World Wide Web, magazines, music, and more Explores complex and difficult topics such as violence, sex, rating systems and warning labels, attention deficit disorder, body image and eating disorders, popular music lyrics, advertising, digital music downloading, parental involvement, policymaking, and child development

As new developments in the study of media audiences have unfolded in recent years, new concerns have entered the landscape. New Directions in Popular Communication Audience Studies addresses the topic of globalization, one of the most sweeping concerns that has reconceptualized the relationship among media, audiences, and power. This special issue covers current debates over meaning-making that have arisen within the context of these concerns. The articles examine scholarship in globalization and media relating to the fields of media studies, anthropology, and American Studies. Highlighting important new directions for the study of popular communication, this special issue offers ways that researchers can reconsider their own projects and interests in light of worldwide developments that affect us all.

This book offers a magisterial overview on children and television from the accumulated global literature in this field of the past 50 years, combining both the American tradition, influenced heavily by developmental psychological studies, as well as the European tradition, characterized by more sociological and cultural studies perspectives to the field. Similarly, it draws together a methodological diversity from both the quantitative – experimental and survey research, together with the qualitative – ethnographic and interview – research of children and television. With a distinctively international approach, Children and Television highlights the global perspective in each of the chapters, balancing the need to contextualize television in children’s lives in their unique cultural spaces, as well as searching for universal understandings that hold true for children around the world.

Screening Gender on Children’s Television offers readers insights into the transformations taking place in the presentation of gender portrayals in television productions aimed at younger audiences. It goes far beyond a critical analysis of the existing portrayals of gender and culture by sharing media professionals’ action-oriented recommendations for change that would promote gender equity, social diversity and the wellbeing of children. Incorporating the author’s interviews with 135 producers of children’s television from 65 countries, this book discusses the role television plays in the lives of young people and, more specifically, in developing gender identity. It examines how gender images presented to children on television are intertwined with important existential and cultural concerns that occupy the social agenda worldwide, including the promotion of education for girls, prevention of HIV/AIDS and domestic violence and caring for ‘neglected’ boys who lack healthy masculine role models, as well as confronting the pressures of the beauty myth. Screening Gender on Children’s Television also explores how children’s television producers struggle to portray issues such as sex/sexuality and the preservation of local cultures in a profit-driven market which continually strives to reinforce gender segregation. The author documents pro-active attempts by producers to advance social change, illustrating how television can serve to provide positive, empowering images for children around the world. Screening Gender on Children’s Television is an accessible text which will appeal to a wide audience of media practitioners as well as students and scholars. It will be useful on a range of courses, including popular culture, gender, television and media studies. Researchers will also be interested in the breadth of this cross-cultural study and its interviewing methodology.