Media Fascinations The media have always fascinated children and young people. The starting point for this book is to situate media research on children and young people in ✶ ✶ ✶ contemporary discourses on childhood and growing up in modern society. The authors present recent Scandinavian qualitative studies, sometimes case ✶ studies, on how children use, interpret and negotiate the meaning of popular ✶ television programs, computer games and Internet. Media Fascinations provides insights into such diverse issues as media literacy, the gendered nature of the media, ✶ the role of children’s socio-cultural background as well as how programming content influences meaning making. It also brings up issues concerning commercial versus public service programming for children as well as specific content features such as children’s interpretations of irony and parody. Throughout the book, as a subtext, the Ingegerd Rydin (ed ✶ authors show their awareness of the methodological issues involved in studying Media children’s media use. Ingegerd Rydin is Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Halmstad University, Sweden. She teaches media studies in general and courses with special focus on children and media reception as well as Fascinations media history. Perspectives on Young People’s Meaning Making . ) NORDICOM Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research Göteborg University Box 713, SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden Telephone +46 31 773 10 00 Ingegerd Rydin (ed.) Fax +46 31 773 46 55 E-mail: [email protected] www.nordicom.gu.se ISSN 1650-5131 ISBN 91-89471-20-2 NORDICOM NORDICOM is an institution within the GÖTEBORG Nordic Council of Ministers UNIVERSITY Media Fascinations ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ Media✶ Fascinations Perspectives on Young People’s Meaning Making Ingegerd Rydin (ed.) NORDICOM Northern Perspectives 4 (Nordiska medieforskare reflekterar 4) Media Fascination Perspectives on Young Peoples Meaning Making Editor Ingegerd Rydin © selection and editorial matters, the editor; individual chapters, the contributors; Nordicom ISSN 1650-5131 ISBN 91-89471-20-2 Published by NORDICOM Göteborg University Box 713 SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG Sweden Editor Northern Perspectives, Ulla Carlsson ©2003 NORDICOM, Göteborg University Cover by Roger Palmqvist Printed by Grafikerna Livréna i Kungälv AB, Sweden, 2003 Contents Preface 7 Ingegerd Rydin Introduction 9 Chapter 1 Jesper Olesen Why Do We Study Children’s Media Use the Way We Do? Discussions on Methodological Reflexivity 15 Chapter 2 Karin Hake Five-Year-Olds’ Fascination for Television. A Comparative Study 31 Chapter 3 Elise Seip Tønnessen Meaning-Making in a Changing Media Culture 51 Chapter 4 Ingegerd Rydin Children’s Television Reception. Perspectives on Media Literacy, Identification and Gender 77 Chapter 5 Elise Seip Tønnessen Entering an Interpretative Community 95 Chapter 6 Karen Klitgaard Povlsen From Beverly Hills 90210 to Ally McBeal: Irony Everywhere. American Series and Their Audiences in Denmark in the 1990s – and after 2000 111 Chapter 7 Barbro Johansson Good Friends, Merry Fighters 131 Chapter 8 Ulrika Sjöberg Making Sense of Screen-based Media. The Uses and Readings of Television, Computer Games, and Internet among Swedish Young People 147 About the Authors 165 5 Preface he idea to write a book was born during meetings at the Nordic Net- Twork on Children, Young People and the Media (BUM), sponsored by the Nordic Foundation Norfa. The initiators have long experience as teach- ers and researchers in the field of children and media culture, and have often been frustrated over the amazing lack of research progress in this area. We all knew from our own research that what is happening when you are “out in the field”, talking to and observing children, is something different from what is depicted in most textbooks on children and the media. Generally, we think that the media students of today, who have grown up with television and new media, have a different attitude towards the media society than do older generations. We hope that they will recognize the situ- ations described in this book. It is written for them. We are very happy that the book is finally being published, and we would like to thank Ulla Carlsson, Director of NORDICOM, who has supported the project from the very beginning. NORDICOM bears the bulk of the financial costs. We would also like to thank the Swedish Scientific Council for giving us a grant for proofreading of the manuscript. Halmstad in June, 2003 Ingegerd Rydin Karin Hake Jesper Olesen Elise SeipTønnessen 7 Introduction Ingegerd Rydin This book presents different perspectives on children’s and young people’s relationships to the media. However, all contributions revolve around the is- sue of how the young audience makes sense of the media, that is, their mean- ing making processes. Our basic assumption is that recipients approach texts with a fundamental expectation of finding meaning, and that they take an active part in creating meaning in their encounter with texts. As will be argued be- low, the meaning derived from media texts can take many forms, involving cognitive, emotional and social perspectives. Moreover, it will be shown that meaning making is a process that occurs within a sociocultural context. The collection comprises a number of separate studies on children’s and young people’s interactions with screen-based electronic media, with focus on television, but also new media such as Internet and computer games. The bias towards television studies makes sense, because even if television is currently regarded as an “old” medium, children devote more time to it than to any other single medium. One aim is that the reader should gain a better understanding of real audiences. Much has been written and said about children and the media, but we seldom have access to the child’s own voice. By providing numerous examples of conversations and interviews with chil- dren from recent qualitative studies in the Scandinavian countries, we would like to offer an alternative picture of the media in children’s lives – a picture that can serve as a complement to the survey and panel data that are regu- larly published. Also, rather than focussing on the “distressing perspective”, which often has a normative bias, we would like to give the reader an op- portunity to approach the actual interactions with the media through con- versations between children as well as between children and researchers. Although the authors represent different disciplines and sometimes vary in their theoretical frameworks, they all apply qualitative methods, such as ethnographical observations and in-depth interviews, with the intention to capture the child’s or adolescent’s own conceptions, opinions or dispositions in relation to media texts. Some contributions take a sociological perspec- tive as their point of departure. Others take a more sociocultural approach 9 INGEGERD RYDIN – stressing children’s various experiences with texts by considering factors such as informal and formal schooling as well as social background – which ties into social psychology as well as developmental psychology. Still other contributions are based in the humanistic sciences, such as literary theory and film theory, and tie into the tradition of Cultural Studies. To start with, we find it important to situate media research on children and young people in contemporary discourses on childhood and growing up in modern society. We usually think of childhood as a transitional phase that must be passed through before entering adulthood. Childhood is more or less regarded as a pre-stage to adulthood. This view has profoundly in- fluenced research on children in most areas, including media studies. One possible consequence of this view is that children are viewed as vulnerable victims of the influences of the media, rather than as active agents, trying to orient themselves in society. However, by relying on the insights of Michel Foucault, we should reflect on our conceptions of what constitutes a child or an adolescent. These categories do, in fact, have histories and are always in the process of transformation (Danaher, Shirato & Webb, 2000). In other words, the discourse on what constitutes childhood has varied throughout history. David Buckingham (2000) suggested, for example, four areas of activity that are traditionally incompatible with a “good childhood”. These areas are work, consumption, violence and sex – activities belonging to adulthood. When they occur in childhood, they are perceived as misplaced. But historically, research on children and media has presented numerous examples of how children transgress boundaries and enter the adult world, both through their media consumption and through their actions. The American sociologist William Corsaro (1993) used the concept of “interpretative reproduction,” which implies that one should regard devel- opment as a matter of acting adequately and creating meaning based on socially understandable premises. This is a prerequisite for being able to orient oneself in the surrounding world. Such a view does not separate children from adults, but instead stresses that children have had fewer experiences than have adults. Both children and adults are actively and creatively involved in the construction and reconstruction of culture. One discourse about childhood that has been prominent during the twen- tieth century has been the idea of the “developing child” and the notion that development proceeds in stages. This