Children's Cross-Platform Media Preferences
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Children’s Cross-Platform Media Preferences: A Sense of Kindness and a Want for Learning? Ashley Woodfall A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Bournemouth University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2015 1 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and due acknowledgement must always be made of the use of any material contained in, or derived from, this thesis 2 Children’s Cross-Platform Media Preferences: A Sense of Kindness and a Want for Learning? Ashley Woodfall Abstract Cross-platform media practices have moved from being something of an under-considered side show, to a strategic necessity. A development vision that attempts to transcend historic platform delineation is becoming the norm in many areas of media production, yet cross- platform media, as an over-arching conceptualisation, is still sparsely mapped. Children’s media in particular can be said to have long spanned platform, yet there is little research that addresses media in this sense, and even less that attempts to bring together the voices of children with those that make media for children. This study sets out to explore children’s cross-platform media within the UK; with children’s media preferences acting as a trigger to dialogue. The study’s original contribution to knowledge is said to sit within its multi-method interdisciplinary design, which as well as foregrounding participant voice, operates in a tactual and reflective fashion. The study looks to explore children’s preferences within media made for them, but also to question the extent to which producers of media for children understand these preferences; with the researcher himself having a background within children’s media practice. To establish the foundations from which to consider these questions, the thesis begins by contextualising and conceptualising cross-platform media, before it moves on to address how children are positioned within media research. Argument is made that media should be seen not as distinct, or platform bound, but as utterances within a cross-platform dialogue, and similarly the study is orientated towards operating across a dialogic phenomenology in which it becomes difficult to locate the unitary, fixed and finalised. It is hoped that through engaging in dialogue on children’s preferences within cross-platform media that this study will impact on practice within the field. Analysis of the research interactions suggests that producers of children’s media share an understanding with children on the ways in which they appear averse to media that they see as unfair, unkind or in which others come to harm. Yet when it comes to the place of learning within children’s media, something child participants appear particularly comfortable with, practitioners seem less in tune with the preferences of children. 3 Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ 3 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. 4 Appendices ........................................................................................................................... 7 List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... 8 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ 10 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 12 CHAPTER 1. CROSS-PLATFORM MEDIA .......................................................................... 21 Part 1. The Cross-platform Landscape ........................................................................... 21 Cross-platform in Practice .............................................................................................. 23 Cross-platform Becomings and Phenomena: Pokémon ................................................ 24 Cross-platform in Dialogue: Star Wars .......................................................................... 26 What is Doctor Who? Cross-platform Intentions ........................................................... 28 BBC Children’s and ‘360 Degree’ Development ............................................................. 32 Towards a Model of Cross-platform .............................................................................. 39 Cross-platform as Practice ............................................................................................. 41 Part 2. Perspectives on Cross-platform ......................................................................... 44 From Bakhtin to Batman – Textual Perspectives ............................................................... 44 Digital Dialogism ............................................................................................................ 44 Co-Authors ..................................................................................................................... 45 Transmediality, Diegesis and Rabbit Holes .................................................................... 49 Parerga and Paratexts .................................................................................................... 53 From Convergence to John Carter - Technological Perspectives ....................................... 56 Convergence & Fragmentation ...................................................................................... 56 Determinism, Agency & the Craft in Technology ........................................................... 60 Interactiv(ity) .................................................................................................................. 62 From the Participatory to Harry Potter - User Perspectives .............................................. 65 Liveness & Territories of the Self ................................................................................... 66 Agency & Canonicity ...................................................................................................... 67 Participatory Culture ...................................................................................................... 73 (Un)finally ........................................................................................................................... 77 CHAPTER 2. CHILDREN AND MEDIA RESEARCH .............................................................. 78 Part 1. Children and Childhood(s) ................................................................................. 78 Historical and Psychological Accounts ........................................................................... 79 The ‘Construction’ Of Childhood .................................................................................... 84 Which Childhood? .......................................................................................................... 85 4 Rights & Policy................................................................................................................ 89 Part 2. Children and Research ...................................................................................... 91 The Powerless Individual/Mass ..................................................................................... 91 The Privileging of the User (or the Text) ........................................................................ 94 What Place Practice and Other Traditions? ................................................................... 98 Toward a Childhood Studies? ...................................................................................... 101 Children’s’ Voice(s). ..................................................................................................... 104 Towards the Participatory: Participant Voice(s). ......................................................... 106 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................... 109 Part 1. Conceptual Orientation ................................................................................... 109 From Dialogue to Constructionism .................................................................................. 109 From Phenomenology to Hermeneutics .......................................................................... 112 Description (and Bracketing) ....................................................................................... 113 Hermeneutics, Interpretation & Dialogue ................................................................... 116 A Dialogic Phenomenology .............................................................................................. 120 Part 2. Design ............................................................................................................. 121 Methodological Openness ............................................................................................... 122 Creative-Reflective Methods ........................................................................................... 124 Text and the Verbal ...................................................................................................... 126 Creative-Visual Turn ....................................................................................................