Newspapers

I am photocopying relevant articles from the star and the guardian within a period of one week. Doing this could help to determine if tabloid presents news in a different way.

Please remember to comment on my questionnaire!

http://www.fishmonks.blogspot.com/ (Under Media)

Powerpoint Presentation 4

Primary Texts:
Tom & Jerry
Due to how long it’s been around, I think it’d be interesting to study what kind of influence it has with its exaggerated physical violence, sometimes taking it to an extreme. (Get feedback from both older & younger generations)
Looney Tunes
Chosen as primary due to how wide its audience is, universally so, and because of its similar physical slapstick violence to Tom & Jerry, with a wider cast of characters and more narrative structure, does this help give violence a purpose and context?
SpongeBob Squarepants
A much more modern cartoon aimed at possibly a younger demographic but with intense and in some cases, extremely graphic cases.
Ben 10 (Primary Only)
Series directed specifically at boys, probably aged 8 – 12, that involves constant fighting and supernatural powers throughout. Seems to be the ‘in’ thing for Primary school boys at the minute.
Pokemon (Secondary Only)
Cartoon that created a craze in the late 90’s, thereby reaching wider audiences than maybe smaller cartoons would. Graphic fighting and violence prevalent throughout.
- The previous 2 are age specific due to how each age group can relate to them e.g. Secondary kids wouldn't be able to as easily relate to Ben 10 as Primary children due to how long its been out and its target group.

To Do:

• Gather some initial findings from the Primary texts
• Finalise details with Ecclesfield Secondary School
• Chase up what’s happening with Ecclesfield Primary School
• Complete Focus Group plans i.e. Pull together a presentation?
• Draw up a written survey to include with Focus Group as a hand out and to give out to Parents/Teachers
• Gather Primary Text examples
• Continue updating the Media Blog
• Gather findings together in a concise form

Powerpoint Presentation 3

AUDIENCE & REASON
Kids (8 -12 year olds)
To form the basis of my research I’m looking at the very start of the timeline, with Primary school kids to get their basic impressions on why they watch these cartoons and what their opinions of these shows are.
Teens (13 – 15 year olds)
To further the above study, I’m also going to run a focus group with a Secondary school group to help develop what I learned from the Primary school kids and whether with age their impressions have changed and if they’re aware of what they watch yet.
Parents
To get some background knowledge on what they let their kids watch, hours of TV allowed and what their opinion on the whole debate is.
Teachers
Similar to the Parents research as I’d find it interesting to see authoritative figures POV on how, if at all, these shows influence kids on a day to day.

Question

Just to reiterate as I don't think I've actually posted the eventualm question I decided on up so it's:


To what extent does TV violence, in a fictional animated capacity, affect the youth of today?

Powerpoint Presentation 2

Internet Research Findings:

•Children, despite being banned from acting out ‘play’ violence, they still conduct it in a more private manner.
• Violence is the catharsis that kids need to avoid taking aggressions out in real-life on other people.
• Violent media aimed at children, both cartoons and video games, aim to provide a way for them to feel powerful in a controlled and safe environment.
• “A powerless child needs some way to feel powerful and dominant, even if it’s only make-believe.
• Is make-believe violence the solution to a lot of real-world violence?

Important to note is that the following findings come from a government controlled website.
(2 of my internet sites are Government pages – both heavily condemn violent media and the Canadian site even gives instructions on how to set a good TV viewing scheme up.)

• Even if watching a violent programme does increase aggressiveness, this may be only a short-term phenomenon. Due to the personalities of kids and they’re always taken by ‘the next big thing’.
• “By watching Looney Tunes you are teaching kids that violence is funny” - Dr. Dimitri Christakis
• Classified as Violent: Power Rangers, Star Wars, Space Jam and Spider-Man
• Classified as Non-Violent: Rugrats, The Flintstones, Toy Story.

- Based off several sources i.e. parents, government controlled sites, etc (See Internet References)

Powerpoint Presentation 1

Book & Journal Research findings:

• The more violence there is, the greater its potential for influence.
• Subjective as to your personal ideology on what is violent and what’s not.
• Studies and moral panics are more ideological in the first place than scientific, due to lack of results from well over 3000 studies.
• The media is constantly used as a scapegoat to explain events that are too complicated or upsetting to take in.
• Media – a form of electronic child abuse?
• Proposals to combat & regulate violent media is less likely to encounter opposition than attempts to address more significant causes of violent crime such as poverty and family breakdowns due to it being more feasible and convenient.
• 3 kinds of effects: Behavioural – leading to aggression; Emotional – producing shock, disgust or excitement; Ideological – portraying socially acceptable, dominant ideas in a bid to encourage viewers to believe in what they’re seeing and it gains this reaction.
• Does media desensitise kids to violence?
• Children can distinguish between fact & fiction through media literacy which they gain through watching such things.
• After watching some form of violence TV, children are more likely to take on the role of a victim than the villain of the piece.
•Parents were more likely to express concern about the effects of violent cartoons on other people’s children than on their own.

- Based on the opinions of several critics (see Book references)

My Questionnaire

Could anyone who visits the site please have a go at my Questionnaire please? (That includes you James)
Thanks,
Joe

To Do it, please go to my blog http://www.fishmonks.blogspot.com/

If it is not the first blog on the page, look in the media section.

Update on Chick Flick research

I've been busy reading this interesting article by Suzanne Ferris and Mallory Young. They have written a book together regarding Chick Lit and they also have written quite a few articles on feminism.

Here is the link:

FindArticles - Chick flicks and chick culture
Post Script, Fall, 2007, by Suzanne Ferriss,
Mallory Young

It has some interesting points and explains a bit of history about chick flicks. I'm working my way through a printed copy and highlighting key points/taking a few notes.

They make a point of how one of the main ideas of chick flicks is to represent women enjoying getting desirable consumer goods (such as handbags, makeup, fancy jewelry etc).

I still need to read a few more reviews on chick flicks, because there are so many and some are aimed at women of different ages.

I think I want to open some sort of discussion forum in which girls can post there opinions on my research, maybe I'll open a blog or something.

edited title

i have changed my title

'How women are represented in American TV dramas partially Desperate housewives in comparison to Happy Days and British TV dramas such as footballers wives and how it is diverse with the class in British culture with such programmes as shameless, and how audiences are perceived by the reflection on women?'

Female advertising

At the moment, i am finding feamle websites such as OK Magazine etc to find out if there are any action/ crime/ gangster movies advertised. At the moment i have had no luck since the 007 movie quietened down. That was the only one i have seen advertised on female website so far. I am trying to think of more ways to do primary reasearch as i blieve this will be more usful for me.

questionnaire

i have just created a questionnaire asking questions asking things like age, gender, favorite films, favorite genre etc. This is to help me create a graph showing film preference patterns with males and females.
i intend to hand out around 50 questionnaires or more if possible to people 14 plus.
I will also use this data to compare it with my results from my other primary research task with the posters and technically, the data stats should be very similar.

primary/ secondary research

i am currentley getting a selection of male magazines such as zoo, nuts and fhm and looking for any films which are advertised in these magazines and looking at the genre of the film and the possible audience spread for them off the pearl and dean website. I am also doing the same for female magazines but on the internet sites rather than the actual magazine as i am allowed acess to these sites on college computers. After this i am going to pick a selection of crime/action/gangster film posters and get a number of people both male and females and get there opinions on them asking questions such as what do and dont you like about the poster, would you consider watching the film, do the actors/actresss apeal to you? etc.

Update

So far completed:
- Book research completed and annotated - 5 books in total
- Journal research completed and annotated - 1 article found
- Internet research completed, needs printing and annotating - 3 sites found
- Programmes to look at chosen - 5 programmes in total
- Cross-examined annotations to see any common ideologies that pop up.

To do:
- Letter to be drafted to headmistress at Ecclesfield Primary
- To then follow up any inquiries and organise a meeting
- To piece together an interview/survey for parents/teachers
- To actually gather physical sources to include in interview/focus group

initial ideas

film advertising:film posters:- how film posters differ depending on there target audience (possibly as specif genre)'or'film trailers:- How they are constructed to appeal to there target audience. (trailers of a specific genre)