Media Fascinations
Perspectives on Young People's Meaning Making
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 authors show their awareness of the methodological issues involved in studying children’s media use.
Content
Preface
Ingegerd Rydin, Jesper Olesen, Karin Hake, Elise Seip Tønnessen
Introduction
Ingegerd Rydin
Why Do We Study Children’s Media Use the Way We Do? Discussions on Methodological Reflexivity
Jesper Olesen
Five-Year-Olds’ Fascination for Television. A Comparative Study
Karin Hake
Meaning-Making in a Changing Media Culture
Elise Seip Tønnessen
Children’s Television Reception. Perspectives on Media Literacy, Identification and Gender
Ingegerd Rydin
Entering an Interpretative Community
Elise Seip Tønnessen
From Beverly Hills 90210 to Ally McBeal: Irony Everywhere. American Series and Their Audiences in Denmark in the 1990s – and after 2000
Karen Klitgaard Povlsen
Good Friends, Merry Fighters
Barbro Johansson
Making Sense of Screen-based Media. The Uses and Readings of Television, Computer Games, and Internet among Swedish Young People
Ulrika Sjöberg
About the Authors
