Sexy Girls, Heroes and Funny Losers: Gender Representations in Children's TV around the World presents the most comprehensive study to date of gender images on children's television. Conducted in 24 countries around the world, the study employed different methodologies and analyses. The findings illustrate how stereotypes of femininity and masculinity are constructed and promoted to children. It presents findings that may well require even the most cynical observer to admit that, despite some great strides, children's television worldwide is still a very conservative force that needs to be reimagined and transformed!

Current characters in children’s entertainment media illustrate a growing trend of representations that challenge or subvert traditional notions of gender and sexuality. From films to picture books to animated television series, children’s entertainment media around the world has consistently depicted stereotypically traditional gender roles and heterosexual relationships as the normal way that people act and engage with one another. Heroes, Heroines, and Everything in Between: Challenging Gender and Sexuality Stereotypes in Children's Entertainment Media examines how this media ecology now includes a presence for nonheteronormative genders and sexualities. It considers representations of such identities in various media products (e.g., comic books, television shows, animated films, films, children’s literature) meant for children (e.g., toddlers to teenagers). The contributors seek to identify and understand characterizations that go beyond these traditional understandings of gender and sexuality. By doing so, they explore these nontraditional representations and consider what they say about the current state of children’s entertainment media, popular culture, and global acceptance of these gender identities and sexualities.

Experiencing fear in front of the screen is a common phenomenon in childhood, and a focus of public concern. Yet, research has encountered ethical and methodological challenges and has focused largely on the effects of watching disturbing news. In this innovative book, this universal experience is investigated in depth via two complementary studies: 1) a retrospective study of experiences related by 626 undergraduate students from eight countries; and 2) a study of the current nightmares induced by watching television of 510 children in five countries. The results presented in this book highlight the most common elements of fear in front of the screen more generally, followed by a focused analysis of the unique features of fear that characterize different developmental stages: pre-school, middle childhood, pre-teens and teenagers. The rich descriptions distinguish between the negative experiences of fear versus the positive experiences of thrill, and explores gender and cultural differences. Finally, the book offers implications for media producers and policy makers as well as for parents and educators.

The latest edition of the acclaimed volume on television studies, featuring new original essays from leading scholars in the field Although the digital age has radically altered the media and communications landscape worldwide, television continues to play a significant part of our lives. From its earliest beginnings through to the present day, television and its influence has been the subject of extensive study, critique, and analysis. A Companion to Television brings together contributions from prominent international scholars comprising a wide range of perspectives on the medium. Original essays define television in its current state, explore why it is still relevant, survey the ways in which television has been studied, discuss how television has changed, and consider what television might look like in the future. Now in its second edition, this compendium includes fresh chapters that cover technological changes affecting television, contemporary approaches to understanding television audiences, new programming trends and developments, and more. Addressing nine key areas of television studies, such as industry, genres, programs, and audiences, the Companion offers readers a balanced, well-rounded, integrative approach to scholarship in the field. This volume: Provides overviews of extensive original research from leading scholars and theorists Examines television’s development and significance in various regions of the world Includes national and regional outlines of television around the world Features theoretical overviews of various critical approaches to television studies Explores historical, economic, institutional, political, and cultural issues studied by media scholars Presenting diverse perspectives on topics ranging from television advertising to satirical representations of the industry, A Companion to Television, Second Edition is an invaluable resource for those in undergraduate courses in television studies, as well as in general media studies and communications.

The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender offers a comprehensive examination of media and gender studies, charting its histories, investigating ongoing controversies, and assessing future trends. The 59 chapters in this volume, written by leading researchers from around the world, provide scholars and students with an engaging and authoritative survey of current thinking in media and gender research. The Companion includes the following features: With each chapter addressing a distinct, concrete set of issues, the volume includes research from around the world to engage readers in a broad array of global and transnational issues and intersectional perspectives. Authors address a series of important questions that have consequences for current and future thinking in the field, including postfeminism, sexual violence, masculinity, media industries, queer identities, video games, digital policy, media activism, sexualization, docusoaps, teen drama, cosmetic surgery, media Islamophobia, sport, telenovelas, news audiences, pornography, and social and mobile media. A range of academic disciplines inform exploration of key issues around production and policymaking, representation, audience engagement, and the place of gender in media studies. The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender is an essential guide to the central ideas, concepts and debates currently shaping media and gender research.

Who analyses children's screen content and media use in Arab countries, and with what results? Children, defined internationally as under-18s, account for some 40 per cent of Arab populations and the proportion of under-fives is correspondingly large. Yet studies of children's media and child audiences in the region are as scarce as truly popular locally produced media content aimed at children. At the very time when conflict and uncertainty in key Arab countries have made local development and diversification of children's media more remote, it has become more urgent to gain a better understanding of how the next generation's identities and worldviews are formed. This interdisciplinary book is the first in English to probe both the state of Arab screen media for children and the practices of Arabic-speaking children in producing, as well as consuming, screen content. It responds to the gap in research by bringing together a holistic investigation of institutions and leading players, children's media experiences and some iconic media texts.With children's media increasingly linked to merchandising, which favours US-based global players and globalizing forces, this volume provides a timely insight into tensions between differing concepts of childhood and desirable media messages.

Feminist scholarship has looked extensively at the perception of the body as a flexible construction of cultural and social dictates, but head hair has been often overlooked. Feminist Interrogations of Women's Head Hair brings new focus to this underrepresented topic through its intersections with contemporary socio-cultural contexts. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines investigate private and public meanings associated with female head hair, problematising our assumptions about its role and implications in the 21st Century. Readers are invited to reflect on the use of hair in popular culture, such as children’s television and pop album artwork, as well as in work by women artists. Studies examine the lived experiences of women from a range of backgrounds and histories, including curly-haired women in Israel, African American women, and lesbians in France. Other essays interrogate the connotations of women’s head hair in relation to body image, religion, and aging. Feminist Interrogations of Women's Head Hair brings together cultural discourses and the lived experiences of women, across time and place, to reveal the complex and ever-evolving significance of hair. It is an important contribution to the critical feminist thought in cultural studies, fashion studies, media studies, African American studies, queer theory, gerontology, psychology, and sociology.

Taking a global and interdisciplinary approach, Children and Media explores the role of modern media, including the internet, television, mobile media and video games, in the development of children, adolescents, and childhood. Primer to global issues and core research into children and the media integrating work from around the world Comprehensive integration of work that bridges disciplines, theoretical and research traditions and methods Covers both critical/qualitative and quantitative approaches to the topic

This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the changing ideas about children and childhood in the United States. Each chapter connects relevant events, attitudes, or anxieties in American culture to an analysis of children or childhood in select American television programs. The essays in this collection explore historical intersections of the family with expectations of childhood, particularly innocence, economic and material conditions, and emerging political and social realities that, at times, present unique challenges to America’s children and the collective expectation of what childhood should be.

Disney Princesses and Tween Identity: The Franchise in Illiberal Hungary examines how tweens in illiberal Hungary construct verbal and visual identities through engagement with Disney princess animations. Presenting and analyzing ethnographic research in the form of interviews with Hungarian tweens around the time of the populist government’s winning the general elections in 2018, Anna Zsubori reveals the importance of social and cultural context in establishing the Disney princess phenomenon as a heterogeneous cultural force. The ambivalent and sometimes even contradictory ideas of identity expressed by the tweens highlight the role that diverse audiences, local negotiations, and dynamic discourses play in the reception of the Disney princess animations. Combining thematic and semiotic textual analyses of the conversations, tweens’ drawings and building blocks, and broader contextual examinations of the sessions with Hungarian children, this book offers original contributions on both theoretical and methodological levels.