Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 589-609).

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-194. Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

M.A. (Information Science) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Mass media such as television, video players, video games, compact disks, and the computers are commonplace in current American culture. For English as a Second Language children, television may be the only source of English in the home serving as models of grammar, syntax, story structure. An investigation was made using English as a Second Language (ESL) kindergarteners, the classroom writing center, participant-observation, teacher as researcher, and case study methodology to investigate the following questions: Do ESL kindergarten children use media in their writing? If so, how do they use media in their writing? Upon examination of the data, it was found that all these ESL children did use media in the writing process. The function and form of the media references varied from child to child. Media was a cultural context for the childrenÕs social interactions. Oral language (with and without media references) not only informed the writing for some, but also served: to initiate, participate in, and sustain social relationships with peers. Findings indicated that two case study subjects used social dialogue as a separate operation from the production of a written story. Language informed the writing but it also had a socialization function in addition to what the writing needs were. The social aspects of literacy beyond language used to inform the writing is a topic suggested for further research.

[Truncated abstract] Children have become an important consumer segment for marketers because of their potential in purchasing and the influence they have on family purchasing decisions. Marketers may not only want to influence children's spending today, but they are also grooming them for long term loyalty. Children are surrounded by sophisticated promotional techniques such as product placements which are presumed to be capable of influencing their purchase and request decisions. It has been argued that the processing of product placements works differently to traditional advertising. Placements are thought to form an impression in the mind of consumers without them being aware of this happening. These impressions may influence their purchase decisions. The consumer's inability to remember incidental exposure to a brand, or to know that these prior exposures are influencing their judgment, is an important factor that defines the effectiveness and potential deceptiveness of product placement. Young children, with more limited cognitive abilities than adults, could perhaps face more difficulty in grasping the difference between promotional and editorial content in the form of a children's magazine placement. Their inability to distinguish commercial from non-commercial content, and the intent of the promotion message, would appear to make young children vulnerable to the effects of the placement message. Children's processing of persuasion knowledge, or their ability to differentiate commercial from non-commercial and the knowledge of commercial intent, are suggested to be less vulnerable to the message. Three different studies (Study I, Study II and the main study on children) using the samples of children's magazines and children themselves were conducted. ... This stored information may have been used in a favourable way at the time of decision-making which may have influenced young children to like the placed brand. A possible explanation of such behaviour could be that as the child becomes deeply bonded with the magazine material, that child could have social interaction with friends who share a similar bond. This could result in a child having a greater influence on their friends. One of the implications of this study for a marketing organisation is the potential usefulness of material connectedness to a magazine when purchasing advertising space in children's magazines. It may also suggest a construct that may form criteria to use across media. Connectedness may be a surrogate for a measure of media 'engagement.' Product placement normally does not identify a sponsor. Placements have been criticised as an unethical practice because this technique attempts to trick vulnerable child consumers. If a majority of children in the sample knew the commercial nature and intent of a product placement, then it is difficult to rationalise this form of execution as misleading because it was placed. This study offers insights and information on the ways children make decision after exposure to a product placement, a technique which has been criticised as a deceptive 'masked' method of communication. Perhaps, product placement may not be as deceptive as many critics claim. This study found that public policy makers should revisit the policy on children's media, especially on masked techniques like product placement.

This research explores the representation of children and young people in a newspaper. The objective was to develop a 'case study' profile of representations in a monopoly daily newspaper in a geographically-isolated Australian capital city. News content with a primary focus on people aged zero to eighteen years was collected for a 12-month period, and analysed from a constructionist perspective, using agenda-setting, news source, media framing and critical linguistics media analysis techniques. Distinctive features of the research design include the combination of these four analytic techniques and the breadth of the age cohort in the research sample. A large body of research literature is used to 'benchmark' the primary analysis of data, and to inform the analyses of age, 'race' and gender. These data are consolidated in three thematic frames: the Promotional Child, Victim Child and Deviant Child, which underpin the aggregated profile of representations developed in this research. Numerous images are reproduced from the research sample and appear throughout the thesis, embedded in relevant discussions. The concluding chapter of the thesis foregrounds a perception of children as voiceless, vulnerable and violent characters, featured in a discourse on social control. Key observations highlighted in this research include disparities in the degree of overt vernacular criticism applied to children and other minority population groups; and the over-representation of marginalised cohorts in compromising newspaper images. The extensive use of children in promotional contexts appears to be partially obscured by the altruistic function of non-commercial promotions and advocacy campaigns. 'Collisions' between altruistic values and news values were found to be predictive of outcomes coinciding with the interests of a target audience; negative outcomes for socially disadvantaged children; and consistent 'collateral benefits' for the news medium seemingly regardless of outcomes experienced by other stakeholders.

Zugl.: Osnabrück, Universiẗat, Diss., 2004.

Thesis (doctoral) - Universität, Osnabrück, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 317-376).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universitetet i Lund, 1983. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-235).

Within the context of debates concerning the reception and interpretation of media texts by television audiences, this qualitative reception study explores how a sample of Bulawayo students negotiate meanings from Zimbabwe's first health communication soap opera, Studio 263. The study thus examines the reasons behind the popularity of this programme with this target audience. The findings of the study reveal that meaning making is a complex process that is dependent on a variety of factors which include, among others, the socio-cultural context of media consumption, gender, economic disposition and age. It particularly maintains that gender and lived realities influence the interpretation and negotiation of meanings in this particular study. / Adobe Acrobat Pro 11.0.0 Paper Capture Plug-in