Thesis advisor: William Stanwood / This research examines the history of gender representations in television programs designed for adolescents to discover how these portrayals have developed and changed over time in order to determine the perceived messages about stereotypical gender norms and roles for adolescents. These messages are important to decode as adolescent males and females can learn gender roles and behaviors from the teen programming that they watch on television. The study investigated the most popular teen television programs from each of the last three decades including Beverly Hills 90210, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, One Tree Hill, Pretty Little Liars and Teen Wolf. The first part of the study completed was a textual analysis of the episodes. Secondly, a content analysis was performed on all of the examples from the episodes. The codes used for this study include Language, Sex Roles, Emotionality, and Traditional Roles. Although the majority of gender messages present were normative in that they reinforced gender roles and stereotypes, the findings also suggest that gender representations are becoming less normative as the genre continues to grow and develop. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Communication Honors Program. / Discipline: Communication.

In 1927 Vladimir Propp published a book in which he defined the characteristics and morphology of fairytales. His work was a groundbreaking one that forced scholars to question the way in which stories and storytelling affect the fabric of society and its ideals. Since 1927 much has changed with regards to the way in which stories are told. Technology has changed the way in which people interact and communicate with each other. Media conglomerates such as Walt Disney, Time Warner Company and News Corporation are driven to create stories and media that will deliver consumers to their advertisers. This paper sought to examine the way in which the teen drama has redefined the fairytale, and to establish whether Propp’s work on the morphology of fairytales can still be seen as valid today. Following an in depth literature review that sought to establish the foundations of fairytales, narratives, Propp’s morphology, the development of television as well as the teen television drama, the findings of this paper were established through a detailed content analysis of the first season of three modern teen television dramas – The O.C., One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl. The research found that while some of Propp’s functions may have been adapted to take on a more modern role and a few others became defunct, the majority of the functions of the dramatis personae could be found almost unchanged within the teen television drama. Gossip Girl, in particular demonstrated that it was highly aware of its allusions to the fairytale analogy with numerous references throughout its first season to fairytales such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. More than any of the other shows, Gossip Girl appeared deliberate in its references to the world of fairytales, a world in which the damsel in distress is always rescued by her knight in shining armour, and where monarchy reigns supreme. While humans have continued to evolve and the modes of storytelling have changed significantly since Propp first published his paper, the teen television drama has not yet redefined the characteristics of Propp’s morphology. At most it has modernised them making them relevant to the 21st century viewer.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2007. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 289 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-113). Also available via the World Wide Web.

The primary goal of this thesis was to provide a snapshot of the portrayal of bullying on teen television. Drawing from contextual factors studied in the National Television Violence Study (Smith et al., 1998), a content analysis of 82 episodes (representing 10 series) and 355 acts of bullying was conducted to examine portrayals of physical, verbal, indirect, and cyber bullying in terms of bully and victim social status, motivations, humor, punishments/rewards, character support for bullies, harm shown to victims, interventions by third parties, and anti-bullying episode themes. The analysis revealed significant differences across bullying types for all variables except third party intervention, with portrayals of physical and verbal bullying identified as most “high-risk” (i.e. depicting bullying in ways that research suggests increase the likelihood of negative effects), and portrayals of cyber bullying identified as least “high-risk” for the majority of contextual elements. More generally, the analysis demonstrated that a substantial amount of bullying on teen television sends some concerning messages to young viewers, including the notion that bullying can be funny, harmless, and go without punishment. Complementing the content analysis, an exploratory textual analysis of 294 online fan posts related to bullying portrayed on Glee was performed to capture a representation of potential audience interpretations and intertexts (consumed alongside the television text). The analysis pointed to four major themes across posts: categories of bullying, messages about bullying promoted by characters, contextual elements of bullying, and feelings about characters involved in bullying. In terms of audience responses, the themes highlighted how some fans think critically about bullying portrayals and their implications, distinguish between different types of bullying, and identify with characters. In terms of intertexts, the trends suggested that fans might be exposed to a variety of messages that both criticize and support high-risk depictions of bullying, and defend and rebuke bullying behavior (depending on the characters involved). Combined, the content analysis and textual analysis underlined the importance of media bullying as a topic of scholarly inquiry, revealing that teen bullying is a unique and complex media phenomenon that audiences respond to and interpret in a multitude of ways.