Youth Television Research Articles

Watching Televised Counter-Stereotypes Alone or with Mom: Studying the Effects on Preadolescents’ Gender Attitudes and Beliefs

ABSTRACT Despite the dominant presence of traditional gender portrayals on television, there is a growing effort to incorporate more diverse gender representations, including in youth television series. The impact of such counter-stereotypical portrayals on preadolescents’ gender attitudes and beliefs remains largely unexplored. This mixed-design experimental study among 75 mother-child dyads (M age child = 10.69, SD = 1.37) examined the effects of watching an episode of an entertainment television program that positively portrays a transgender character, either alone or with the mother. The findings indicated that watching the episode lowered preadolescents’ gender essentialism, but did not increase acceptability of and willingness to befriend gender-nonconforming peers. Maternal presence did not further impact the findings. Perceived similarity to and liking of the transgender character did not act as moderators, but had a direct impact on preadolescents’ gender attitudes and beliefs. In conclusion, the results suggest that exposure to counter-stereotypes in entertainment television can influence components of preadolescents’ gender attitudes and beliefs. Gender-diverse television characters who are perceived as highly similar and likeable appear to be particularly influential.

A Study on the Communication Strategies of Youth Television Open Program Hosts

A Study on the Communication Strategies of Youth Television Open Program Hosts

The relationships between school children's wellbeing, socio-economic disadvantage and after-school activities: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundLower socioeconomic status is associated with poorer wellbeing among children. Identifying how children participate in after-school activities and how after-school activities are associated with wellbeing may inform interventions to improve wellbeing among children from low socioeconomic backgrounds. This study explored whether children’s after-school activities varied by socioeconomic status and examined the associations between after-school activities and wellbeing in low socioeconomic status children.MethodsThis study analysed cross-sectional data from 61,759 school students in years 4 to 9 who completed the 2018 South Australian Wellbeing and Engagement Collection. Students reported the number of days per week they participated in 12 activities (after-school care, homework, music lessons or practice, youth organisations, sports, television, videogames, social media, reading, chores, arts and crafts, and socialising with friends) during the after-school period (3-6 pm) and their wellbeing (happiness, sadness, worry, engagement, perseverance, optimism, emotion regulation, and life satisfaction). Socioeconomic status was measured by parents' highest education level obtained from school enrolment data. Linear multilevel models were used to examine whether frequency of after-school activities varied by socioeconomic status. Multilevel ordered logit models were used to analyse the association between after-school activities and wellbeing amongst participants in the low socioeconomic status category.ResultsAfter-school activities differed according to socioeconomic status; high socioeconomic status children did more frequent sport, homework, and reading and low socioeconomic status children did more frequent screen-based activities (TV, videogames and social media). Among children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, higher wellbeing was associated most consistently with more frequent sports participation, homework, reading and spending time with friends and less frequent videogames, social media and after-school care.ConclusionsChildren's wellbeing is positively associated with socioeconomic status. Amongst children from disadvantaged backgrounds, participating in sport, spending time with friends and getting less screen time may be protective for wellbeing. The results suggest that programming targeted at increasing sports participation and reducing screen time amongst children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds may support their wellbeing.

Media narratives, agonistic deliberation, and Skam: An analysis of how young people communicate in digital spaces

Abstract Increasingly, the means of engaging young people in constructive public debate and democratic society has shifted to online digital media platforms. This assumes that participants have the necessary media literacy skills to engage in a meaningful way. We discuss how and to what extent responses in an online blog elicited by two different scenes from the popular youth television series Skam [Shame] demonstrate agonistic deliberation and media literacy in digital dialogue spaces. Our study includes an analysis of the rhetorical characteristics of the dialogues; the mapping of key themes that characterise reactions of blog commentators in the online discussions; and a discussion of the characteristics of – and degree of deliberation in – online comments. We propose that narratives which employ agonistic deliberation around pertinent social themes are most likely to encourage and elicit public engagement that moves beyond emotional outbursts, reflecting a deeper consideration of the themes and topics.

Hip-Hop into the Video Age: New York Teenhood, Malcolm McLaren and the British Eye

In the 1980s, the popularizing of domestic video technology coincided with a boom in British youth television and music videos of New York hip-hop’s visual world. These provided crucial pre-conditions for hip-hop’s London explosion. This article analyses these historical media shifts, the early evolution of rap’s imagery and testimony from early London hip-hoppers to examine how music video’s dynamic multimedia visuality opened up both hip-hop’s fashion ‘code language of status’ and new bodily velocities, enabling hip-hop’s transference from New York to London as a multifaceted youth movement. It considers the role of Malcolm McLaren and the World’s Famous Supreme Team’s video ‘Buffalo Gals’.

Faye Woods, British Youth Television: Transnational Teens, Industry, Genre

Faye Woods, <i>British Youth Television: Transnational Teens, Industry, Genre</i>

Streaming British Youth Television: Online BBC Three as a Transitional Moment

Streaming British Youth Television: Online BBC Three as a Transitional Moment

Telefantasy Tower Blocks: Space, Place and Social Realism Shake-ups in Misfits

This article considers the ways in which British youth telefantasy Misfits (E4, 2009–13) takes up and makes strange urban spaces familiar from social-realist narratives. Filmed on the sprawling East London estate, Thamesmead, the programme chronicles a group of young offenders who are given powers by a freak storm, turning them into ‘ASBO superheroes’. Misfits depends on its British urban landscapes for the assertion of its ‘authenticity’ within British youth television, using spaces and landscapes familiar from urban youth exploitation cinema and television's narratives of the underclass. After situating the series within existing cultural discourses and recent developments in social-realist representations, the article explores how Misfits disrupts what have become signifiers for the ‘real’ – the brutalism of housing estates, the grey of the concrete and sky – by making them strange, turning them into telefantasy. The series presents the estate as an uncanny place: the domestic, social-realist world shifted into a fantastical space by the storm. Through close analysis, this article explores how the familiar spaces become skewed and unsettling to match our protagonists' isolation, shifting bodies and scrambled sense of self.

Hábitos y consumos televisivos de la generación digital desde la perspectiva de los usos y gratificaciones. Estudio de caso en la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

Desde la teoría de los Usos y Gratificaciones, el objetivo de este trabajo es comparar los hábitos y razones del consumo televisivo juvenil en la pantalla tradicional y en el ordenador. A partir de una encuesta aplicada a una muestra de 213 estudiantes de primero a tercero de titulaciones de grado de ciencias sociales de la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, se analizarán sus hábitos de consumo en los dos soportes, se examinarán cuáles sus formatos televisivos preferidos así como sus motivos de exposición para conocer cuál es el soporte que les proporciona una mayor gratificación. Entre los principales resultados hallados se destaca que la televisión convencional continúa siendo el medio preferido para una generación que, todavía, no ha culminado la transición hacia el medio digital y que el consumo se realiza de manera individual en los dos tipos de soportes analizados. Son individuos que realizan un consumo televisivo multitarea y en los que el visionado no les resta tiempo a la realización de otro tipo de actividades. Se inclinan hacia la televisión por Internet por sus características más que por su oferta y hacia la televisión convencional porque quieren entretenerse, informarse y aprender.

Teen TV Meets T4: Assimilating The O.C. into British Youth Television

This article explores the presence of imported US Teen TV in the schedules of British youth television and the relationship between the two national forms. Focusing on the broadcast of The O.C on Channel 4 youth strand T4, it considers the role of the spaces in-between programmes in framing the audience’s experience of the imported US text. It demonstrates how the T4 supertext employed presenter performance, critique and parody to assimilate the glamorously aspirational US Teen TV text into the cynically engaged flow of British youth television.

Classed Femininity, Performativity, and Camp in British Structured Reality Programming

This article explores the representations and tonal qualities of British “structured reality” programming. Focusing on The Only Way Is Essex and Made in Chelsea, it investigates their glocalizing of the model established by MTV’s Laguna Beach and The Hills. It argues that while they blur boundaries between docusoap, drama, and soap opera, the British programs also recognize and foreground issues of construction for their reality TV-literate youth audience. It suggests the programs play a key role in their respective channel identities and the ideologies of British youth television, connecting to larger issues of class, gender, and taste. This is articulated through their regional and classed femininities, with the article exploring how the programs draw on classed ideologies surrounding “natural” and “excessive” femininities and of the role of this in their engagement with construction and camp play. This play contributes to the tonal shift offered by the British programs, mixing the melodrama of the MTV programs with a knowing, at times comic edge that can tip into mockery. In doing so, the programs offer their audience a combination of performative self-awareness and emotional realism that situates them clearly within British youth television.

Television, Youth Identity and Value Socialisation: A Study Among Students in Pekanbaru, Riau, Indonesia

This study aims to identify (a) the form of television penetration in youth life; (b) the influence of television penetration on youth values and identities; (c) the relation between the social institutions and their roles in strengthening youth values and identities; and (d) the influence of demographic factors on youth values and identities. Using Social Cognitive Theory, this study took 15–24 year-old teenagers living in Pekanbaru as the population of the study. The samples consisted of 225 teenagers for the survey and 11 teenagers for the in-depth interviews selected from four senior high schools and two universities in Pekanbaru using multi-stage cluster random sampling. The finding—using descriptive statistical analysis, correlations, multiple regression, and qualitative analysis—shows there was a high penetration of television in the lives of the youth, and the penetration level has a significant correlation with their identities and values. Social institutions have a higher significant correlation with their values and identities. The correlation data also indicated that the television penetration on the youth (television environment, television usage, and television orientation) can predict some dependent variables, i.e. value orientation, group identity, and social identity; whereas social institutions (family, peers, school, and religion) can predict the other dependent variables, i.e. personal values, social values, value orientation, personal identity, and social identity. Hence, social institutions have a stronger relation with youth values and identity than that of television. The finding supported the Social Cognitive Theory that the youths have undergone a learning phase through a process of mass media socialisation.

‘Alien Nation’, Northumbria University, 20–21 July 2011

In July 2011, Northumbria University hosted the first major conference on British science fiction, horror and fantasy television, organised by James Leggott and Alison Peirse. Drawing delegates from beyond the UK– including presenters from Canada and South Korea – this two-day event encompassed 45 papers, three keynote speeches, a round-table discussion on definitions of British telefantasy and screening events involving creative personnel and bloggers. The spread of papers, which covered a broad range of subjects from music and authorship to adaptation and fandom, was in many ways representative of continuing and emerging areas of scholarship. The high number of presentations on contemporary programmes, from the unavoidable Doctor Who and its spin-offs (already analysed and anthologised in some detail) to as yet less discussed programmes such as Being Human, Outcasts and Lost in Austen, offered a clear acknowledgement of a recent renaissance in British telefantasy. Many of these papers engaged with the complex generic, cultural or transmedia contexts of these recent programmes; for example, Tom Phillips’ discussion of the online world of Psychoville, Faye Woods’ situation of Misfits within trends in British youth television and Catherine Spooner’s reading of The Mighty Boosh as a Goth comedy. Although there was occasional discussion of programmes from the 1980s and 1990s, such as the fondly remembered vampire drama Ultraviolet (discussed by Lorna Jowett), far more attention was given to output from the 1960s and 1970s, from canonical shows such as Space 1999 and Survivors to more obscure work such as the almost entirely forgotten dystopian drama 1990 (as analysed by Andrew Butler). A notable cluster of papers, across the twelve panels, dealt with

Negotiating Canadian Culture Through Youth Television: Discourse on Degrassi

Negotiating Canadian Culture Through Youth Television:Discourse on Degrassi Suzanne Rintoul (bio) and Quintin Zachary Hewlett (bio) Byers, Michele , ed. Growing Up Degrassi: Television, Identity and Youth Cultures. Toronto: Sumach, 2005. 317 pp. $28.95 pb. ISBN 1-894549-48-1. Print. Castellarin, Loretta, and Ken Roberts. Spike. Degrassi Junior High. Halifax: Lorimer, 2006. 106 pp. $9.95 pb. ISBN 1-55028-925-X. Print. Dunphy, Catherine . Caitlin. Degrassi Junior High. Halifax: Lorimer, 2006. 145 pp. $9.95 pb. ISBN 1-55028-923-3. Print. Ellis, Kathryn . Degrassi: Generations. Bolton, ON: Fenn, 2005. 192 pp. $22.95 pb. ISBN 1-55168-278-8. Print. Ellis, Kathryn . Joey Jeremiah. Degrassi Junior High. Halifax: Lorimer, 2006. 153 pp. $9.95 pb. ISBN 1-55028-924-1. Print. Nielsen, Susin . Snake. Degrassi Junior High. Halifax: Lorimer, 2006. 183 pp. $9.95 pb. ISBN 1-55028-926-8. Print. Torres, J. Suddenly Last Summer. Illus. Ramón Pérez. Degrassi The Next Generation Extra Credit 2. Bolton, ON: Fenn, 2006. N. pag. $12.95 pb. ISBN 1-55168-320-2. Print. Torres, J. Turning Japanese. Illus. Ed Northcott. Degrassi The Next Generation Extra Credit 1. Bolton, ON: Fenn, 2006. N. pag. $12.95 pb. ISBN 1-55168-318-0. Print. [End Page 125] Known from its inception as a television franchise that targets young people while dealing with the complex issues facing them in a mature and realistic fashion, Degrassi is, perhaps, one of the most internationally recognized aspects of Canadian popular culture. Following the relative success of their CBC series Kids of Degrassi Street (1979-1985), Kit Hood and Linda Schuyler created what would, over the next twenty years, become an increasingly popular franchise and an unprecedented international hit for Canadian television. Degrassi Junior High (1987-1989), Degrassi High (1989-1991), and the made-for-TV movie School's Out! (1992) targeted a niche market consisting mostly of Canadian youth by charting the lives of a large group of Toronto teens and pre-teens. By having its actors go into the real world to discuss real problems facing teens, Degrassi Talks (1992)—a six-episode documentary series that provoked the publication of book tie-ins and educational reference materials—capitalized on the unusual combination of popularity and educational value espoused by the series. In 2001, CTV aired the first episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation. Still set and filmed in Toronto, the show now focuses on the lives of a new group of students, including the daughter of one of the major characters from the original. Like its predecessors, the new show is a hit in Canada and has been steadily gaining popularity in other countries such as the United States and Australia. Amid the critical discourse pertaining to Degrassi, one encounters questions about television studies, problems facing young people, global youth culture, and nostalgia. But the topic perhaps most often broached by Degrassi scholars and fans is the series' "Canadianness." To be more precise, conversations about the series tend to reflect the idea that Canadian culture offers representations of youth and [End Page 126] childhood that are somehow more authentic than, say, American television.1 In this review essay, we assess the prevalence of this type of rhetoric by reviewing Degrassi: Generations, Kathryn Ellis's catalogue of the entire televised franchise, and a collection of essays edited by Michele Byers called Growing up Degrassi: Television, Identity, and Youth Cultures. These non-fictional texts clearly emphasize distinctions between American and Canadian approaches to the "realistic" representation of childhood and adolescence. We then move on to test the assumptions made in these books by looking at four re-released novelizations of episodes from what critics and fans tend to dub "Degrassi Classic," as well as two graphic novels adapted from storylines found in Degrassi: The Next Generation. None of the fictional texts make overt claims for the authenticity of Canadian representations of childhood or youth, although they do assume an audience that is willing to accept Canada as the setting for a number of events to which middle-class (and ostensibly "Westernized") children and teens can relate. Generally speaking, the "Canadianness" of the books is rather inconspicuous. What is conspicuous about these texts, though...

Negotiating Canadian Culture Through Youth Television: Discourse on Degrassi

Find information about UTP Journals. University of Toronto Press is Canada’s leading academic publisher and one of the largest university presses in North America, with particular strengths in the social sciences, humanities, and business. The Book Publishing Division is widely recognized in Canada for its strength in history, political science, sociology, Indigenous studies, and cultural studies. Internationally, UTP is a leading publisher of medieval, Renaissance, Italian, Iberian, Slavic, and urban studies, as well as studies in book and print culture.

“Television Resurrections”: Television and Memory

The Clarendon Press, 2000). For an innovatory attempt to write British commercial television into this history, see Rob Turnock, and Consumer Culture: Britain and the Transformation of Modernity (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007). 23. Dick Hebdige gives one of the classic accounts of the British romance with U.S. culture in Towards a Cartography of Taste, in his Hiding in the Light (London: Comedia/ Routledge, 1988). The key point of the argument is that U.S. culture seems to offer working-class people a liberation from the class stratification of British society. 24. There is a substantial history of scholarship in Britain on cultural policy and social theory, but little of it could be characterized as Television Studies. See, for example, Nicholas Garnham, Emancipation, the Media and Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), and Jim McCuigan, Culture and the Public Sphere (London: Routledge, 1996). 25. For a succinct summary of the issues at stake, see Sylvia Harvey's Ofcom's First Year and Neoliberalism's Blind Spot: Attacking the Culture of Production, Screen 47, no. 1 (2006): 91-105. 26. Amanda Lotz, If It's Not TV, What Is It? The Case of U.S. Subscription Television, in Cable Visions: Beyond Broadcasting, ed. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Cynthia Chris, and Anthony Freitas (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 85-102. 27. See, for example, Tim O'Sullivan, Television Memories and Cultures of Viewing 1950-65, in Popular in Britain: Studies in Cultural History, ed. John Corner (London: British Film Institute, 1991), 159-81; and Nostalgia, Revelation and Intimacy: Tendencies in the Flow of Modern Popular Television, in Geraghty and Lusted, The Studies Book, 198-209; Myra MacDonald, Performing Memory on Television: Documentary and the 1960s, Screen 47, no. 3 (2006): 327-45; Karen Lury, British Youth Television: Cynicism and Enchantment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001); and Amy Holdsworth (see article below). 28. Asa Briggs, cited by Stefan Collini in Mainly Fair, Moderate or Good, Guardian Saturday Review (September 22, 2007): 4-6, quotation on page 6; and Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom vols. 1-5 (London: Oxford University Press, 1961, 1965, 1970, 1979, 1995).

Parental Influences on Youth Television Viewing

To assess associations among youth television (TV) viewing and parental TV viewing, parental knowledge of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendations to limit children's TV viewing time to < or = 2 hours per day (knowledge), and parental limits on the frequency of children's TV viewing (rules). Adult participants in the 2002 Styles surveys answered questions about their weekly TV viewing, knowledge, and rules. TV viewing time of children of the adult participants (520 boys and 525 girls) age 10 to 18 years was also collected. Associations between hours of child TV viewing and parental TV viewing, parental knowledge, and parental rules were quantified using linear regression techniques. Variables included in multivariate regression models accounted for 8% to 18% of the variance in TV viewing among boys and girls. Parent TV viewing was significantly associated with TV viewing in 10- to 12-year-old and 16- to 18-year-old boys and girls. Knowledge was not associated with TV viewing in boys and girls in this sample. Rules were associated with TV viewing in boys and girls of all ages. Our findings suggest that parental TV viewing and rules limiting their child's TV time may play an important role in children's weekly TV viewing time.

Child And Parental Characteristics Associated With Youth Television Viewing In A National Sample Of Girls And Boys

Several studies have reported an association between television (TV) viewing and childhood overweight. However, few studies have examined the association of child and parental factors with youth TV viewing. PURPOSE Among 519 boys and 517 girls aged 10–18 years who completed mail panel surveys in 2002, the purpose of this analysis was to examine child and parental characteristics associated with TV viewing. METHODS The ConsumerStyles survey was sent to 10,000 households who were part of a consumer mail panel (response rate = 61%, n=6065). Of these households, 6027 received a HealthStyles survey to be completed by an adult, and 2444 also received a YouthStyles survey to be completed by a household child, yielding response rates of 73% (Healthstyles) and 62% (Youthstyles). Children were asked, “After school, on a typical weekday (Monday to Friday) during the school year, how many hours a day do you spend watching TV?” and “On an average weekend (both Saturday and Sunday) during the school year, how many hours do you spend watching TV?” Child and parent measures were placed into the following 4 variable groupings: demographic characteristics (parent age, sex, race, and marital status, household income, and household size); parent and child body mass index (BMI); parental imposition of rules to limit time spent viewing TV or playing video games; and parental TV viewing. Associations between the variable groupings and youth TV viewing were analyzed using hierarchal multiple linear regression. Weighted R2-values (R2) are reported. RESULTS Age- and sex-specific regression models accounted for 16–21% of the variance in TV viewing in boys and 9–21% in girls. However all models failed to reach significance among 13–15 year old girls. Among children 10–12 years, most of the variance in TV viewing was accounted for by parent and child BMI in boys (R2 = 0.07) and parental rules about TV viewing in girls (R2 = 0.10) and in 13–15 year old boys (R2 = 0.07). Demographic characteristics explained the most variance in TV viewing in 16–18 year old boys (R2 = 0.07), and girls' (R2 = 0.13). CONCLUSIONS Depending on the age and sex of the child, different child and parental characteristics were associated with youth TV viewing. Parental rules about TV viewing is a modifiable characteristic found to be correlated with youth TV viewing. These findings may be useful to facilitate design of TV reduction efforts for youth.

Child And Parental Characteristics Associated With Youth Television Viewing In A National Sample Of Girls And Boys

Several studies have reported an association between television (TV) viewing and childhood overweight. However, few studies have examined the association of child and parental factors with youth TV viewing. PURPOSE Among 519 boys and 517 girls aged 10–18 years who completed mail panel surveys in 2002, the purpose of this analysis was to examine child and parental characteristics associated with TV viewing. METHODS The ConsumerStyles survey was sent to 10,000 households who were part of a consumer mail panel (response rate = 61%, n=6065). Of these households, 6027 received a HealthStyles survey to be completed by an adult, and 2444 also received a YouthStyles survey to be completed by a household child, yielding response rates of 73% (Healthstyles) and 62% (Youthstyles). Children were asked, “After school, on a typical weekday (Monday to Friday) during the school year, how many hours a day do you spend watching TV?” and “On an average weekend (both Saturday and Sunday) during the school year, how many hours do you spend watching TV?” Child and parent measures were placed into the following 4 variable groupings: demographic characteristics (parent age, sex, race, and marital status, household income, and household size); parent and child body mass index (BMI); parental imposition of rules to limit time spent viewing TV or playing video games; and parental TV viewing. Associations between the variable groupings and youth TV viewing were analyzed using hierarchal multiple linear regression. Weighted R2-values (R2) are reported. RESULTS Age- and sex-specific regression models accounted for 16–21% of the variance in TV viewing in boys and 9–21% in girls. However all models failed to reach significance among 13–15 year old girls. Among children 10–12 years, most of the variance in TV viewing was accounted for by parent and child BMI in boys (R2 = 0.07) and parental rules about TV viewing in girls (R2 = 0.10) and in 13–15 year old boys (R2 = 0.07). Demographic characteristics explained the most variance in TV viewing in 16–18 year old boys (R2 = 0.07), and girls' (R2 = 0.13). CONCLUSIONS Depending on the age and sex of the child, different child and parental characteristics were associated with youth TV viewing. Parental rules about TV viewing is a modifiable characteristic found to be correlated with youth TV viewing. These findings may be useful to facilitate design of TV reduction efforts for youth.