PORTRAYAL OF ALCOHOL USE AND ABUSE IN CARTOONS

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Much research has been done since the 1950s to establish the effects of watching television on viewers. While by no means is this research conclusive, many researchers have found a strong relationship between viewing television and subsequent effects (e.g. , increased aggressiveness) in heavy viewers. One area that has received comparatively little attention by scholars is children's programming, in particular animated cartoons. Several authors, however, have determined that children are especially susceptible to media messages. It is therefore important to study what cartoons 'tell' viewers in order to determine how this medium influences young people's mental health by affecting how they come to view, understand, and interpret the world around them. This study will investigate the depiction of alcoholic beverage use and abuse in children's animated cartoons during the period 1930-1990. Among the topics of study in these cartoons are (1) how often and how much alcohol use is portrayed, (2) which alcoholic beverages are used most/least often by cartoon characters, (3) what traits (e.g. , gender, age, race) are associated with alcohol consumption, (4) the contexts in which drinking usually occurs, (5) the reason(s) given for characters' drinking, (6) the effects that are shown to result from alcohol consumption, and (7) what, if any, positive or negative consequences are shown to result from drinking. To enable the researchers to (1) study the overall messages provided by the cartoons regarding alcoholic beverage use, and (2) determine if these messages have changed during the 60 years under study, a stratified random sample of all cartoons produced by all of the major animation studios in operation since 1930 will be drawn. This will yield a sample of 1,300 cartoons with more than 3,000 character codings. The method of analysis will be content analysis using predesigned, pretested (and pilot tested), fixed-format coding forms.