'Children, Media and Culture': research and contracted book for Open University Press in the series, 'Issues in Cultural and Media Studies'.

“儿童、媒体和文化”：开放大学出版社的“文化和媒体研究问题”系列研究和签约书籍。

• 批准号: AH/G008124/1
• 负责人: Maire Messenger Davies
• 金额: $ 4.25万
• 依托单位: University of Ulster
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2009 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FG008124%2F1
• 关键词: Children; Media; Culture; research; contracted

The proposed research is for a commissioned book on 'Children, media and culture' for the Open University Press. This book is intended to inform a public debate about children and their lives, and particularly the role of popular media in their lives. The definition of media in the research for the book is wide-ranging: not just television and video games, but also still-popular forms such as fairy tales, children's literature and traditional games. Childhood and children's culture are regularly in the forefront of debates about how society is changing - often, it is argued, for the worse (see for instance Sue Palmer's 2006 book, 'Toxic Childhood'). Certainly children's lives have changed in the last ten years, some of the most visible changes being new media technology / digital television; the internet; portable entertainment systems such as games, mobile phones, i-pods and so on. Television, the most popular medium with children for the last thirty years, is becoming less so, as a major report on the future of children's public service broadcasting, by the telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, in October 2007, demonstrated and many people are worried about this: perhaps public service broadcasting, as exemplified by the BBC's children's services, is declining. As media consumption becomes fragmented, and less easy to regulate, so public anxieties arise about how children can be protected from new harmful influences. On the other hand, some forms of children's culture - including traditional ones - seem to be triumphantly successful; the 'Harry Potter' series of books, with their multiple electronic spinoffs - films, games, toys - are an example. My proposed research, and its resultant book, intends to examine critically the view that technology has dramatically changed children's lives and to look at some of the ways in which a.) it has not and b.) at other influences on their lives. The research will also explore how children can be seen as 'citizens-in the-making' in this new, media-rich environment: an environment in which interactivity and 'citizen journalism' are seen as alternative and more democratic ways of communication, and more empowering for children, than traditional print and screen-based media. The broad question is: Has childhood itself changed, thus necessitating changes in the media provided for children, or are there some enduring aspects of childhood and of its culture, that do not change but are re-invented in new forms as technologies develop?The research will include a variety of methods: the traditional scholarly approach of library research, investigating academic studies on children, childhood and children's media and culture. This will include archive research into screen material, for example the film and television archives held by the British Film Institute. Hence the research will also involve watching and critically reviewing material intended for children, using a case study approach for different media forms: literature; film; television; screen adaptations; computer games and websites. It will also examine material produced BY children; new technology permits children to be their own authors and to be 'citizen journalists'. What sort of material is produced by them? Do they enjoy and benefit from reading and looking at work produced by other children? Can this replace professional forms of entertainment and information? This is a question being examined currently by a number of projects in the AHRC/BBC Knowledge Transfer programme. The research for my commissioned book will include interviews with both producers and consumers: media workers and families with children to address these issues as broadly as possible.

拟议的研究是为开放大学出版社委托出版的一本关于“儿童、媒体和文化”的书而进行的。本书旨在为有关儿童及其生活，特别是大众媒体在他们生活中的作用的公开辩论提供信息。本书研究中对媒体的定义很广泛：不仅包括电视和视频游戏，还包括童话故事、儿童文学和传统游戏等仍然流行的形式。童年和儿童文化经常成为关于社会如何变化的争论的最前沿——有人认为，这些变化往往会变得更糟（例如，参见苏·帕尔默 2006 年的书《有毒的童年》）。当然，过去十年中儿童的生活发生了变化，其中最明显的变化是新媒体技术/数字电视；互联网；便携式娱乐系统，如游戏、手机、i-pod 等。电视作为过去三十年来最受儿童欢迎的媒体，正变得越来越不那么受欢迎，正如电信监管机构 Ofcom 在 2007 年 10 月发布的一份关于儿童公共服务广播未来的重要报告所表明的那样，许多人对此感到担忧：也许以 BBC 儿童服务为例的公共服务广播正在衰退。随着媒体消费变得分散且不易监管，公众开始担心如何保护儿童免受新的有害影响。另一方面，某些形式的儿童文化——包括传统文化——似乎取得了巨大的成功。 “哈利·波特”系列图书及其多种电子衍生品——电影、游戏、玩具——就是一个例子。我提出的研究及其由此产生的书，旨在批判性地审视技术已经极大地改变了儿童生活的观点，并探讨了 a.) 技术没有改变的一些方式以及 b.) 对他们生活的其他影响。该研究还将探讨如何在这个媒体丰富的新环境中将儿童视为“正在形成的公民”：在这种环境中，互动性和“公民新闻”被视为替代性的、更民主的沟通方式，并且比传统的印刷媒体和屏幕媒体更能赋予儿童权力。广泛的问题是：童年本身是否发生了变化，因此需要改变为儿童提供的媒体，或者童年及其文化是否有一些持久的方面，这些方面没有改变，但随着技术的发展以新的形式重新发明？这项研究将包括多种方法：图书馆研究的传统学术方法，调查有关儿童、童年以及儿童媒体和文化的学术研究。这将包括对屏幕材料的档案研究，例如英国电影学院持有的电影和电视档案。因此，研究还将涉及观看和批判性地审查针对儿童的材料，对不同的媒体形式使用案例研究方法：文学；电影;电视;屏幕适配；电脑游戏和网站。它还将审查儿童制作的材料；新技术使儿童能够成为自己的作家和“公民记者”。他们生产什么样的材料？他们是否喜欢阅读和观看其他孩子的作品并从中受益？这可以取代专业形式的娱乐和信息吗？ AHRC/BBC 知识转移计划中的许多项目目前正在研究这个问题。我委托撰写的书籍的研究将包括对生产者和消费者：媒体工作者和有孩子的家庭的采访，以尽可能广泛地解决这些问题。