Week 8 Blog: Recommended text.

For my resource I found an excellent book on popular culture in general called Re-reading popular culture, written by Joke Hermes. However I want to focus specifically on Chapter 6: Children and the media. This chapter focuses on how popular culture affects children and their interactions with society. It also dispels a lot of myths regarding children's popular culture, including one that is of particular interest to me; the influence of TV and video games on young children with a particular focus on violence in media.

In terms of relevance to CLN647, I particular found it interesting how Hermes discussed how children learn and interact with media, particularly educational media. After interviewing a number of children regarding how they viewed the third world based on the information they received from television, he found that children thought of it as a place that's constantly miserable and full of hardship. While the standard of living in third world countries is obviously poorer than in the first world, this extreme form of "black and white" reasoning is telling of how children absorb information.

This chapter touches on gender issues as well, particularly within video games. It came as a suprise to the author of the book that many of the games are gender "neutral". While a lot of the more violent games are seen by younger people to be "boys games" there is very little difference in how children of either gender interact with games. It was also interesting to see that most younger boys did not mind having central female characters in games. Which in my personal experience is not always true of older gamers, which has caused some controversy recently.

I also think one of the most important aspects to consider when analysing children's consumption of popular culture is that they don't only watch movies or play games that are aimed at them. It is limiting to only focus on "children's" texts. In the book Joke Hermes says it a lot better than I can:

 "We are used to defining children by age, and in opposition to being an adult.9 In terms of media usership, this is hardly adequate. Children see much more than just children’s programming on television; the game player community extends far into adulthood. By linking age to emotional and cognitive development, media scholarship excludes children from debate about what they like." (2005)

This has actually lead to a number of much talked about issues such as children being exposed to violent media.

Violence in popular culture, particularly video games is another issue that comes up regularly. Every one of those links has come to the conclusion that violent video games do not cause violence in children. While this is a sign of bias on my part as I think the concept is ridiculous; all of the sources, aside from the reddit discussion, are reliable sources of information. It is almost impossible to find reliable information stating otherwise. This also concurs with the literature that Hermes consulted for the book. It is telling of children's ability to distinguish reality from fiction, something that is often woefully underestimated in my personal experience.

Overall I think this chapter brings up a lot of issues worthy of discussion and all the information is well referenced with reliable information. It has given me a lot to think about and also broadened my understanding of youth and popular culture.


References 
Hermes, J. (2005). Re-reading popular culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.