Annotated Bibliography

Banet-Weister, Sarah. “Girls Rule! Gender, Feminism, and Nickelodeon.” Kids Rule!
Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship. (2007): 104-142
In this chapter, the author discusses how children understand media in regards to their own lives, specifically the representation of gender. She discusses Nickolodeon’s use of gender and how it has being used to create television programs that aim to empower young girls by making them lead characters. This new “girl power” is further discussed in terms of television programs and how it has become a part of contemporary children’s culture.
Bierwirth, Kristen Peters and Fran Blumberg. “Preschoolers' Judgments Regarding Realistic
and Cartoon-based Moral Transgressions in the US”. Journal of Children and Media. 4.
1(2010) 39- 58
The objective of the study in this article is to assess children’s knowledge of the difference between moral aggression in cartoons and real life. Pictures of cartoon transgression and real life situations were shown to children in order to learn what they thought was acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and appropriate consequences.
Carter, James. “Dora the Explorer: Preschool Geographic Educator.” Journal of Geography.
107. 3 (2008): 77-86
This article examines the children’s television program entitled “Dora the Explorer”, and its contribution to teach preschoolers about geography. In the television program a male character named “Map” accompanies Dora on her adventures and assists her to overcome obstacles along the way, and eventually reach her final destination. The program teaches young viewers about landscape, environment, and the outside world with the help of Dora, the geographic educator.
Fisch, Shalom et al. “Coviewing Preschool Television in the US: Eliciting parent-child
interaction via onscreen prompts. “Journal of Children and Media. 2.2 (2008): 163-173
This study examines the relationship between parent and child when viewing children’s television programs together. Parent-child interactions were examined by watching shows that utilize three different strategies including a “mommy bar”, where tips are displayed to help the parent interact with the child, “educationally enhanced bar”, including comments of characters and emotions aimed to provoke discussion, and finally a show with no subtitles helping the parent to interact with their child. The goal is to discover the method that provokes the best parent-child interaction.
Jennings, Nancy, Stephen Hooker and Deborah Linebarger. “Educational Television as Mediated
Literacy Environments.”Learning Mediated Technology. 34. 3 (2009): 229-242
This article discusses the impact of children’s television shows and how it can facilitate learning, and in particular, literacy and language development. The author refers to two terms called “outside-in skills”, which is children’s understanding of print, and “inside-out skills”, which refers to children’s phonemic awareness and fluency learning. To further explore this theory, a study is conducted by examining children while they watch a show entitled “Between the Lions”.
Klein, Hugh and Kenneth S. Shiffman. “Race-Related Content of Animated Cartoons.” Howard
Journal of Communications. 17. (2006): 163-182
Cartoon characters are analyzed in this article to determine how the different races are reflected in children’s television shows. Animated cartoon characters were randomly chosen and examined to discover characteristics connected with particular races, such as stereotypes, racism and ultimately if and how it has changed over the years.
Rosaen, Sarah, and Jayson Dibble. “Investigating the Relationships Among Child’s Age,
Parasocial Interactions, and the Social Realism of Favourite Television Characters.”
Communication Research Reports. 25. 2 (2008): 145-154
This article explores children’s relationships with cartoon characters and more importantly why they are attracted to particular characters. The author refers to terms such as “parasocial interaction”, “reality status” and Piaget’s “stages of cognitive development” to examine children’s understanding and relationship to these characters. A study is conducted surveying children aged five to twelve to learn about their favourite characters and their connections to them based on age.
Luther, Catherine A. and Robert Legg Jr. “Gender Differences in Depictions of Social and
Physical Aggression in Children's Television Cartoons in the US.” Journal of Children
and Media. 4. 2 (2010): 191- 205
This article examines male and female cartoon characters to discover gender differences when dealing with issues such as social and physical aggression. Cartoons on The Cartoon Network, Nickolodeon, and Toon Disney were closely analyzed to discover if gender stereotypes such as males physical aggressiveness, and females social aggressiveness, were emphasized in children’s cartoons.
Moran, Kristin C. “Parents' Perceptions of Preschool Television.” Journal of Children and
Media. 4. 4 (2010) 468 — 483
This article explores Latino-themed shows, such as Dora the Explorer, and Handy Manny in order to discover audience perceptions. The two types of audiences analyzed are English speaking and Spanish speaking viewers for the purpose of learning how these two different audiences differ in their understanding and reaction to these television shows.
Roberts, Susan and Susan Howard. “Watching Teletubbies: Television and its Very Young
Audience.” Popular Culture, New Media, and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood.
(2004): 68-81
The study in this article is interested in the responses of children under the age of two, to television programs. While children are watching an episode of the television show Teletubbies, different responses are examined and recorded, such as attention level, parasocial response, TV literacy response, verbal echoing, and cognitive responses in order to learn more about how children are affected by these television programs.