Children and media: a cultural studies approach

• Main Author: D av i d B u c k i n g h a m
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade de São Paulo 2012-06-01
• Series: Matrizes
• Subjects: Estudos Culturais, crianças, televisão, circuito cultural, significados
• Online Access: http://www.revistas.usp.br/matrizes/article/view/38328

Defying the traditional psychology understanding on what are the effects of the media and also the researches made on the subject, the present article offers an approach to the study of the relationship between children and the media, focusing mainly on television. We retrace the Cultural Studies perspective, although the researches from the Birmingham Centre have not worked over such age group.The work includes the model of the cultural circuit, it refuses to understand meaning as something that the media distributes to a passive audience and it states that the audience has an active role but works under conditions strange to its own choice. Regarding children, their relationship with the media is structured and restrained by broader social discourses and institutions that try to define childhood in some given ways.