SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION
CMNS 320-4

CHILDREN, MEDIA AND CULTURE

Prerequisites:

CMNS 220, and either CMNS 260 or 363.

Course Description:

This course introduces students to the issues arising from the evolving role of communication media in children's lives. The course will provide an historical perspective on the development of children's media including books, films, television and video games, with a focus on the current critical debates and research analysis of postmodern childhood. The course will also examine and evaluate a variety of policy and program initiatives in the area of children's media consumption and media education.

The course will direct itself to the following three objectives:

• To provide a historical perspective on children’s cultural consumption and the emergence of the children’s cultural industries (publishing, movies, radio, tv, toys, video games and the internet);
• To introduce approaches to research on children's media use and evaluate some of the evidence gathered by researchers concerning children’s media production, use and impact on children;
• To outline the critical debates concerning children’s media industries, including programming, policy options and alternatives to commercial models of cultural production.

Readings:

Courseware package to be announced.

Lecture Topics:

– Culture, History and Policy
1. Introduction.
2. Comparative Perspectives: Childhood and Folkculture.
3. Historical Perspectives on Modern Childhood.

– Children's Cultural Industries
4. Origins of Innocence: Books, Education and Literacy.
5. Play: the work of childhood.
6. Windows to the World: Movies and TV.
7. InteractiveVideo Games, internet and Multimedia.

– Debates, Critiques and Prognosis:
8. Children's Marketing: whose rocking the cradle?
9. Girl Culture: The Barbie Factor and Sexual Objections.
10. Boy Culture: Violence , Imagination and Aggression.
11. McDisneyfication: Global Diversity.
12. Media Education and Media Criticism for Kids.

Assessment:

Reading Log 25%
Review Essay 30%
Research Report 35%
Participation 10%

The School expects that the grades awarded in this course will bear some reasonable relation to established university-wide practices to both levels and distribution of grades. In addition, the School will also follow Policy T10.02 with respect to intellectual Honesty, and Academic Discipline (see the current Calendar, General Regulations Section).