Viscerality, mood control, and media literacy: Children’s perceptions of quality in films and series

TY - ABST

T1 - Viscerality, mood control, and media literacy

T2 - ECREA 2024: Communication & Social Disorder

AU - Jensen, Pia Majbritt

AU - Christensen, Christa Lykke

PY - 2024/9/25

Y1 - 2024/9/25

N2 - This paper presents the methodology and findings of a mobile ethnographic study on how Danish 8-17-year-old children and adolescents perceive quality and relevance when it comes to their media use with a focus on series and films. Theoretically, our point of departure is that films and series have a ‘cultural value’ that is attributed by the beholder (Carnwath and Brown 2014), and these are the values we are interested in pinpointing, albeit from the perspectives of the children, and not from adult perspectives such as high and low culture, artistic quality, or good and bad taste (Drotner 1999). We collected the data using the method of mobile ethnography, in our case via a qualitative research tool app called Indeemo. Through this method we gave the informants various tasks relating to their media use – communicated via short online videos and text – that they in turn completed with a combination of ‘selfie’ videos, text and images gathered in the Indeemo app. The result of this was a rich, but still structured, qualitative data collection that took place in the comfort of their own home and, importantly, was removed from too much adult researcher interference. Hence, the method is different from traditional qualitative methods such as focus groups, observations, experimental settings, and in-depth interviews, in which the researcher is relatively conspicuous and – as previous research has established (Coulter 2021; Rooney 2017) – may therefore influence the children’s behaviours and answers.The results show that the children’s media diets and preferences – and media usage patterns in general – are extremely diverse. Although we see overarching tendencies, such as age and gender differences, a preference for US films and series, and a large consumption on global streaming platforms, preferences are extremely individualised among the children, even within the same families. Results also show that ‘quality’ is associated with content that is emotionally relatable and stimulates the senses, and the children often choose content for its ‘visceral’ – rather than cognitive and cinematic – qualities. They want to feel the films and series (through surprise, enjoyment, fear, disgust, sadness, etc.) rather than intellectually appreciate them. At the same time, they are highly reflective about what content they can use for achieving specific moods and feelings, as well as extremely media literate when they accurately talk about cinematic qualities (such as acting, budget, plot lines, special effects, etc.) of the films and series they watch. The children do not settle for series and films that in their opinion are second-rate, and from the age of 12, start orienting themselves toward content made for (young) adults and are thus no longer inclined to watch children’s content.

AB - This paper presents the methodology and findings of a mobile ethnographic study on how Danish 8-17-year-old children and adolescents perceive quality and relevance when it comes to their media use with a focus on series and films. Theoretically, our point of departure is that films and series have a ‘cultural value’ that is attributed by the beholder (Carnwath and Brown 2014), and these are the values we are interested in pinpointing, albeit from the perspectives of the children, and not from adult perspectives such as high and low culture, artistic quality, or good and bad taste (Drotner 1999). We collected the data using the method of mobile ethnography, in our case via a qualitative research tool app called Indeemo. Through this method we gave the informants various tasks relating to their media use – communicated via short online videos and text – that they in turn completed with a combination of ‘selfie’ videos, text and images gathered in the Indeemo app. The result of this was a rich, but still structured, qualitative data collection that took place in the comfort of their own home and, importantly, was removed from too much adult researcher interference. Hence, the method is different from traditional qualitative methods such as focus groups, observations, experimental settings, and in-depth interviews, in which the researcher is relatively conspicuous and – as previous research has established (Coulter 2021; Rooney 2017) – may therefore influence the children’s behaviours and answers.The results show that the children’s media diets and preferences – and media usage patterns in general – are extremely diverse. Although we see overarching tendencies, such as age and gender differences, a preference for US films and series, and a large consumption on global streaming platforms, preferences are extremely individualised among the children, even within the same families. Results also show that ‘quality’ is associated with content that is emotionally relatable and stimulates the senses, and the children often choose content for its ‘visceral’ – rather than cognitive and cinematic – qualities. They want to feel the films and series (through surprise, enjoyment, fear, disgust, sadness, etc.) rather than intellectually appreciate them. At the same time, they are highly reflective about what content they can use for achieving specific moods and feelings, as well as extremely media literate when they accurately talk about cinematic qualities (such as acting, budget, plot lines, special effects, etc.) of the films and series they watch. The children do not settle for series and films that in their opinion are second-rate, and from the age of 12, start orienting themselves toward content made for (young) adults and are thus no longer inclined to watch children’s content.

M3 - Conference abstract for conference

Y2 - 24 September 2024 through 27 September 2024

ER -