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In today's global media landscape, the integration of LGBTQ characters and storylines in children's television has transformed media representations for young audiences. However, little is known about the way parents evaluate this on-screen presence. By means of interview with 53 Flemish parents, this study uncovered a complex interplay of considerations related to children, media, gender, and sexuality. In terms of possible opportunities associated with LGBTQ characters, parents referred to possibilities of information, socialization, promoting prosocial behavior, and aiding identification. However, parents also harbored some concerns regarding characteristics of the viewers (children's young age and gender differences) as well as characteristics of these media representations (as to quantity, quality, and physicality between characters). Parents mentioned they were worried about the perceived maturity needed to comprehend what these LGBTQ characters represent, and they showed more discomfort with gender diversity (trans and non-binary characters) than sexual diversity (non-heterosexual characters). They also feared that an overabundance of LGBTQ references might prioritize "political correctness" over authentic representation, which moreover could confuse children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early connection children form with nature is vital in fostering positive attitudes towards the environment. Television plays a significant role in shaping these attitudes, yet the inclusion of environmental messaging in children's programs remains unexplored. This study investigates the extent of conservation messages and nature portrayals on Australian free-to-air children's television. A mixed-methods approach was employed, analysing all programs airing on ABC Kids, a network aimed at children aged two to six years old, over a seven-day period. Phase 1 involved summarising program descriptions, types, styles, moral themes, and durations. Phase 2 entailed viewing all episodes and noting environmental representations, which were then analysed using content analysis. Only 14.3% of programs (10/70), representing 10.3% of airtime (481/4652 min), included an 'Environmental Experiences' moral theme. Content analysis revealed six distinct themes in environmental representations, with more positive than negative messages. These messages were predominantly implicit, conveyed through character dialogue and imagery. Environmental moments represented a balance of flora and fauna but were largely not fact-based. This study suggests a need for increased airtime for environmentally focused programs and more consideration of current environmental issues. Producers are encouraged to include more positive environmental morals and align themes with children's learning styles to enhance their connection to and understanding of environmental issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current evidence suggests a potential detrimental effect of increased television viewing on children's health, including sensory processing issues. Therefore, this study examined the association between television viewing time and atypical sensory reactivity (SR) in children aged from three to seven years. We evaluated data from the InProS cross-sectional study (n = 545). Daily television viewing was categorized into tertiles: ≤1.5, 1.5 to 2.5, and ≥2.5 hours. SR was evaluated using the Short Sensory Profile (SSP). Children with atypical SR were those with a global SSP score below 155, 30 for tactile sensitivity, 15 for taste/olfactory sensitivity, 13 for movement sensitivity, 27 for under-responsive/seeks sensation, 23 for auditory filtering, 26 for low energy/weak, and 19 for visual/auditory sensitivity. We used multiple Poisson regression models with robust variance to explore associations. After adjusting for covariates, children who watched television 1.5 to 2.5 and ≥2.5 hours/day showed a higher prevalence of atypical global SR (prevalence ratio [PR]: 1.54; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.03 to 2.30; PR: 1.81; 95% CI: 1.19 to 2.76, respectively) and auditory filtering (PR: 1.50; 95% CI: 1.15 to 1.96; PR: 1.36; 95% CI: 1.01 to 1.83, respectively), compared with children who watched ≤1.5 hours/day. In addition, watching television ≥2.5 hours/day, compared with watching ≤1.5 hours/day, was associated with having atypical SR in movement sensitivity (PR: 1.73; 95% CI: 1.06 to 2.83), under-responsive/seeks sensation (PR: 1.31; 95% CI: 1.02 to1.69), and low energy/weak (PR: 2.02; 95% CI: 1.01 to 4.06). The findings showed that television viewing ≥1.5 hours/day was associated with a higher prevalence of atypical SR in childhood. However, further longitudinal studies are required to confirm these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated in several historical and scholarly contexts—Roland Barthes's discussions of image/music/text, Michel Chion's and Claudia Gorbman's scholarship on film music, Linda Hutcheon's (and others') urgings to extend adaptation scholarship beyond book and film, and Kamilla Elliott's call to disrupt the binaries of word/image literature/film—this article's main intent is to look at the role music plays in adaptation. To do so, it focuses on Maurice Sendak's 1962 Nutshell Library and the four concept books it contains (One was Johnny , Alligators All Around , Pierre , and Chicken Soup with Rice), these stories' translation to television in 1975, and their subsequent transformation into a Broadway musical in 1980. The article argues for the value of looking to texts for children in relation to adaptation studies and especially with regard to music's effects as a part of the adaptation process and product. As it does, it claims that, through music's specific abilities to intensify emotion, position emphasis, and establish sequence, it transforms the literacy lessons of Sendak's Nutshell Library , the ideologies of child agency put forward by that text, and the place of the real child in and in relation to media. In this, it highlights music's capacity to disrupt and alter the word–image relationship across books, films, and embodied performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bluey stands as the current pinnacle in children's television series, lauded and adorned with multiple accolades for its educational and social merits. It stands out for its portrayal of childhood social learning within familial settings, offering a realistic depiction of everyday challenges. In addition, Bluey is based on the everyday life of Australian society, clearly reflecting the country's customs, social values, and natural environments, making it an invaluable resource for enriching the cultural learning of the English language and culture from an Australian point of view, an issue that is rarely addressed in the specialist literature. Thus, this study seeks to identify the cultural and societal facets of Australia depicted in it, with the aim of assessing its pedagogical value in teaching English to non-native learners within the context of primary education. Thirty evaluators analyzed the 52 episodes of the first season of Bluey, endeavoring to identify elements across nine thematic areas. To mitigate variances among evaluators, elements were verified only if agreement was reached by at least three evaluators. In total, evaluators identified 3327 elements representing Australian culture, comprising these categories: (1) Childhood; (2) Devices; (3) Lifestyles; (4) Food; (5) Language; (6) Sports; (7) Animals; (8) Nature; and (9) Places. A total of 1223 elements received verification by the requisite number of evaluators. The resulting catalog of Australia-specific elements per episode serves as a valuable tool in selecting the most instructive episodes for English-language and Australian cultural education for non-natives. This compilation facilitates a nuanced approach to teaching English, rooted in the diverse and culturally rich Australian context, thus breaking away from strictly British and American cultural associations and embracing a broader linguistic and cultural landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TV viewing is associated with health risks, but existing measures of TV viewing are imprecise due to relying on self-report. We developed the Family Level Assessment of Screen use in the Home (FLASH)-TV, a machine learning pipeline with state-of-the-art computer vision methods to measure children's TV viewing. In three studies, lab pilot (n = 10), lab validation (n = 30), and home validation (n = 20), we tested the validity of FLASH-TV 3.0 in task-based protocols which included video observations of children for 60 min. To establish a gold-standard to compare FLASH-TV output, the videos were labeled by trained staff at 5-second epochs for whenever the child watched TV. For the combined sample with valid data (n = 59), FLASH-TV 3.0 provided a mean 85% (SD 8%) accuracy, 80% (SD 17%) sensitivity, 86% (SD 8%) specificity, and 0.71 (SD 0.15) kappa, compared to gold-standard. The mean intra-class correlation (ICC) of child's TV viewing durations of FLASH-TV 3.0 to gold-standard was 0.86. Overall, FLASH-TV 3.0 correlated well with the gold standard across a diverse sample of children, but with higher variability among Black children than others. FLASH-TV provides a tool to estimate children's TV viewing and increase the precision of research on TV viewing's impact on children's health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the revolutionary impact of new media, television remains a socially shared reference point for media functions, e.g., information, entertainment, and hybridized genres. Through its simplified knowledge and scripts, television reduces cognitive asymmetry between experts and the public on general and specific topics, thus having a critical role in constructing social representations. This work examines two (apparently) distant realities, i.e., mental health as a fundamental aspect of public health and popular and "light" entertainment formats like reality shows. In the past, researchers investigated media representation of mental illness in general terms alongside other types of programs, e.g., coming-of-age, dramedy television series, and children's television programs. This study examines how depression is discursively constructed and socially represented in a case that shook the Italian public opinion, i.e., a Big Brother VIP cast member with depression symptoms. The critical discourse analysis, focusing on positioning and representations about depression, enabled us to emphasize that (1) knowledge about depression is poorly defined and participants' reactions are mostly immature and clumsy, and (2) mass media can play an essential role in creating more mindful and complete knowledge about mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children develop their perceptions, expectations, and attitudes toward the occupational world much earlier than they enter it, also via television which serves as a central socialization agent in the preschool years. The current study thematically analyzes the values associated with the occupational world in children's series by integrating two theoretical perspectives: Schwartz's theory of values and Bandura's social cognitive theory. The study finds that children's series represent the occupational world extensively and uniformly as multicultural and community-oriented. Many aspects of the occupational world in these shows are portrayed inconsistently with the real-world workplace. All occupations are treated equally, and the workplace is portrayed positively, involving obedience and conformity and nearly no concern for personal professional advancement. Impact Summary: Prior state of knowledge: Most prior research on the representation of the occupational world has focused on adult-targeted programming and on gender representations. However, television is an important socialization agent about the occupational world and its associated values also for young children. Novel contributions: This content analysis applies two perspectives: social cognitive theory and Schwartz's theory of values. It finds that the occupational world on children's television is presented positively, with conformity and little concern for personal advancement, rather inconsistently with the real-life workforce. Practical implications: As children can learn about the occupational world from its televised representation in child-targeted shows, parents should be familiar with and mediate the content's meaning for their children and complement such portrayals with discussions and real-world encounters with the workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Very young children increasingly use information and communication technologies (ICTs) in their home and educational environments. The study examined representations of ICT use in children's television content, which is a central socialization agent for this audience. Based on cultivation theory, an in-depth qualitative content analysis of television series for young children aired in Israel was conducted. Findings indicate that ICTs are depicted in this content as largely positive, promoting community connectedness and problem resolution, and as effective innovations for the dissemination of information. At the same time, these portrayals ignore common ICTs in children's lives (e.g. social media) as well as social and emotional aspects associated with ICTs in the real world (e.g. entertainment use). Promising themes in the representations—such as the promotion of free, intuitive, and successful use of ICTS—are coupled with findings that question the realism and relevance of these representations for young audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on family television co-viewing has tended not to examine variation by socioeconomic status (SES). This research uses time diaries from socioeconomically and racially diverse child and adolescent respondents (ages 8–17) from the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) in 2002 (N = 1918), 2007 (N = 1288), 2014 (N = 743), and 2019 (N = 622). I investigate socioeconomic differences in children's total shared TV time and how SES interacts with children's TV co-viewing to shape child-reported relationship quality with their most co-viewing family members. I find that parental educational attainment is significantly associated with total shared television time, but not consistently with child-reported closeness to family members. I find that co-viewed television time is only significantly associated with closeness to their most co-viewing family member in some waves for those whose head of household education is less than high school. Mothers being the most co-viewing family member, however, emerged as significantly associated with child-reported closeness at all waves, emphasizing the importance of co-viewing television specifically for the mother-child relationship. Previous research has explored the relationship between children's co-viewing television with family, but without consideration of SES-based differences in television time. Parental educational attainment is significantly associated with children's total shared TV time. Socioeconomic status and co-viewing time are not consistently significantly associated with child-reported closeness to their co-viewing partner, though mothers being the co-viewer is associated across sample year. This has implications for researchers investigating the role of socioeconomic status in television and family dynamics, helping to tease apart classed and gendered television-viewing patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines parental attitudes towards LGBTQ characters in Flemish children's television shows. Through a survey, this research aims to investigate predictors for the attitudes and levels of resistance among parents, considering specific sociodemographic characteristics and parents' perceptions about the impact of television and children's sexual development. Data were collected from 614 Flemish parents with children aged four to twelve. The results reveal overall positive attitudes towards LGBTQ inclusion. However, attitudes are more negative towards gender diversity (trans and non-binary characters) compared to sexual diversity (non-heterosexual characters). Furthermore, attitudes towards sexual diversity differ among parents: fathers display more negative attitudes compared to mothers, and resistance is highest for parents with a lower educational attainment. Parents who believe in the prosocial impact of LGBTQ representation exhibited more positive attitudes, whereas those with conventional beliefs about children's sexual development displayed more resistance. This study offers insightful findings for future research, television producers, and media literacy initiatives aimed at providing a more inclusive media landscape and promoting acceptance among children and parents alike. Media representations of sexual and gender minorities are increasingly common in children's programming. Nevertheless, global controversies persist, highlighting tensions between inclusive representations and concerns about preserving childhood innocence. Our study reveals generally positive parental attitudes towards LGBTQ representation in Flemish children's programs. However, significant variations exist between different sociodemographic groups (i.e. significant different attitudes between mothers and fathers), and resistant against gender diversity (trans and non-binary characters) persists. Understanding parental attitudes towards LGBTQ representation is primarily beneficial to generate awareness among parents but equally for media workers and policymakers. Promoting prosocial outcomes of LGBTQ representation can enhance acceptance and understanding among children and parents, despite lingering societal tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with international trends, increasing numbers of children in Australia use streaming video platforms to watch television on-demand from extensive catalogues. Child viewers thus tend to negotiate platform interfaces organised by algorithmic curation to select content, rather than accessing content via scheduled linear TV. The deeper implications of this substantial shift in child audience habits around television have yet to be robustly reckoned with across scholarly and national policy approaches. Indeed, policy settings in Australia have not kept pace with these transformations, one result of which has been that 84% less Australian content was aired on free-to-air commercial broadcasters in 2022 compared to 2019. Key producer bodies fear the sector is in serious peril and may not withstand the current instability. Given that local children's television meets Australian children's best interests by situating them within their own socio-cultural context, the issue has become a site of significant policy, industry, and cultural concern. At this precarious time for the Australian children's television sector, this article outlines key findings of a mixed method study with Australian children aged 7–9 (n = 37) and their adult guardians to illustrate how children understand, identify, and discover 'local' and 'children's' content on streaming platforms. This child audience research contributes to current policy and scholarly debates around the 'routes to content' audiences develop in the streaming era. A focus of our analysis is how and if children find Australian content. Our aim is to shed light on how 'discoverability' issues compound the current state of turmoil for the sector. We elucidate children's digital fluencies with platform interfaces but highlight their limited cultural literacies with the content itself, which poses significant implications for industry and policy strategy around local content discoverability for child audiences on streaming platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Screen use, including TV viewing, among children is associated with their physical and mental development. The most common assessment of TV viewing are self-reports and these introduce significant error. Objective measures are needed to improve research approaches to inform screen use guidelines. We present an objective approach to assess TV viewing as participant's gaze on the screen. Family Level Assessment of Screen use in the Home (FLASH-TV) uses state-of-the-art computer vision methods for face detection, recognition, and gaze estimation to process images and estimate the amount of time a child in the family spends watching TV. We recruited 21 triads of participants for the development of the FLASH-TV system who took part in 1.5 h observation studies with 5 in participants' homes. We evaluated each step of FLASH-TV by comparing to human-labeled ground truth data. Face detection and recognition methods achieved more than 90% sensitivity in detecting the target child under the challenging conditions of low lighting and poor resolution on a subset of test frames. Our final step of gaze estimation achieved more than 70% sensitivity and 85% specificity when evaluated on all of 3 million gaze/no-gaze labeled frames from 21 triads. Finally, our combined three-step system achieved 4.68 min mean absolute error of the TV watching time with a mean ground-truth TV watching time of 21.72 min. This method offers an objective approach to measure a child's TV viewing, with validation studies underway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study was to investigate impact of dancing program on early childhood children's pro-social skills, aggression and shyness. Treatment group applied eight weeks long dancing program which contained two dance activities for each week. Control group had not applied the dance program. Forty-five children from treatment and 62 children from control group participated the study. Teachers rated their children's social skills before and after the dancing program. Findings showed that treatment children's pro-social skills significantly increased from pretest to posttest and aggression and shyness scores significantly decreased from pretest to posttest. Similar findings were not detected for control group. Two groups' posttest minus pretest differences for three sub dimension compared and comparison revealed significant difference in favor of treatment group. These findings pointed the dancing program which was developed by investigators as a practical intervention tool to promote young children's social skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends academic debates occurring in the discursive intersections between childhood studies and tourist studies. Drawing on theoretical concepts devised by Mikhail Bakhtin and Erving Goffman, it employs a critical discourse analysis that focuses on the representation of tourists in selected travel-themed episodes of three popular children's television series. This study investigates how travel experiences and practices of touristic consumption are discursively constructed and interrogates how this tourist discourse is implicated in relationships performed by children and adults or authority figures in these narratives. The findings imply that children's travel-themed television narratives both challenge and reinforce cultural assumptions about tourist behaviour. This paper highlights how literary devices such as carnivalesque humour and anthropomorphism are employed to convey cultural messages and touristic themes. It also demonstrates that critical discourse analysis is an effective framework for explaining and understanding the various social interactions, roles, and relationships portrayed in these narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the global expansion of the children's television series Sesame Street. The series was created in the United States in 1969 with the goal of preparing preschool-aged children for formal education, particularly those who were disadvantaged by racial and class inequities. The organization behind Sesame Street, Children's Television Workshop (CTW), sought to sell the series internationally while avoiding the perception of cultural imperialism. However, CTW faced challenges in Western Europe, where broadcasters had different ideas about appropriate children's programming. The article explores CTW's efforts to negotiate international markets and the impact of Sesame Street's global success. [Extracted from the article]

This is a case study of 40 years of policy approaches in Australian children's television during which the children's television production ecology was profoundly altered by new distribution technologies. For decades Australia used quotas, subsidies and screen organisation The Australian Children's Television Foundation to safeguard supplies of children's television including drama. Digitisation has caused enormous industrial disruption while delivering abundant children's content on demand. The article calls for new approaches to supporting local children's screen content through increased funding of public service media rather than the ad hoc distribution of resources to an organisation without direct pathways to audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the process of script development in the anime industry, with a specific focus on the collaborative environment known as the writer's room. The author draws on participant observation of two anime series to explore the social dynamics and consensus-building involved in script development. The article emphasizes the importance of stakeholder consensus and the influence of negotiated social values and relationships in shaping scripts. It also discusses the roles of producers, studio staff, and writers in the script development process. Overall, the article provides insights into the complexities and challenges of script development in the anime industry. [Extracted from the article]

Mass media plays an important role in delivering and spreading information, increasing the probability of exposure of growing individuals to content of various kinds, even content that is inappropriate for their developmental stage. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the type of television use, exposure to different types of programs potentially characterized by violent content, and psychological well-being in a sample of Italian children. 177 elementary school students, from grade 3 to grade 5 (94 females, 83 males, Mage=9.6, SD=0.8, age range: 8-11 years) completed an ad hoc questionnaire, related to socio-demographic data and mode of television viewing, the Italian Fear Survey Schedule for Children - Revised, the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children, and the Societal and Personal Risk Assessment for Youth. The results show that age has no significant correlation with television viewing time or parental coviewing. However, there was a positive correlation with perceived social risk and general risk perception, while there was a negative correlation with separation anxiety. A cluster analysis revealed four unique behavioral patterns that illustrate the complex relationship between television content and psychological responses. In addition, ANOVA revealed significant differences in risk perceptions between groups. These findings underscore the need to employ nuanced media engagement techniques and design targeted media literacy programs that take into account the complex effects of media on children's development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on exploring translanguaging pedagogies in education, particularly regarding multilingual learners' experiences and the impact of incorporating home languages into the classroom. Topics include the twin skin of ethnic and linguistic identity; the exclusionary effects of monolingual classroom instruction; and the potential of translanguaging pedagogies to challenge colonial linguistic practices and values in schools.

Background: The influence of food advertising on food preferences and consumption could also contribute to the socio-economic inequalities among Spanish children in terms of eating habits and childhood obesity. Although the main food advertising channel targeted at children in Spain is television, available studies estimate exposure indirectly by combining content data with audience data. The aim of this study was therefore to describe the frequency of exposure to television advertising of unhealthy foods and drinks, measured directly, among Spanish children and adolescents, and analyse its socio-economic inequalities. Methods: Observational study of television advertising impacts in a sample of 1590 children aged 4 to 16 years drawn from a consumer panel representative of the Spanish population in this age group, over the course of a full week of broadcasting in February 2022. The sample was obtained through stratified random sampling by Autonomous Region, with quotas being set by reference to socio-demographic variables. Exposure was measured with an audiometer, and the nutrient content of the food and drink advertised was analysed using the nutrient profile of the WHO Regional Office for Europe. We used the Chi-squared test to analyse possible differences in advertising coverage by socio-economic level. Results: The participants saw a weekly mean of 82.4 food and drink commercials, 67.4 of which were for unhealthy products (81.8%), mostly outside the child-protection time slot. On average, low-social class participants received 94.4% more impacts from unhealthy food and drink advertising than did high-class participants (99.9 vs. 51.4 respectively). The mean advertising coverage of unhealthy foods and drinks was 71.6% higher in low-class than in high-class participants (10.9% vs. 18.7%; p = 0.01). Conclusion: Spanish children and adolescents received an average of 10 impacts per day from television spots for unhealthy foods and drinks. The exposure of low-class children is double that of high-class children, a finding compatible with the high prevalence of childhood obesity in Spain and the related socio-economic inequalities. To protect Spanish minors from the harmful effects of food advertising and reduce the related social health inequalities would require the implementation of a 24:00 watershed for unhealthy food advertising on television. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses an exhibition at the Museum of Toronto called "Mr. Dressup to Degrassi: 42 Years of Legendary Toronto Kids TV." The exhibition showcased audiovisual and ephemeral archival materials from Toronto's children's television programming, including shows like Mr. Dressup, Today's Special, and Degrassi. The exhibit was curated by Ed Conroy and featured interactive activities and contextual information about the historical and cultural significance of these shows. However, the exhibit also highlighted the challenges of preserving and accessing early television shows, as not all of them have been preserved or are readily available. [Extracted from the article]

This study examines the global expansion strategies that were initiated by the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), with a specific focus on the adaptations of Sesame Street in Japan and South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. When CTW began its globalisation in the early 1970s, the international adaptation process of Sesame Street had two key methodologies: Co-production and Open Sesame, serving as the framework for disseminating US educational television internationally. However, Sesame Street in both Japan and South Korea had been mainly perceived as a tool to enhance English proficiency for formal schooling. Another significance of these adaptations was the centralised approach to educational broadcasting. State-run broadcasters or national education research institutes in these countries played pivotal roles in broadcasting Sesame Street for formal schooling. This unique adaptation positioned Sesame Street as an educational programme for English-learning programmes, transcending its original preschool focus. The globalisation of Sesame Street in Japan and South Korea enabled the creation of new local educational programmes for preschool children by borrowing the show's fundamental educational purposes and programme structures. In sum, the cases of Sesame Street in Japan and South Korea represent how educational broadcasting in local countries interacted with both domestic and foreign influences to establish indigenous educational programmes. These adaptation processes reflect the dynamic interactions between local countries and CTW's global strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological, spiritual, and psychological challenges threatening the survival of humanity are so formidable that nothing short of a transition in both our psychological lives and public policy will suffice. This article proposes that mythopoesis, the creation of imaginative worlds using the arts and mythology, can help guide us in the imagining of new ecological and psychological worldviews that can inspire us to work through the current-day ecological crisis of the Anthropocene. By examining one of the great works of children's fantasy television, Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, we will illustrate how the series thoughtfully integrates principles of Depth Psychology such as alchemy, personal and collective shadow, the Great Turning, the ecological unconscious, earth dreaming, and the imaginal realm, with mythopoesis into a remarkably creative vision that provides a metaphorical blueprint for content that can be useful in the current era of crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Beyond Bagpuss: A History of Smallfilms Animation Studio" by Chris Pallant explores the creative origins, production histories, artistic innovations, and cultural influences of the Smallfilms animation studio. The book focuses on the contributions made by Smallfilms to British animation and domestic television programming, highlighting their independence from London and their mechanical ingenuity. Pallant covers various Smallfilms series, including Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine, The Saga of Noggin the Nog, Pogles' Wood, and the Clangers, as well as lesser-known works like Sam on Boffs' Island and Pinny's House. The study emphasizes the craft and Britishness of Smallfilms animations, providing insights into the creative cultures and thematic constants of the studio. Pallant's research methodology involves widening the frame, plugging gaps in the historical record, and expanding the Smallfilms narrative beyond the Postgateian orthodoxy. The book also addresses methodological challenges faced by UK television historians, the practical opportunities and pitfalls of the archive, and the precarious nature of animation as an artistic practice. Overall, "Beyond Bagpuss" offers a comprehensive and robust account of television animation through the lens of Smallfilms' working practices and stylistic operations, shedding light on the significant impact of Postgate and Firmin on British cultural history. [Extracted from the article]

This study examined whether an educational television show would affect young Haitian children’s gender perceptions. We first collected data on children’s beliefs about male and female characteristics and roles. Among 862 participating 6- and 7-year-olds from urban, peri-urban, and rural settings, we saw gender stereotypical beliefs about activities, traits, and occupations. We conducted a school-based intervention over a 10-week period, in which children were randomly assigned to watch a children’s television program in either of two groups: one that watched Lakou Kajou or one that watched Dora the Explorer. Each group saw 21 episodes of its assigned show, spread over 3 screenings of 7 episodes each. Lakou Kajou is an educational television show created in Haiti that purposely incorporates overt counter-stereotypical gender messaging. Among those children who watched Lakou Kajou and recalled more characters from the show, beliefs around gender became less stereotypical. In countries like Haiti, where pronounced gender disparities and biases exist, it is encouraging to see that a locally produced educational television show can change beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]