Sultan Moulay Slimane University

Faculty of Letters and Humanities

SLCE Master Program 2016/2017

Media Studies

EL HORCHI Sara

Children as a Special Audience

Just as parents and schools play a fundamental role in the

protection of children from negative media content, so do regulators and
policy makers. In fact, in his seminal book Media Literacy and mainly in the
fifth chapter, Children as a Special Audience, James Potter mentions
some adopted policies in the United States that aim at protecting children
from negative TV content given that television is the medium that can be
found in almost every house and children spend a lot of time in front of it.
Hence, they are exposed to whatever content whether it is negative or
positive. Some of these children while they are watching TV, they do not
have the capacity nor the education that allow them to understand the
plot of some TV shows and the ideology behind them. So what are these
policies? And to what extent are they effective?

One of the policies is called the family hour; it was adopted by

the TV industry in the United States after the pressure that was put on it
from the congress. This family hour came as self-regulatory policy which
suggests that all TV programs that are believed to be family friendly are
to be aired during prime time, whereas programs that have sensitive
content are to be pushed into late evening. However, several TV stations
filed suit because according to them this policy is a violation of free speech
which is what the first amendment to the US Constitution is about. That is
why, TV owners won their case in court and this policy did not work. This
has lead regulators to seek for other strategies and policies. In 1996, the

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Telecommunications Act was signed by then president Bill Clinton. This
act included an amendment which commended that all TV receivers sold
in the USA should have what is called a V-Chip. This latter gives parents
the ability to block out TV channels they believe are unsuitable and
inappropriate for their children to watch.

As a point of fact, regulators have also looked for strategies and policies to
protect children from unfair advertising practices. The first one is to limit
the amount of time devoted to advertising that target children to 12
minutes per hour on weekdays and 10,5 minutes per hour on weekends.
(P: 66) The second regulation emphasizes on that a lucid separation
should be put between entertainment and advertising content, why is
that? Potter contends that young children do not have the ability to discern
the difference between a program content and advertising content so this
shift of content is unfair for them. Thats why, the Federal Communications
Commission suggests what is called bumpers, and a bumper comes in
the form of a short video that marks the shift from a program to a
commercial break, and here we are talking about TV programmers giving
the possibility to the child to know that he is no longer watching his
program but rather a commercial.

It is crucial to point to the fact that children are treated as a special

audience because of their low levels of maturation and experience;
however, according to Potter, this does not mean that adults are more
media literate than children. In fact, Potter contends that there is a kind of
misinterpretation of Piagets theory. This latter even if it is confined to
children it does not mean that cognitive development ends at age 12;
Piaget simply focused his work on children and not adults and adolescents.
Concerning experience, we cannot talk about adults and adolescents
having more experience than children one hundred per cent. In fact, there
is a great deal of children with more effective experiences than many
adults and adolescents, especially now that we are living in the era of
technology. Children are exposed, every day, to a variety of novel
experiences as they are the category of people that knows much about

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novel electronic devices that allow them to experience different things
through the variety of useful websites they provide, in contrast to some
adults who are lagging behind in their openness to try novel technologies.
That is why; it is of paramount importance to understand that being older
does not grant you the title of a media literate. So, what are the abilities
that can help people to be media literate and to protect them from the any
potential harm from it?

They are called natural abilities and these are what make people more
media literate than other people. In fact, according to potter, people with
high degree of these natural abilities are more able to read media texts
than those with low level of these abilities. As a matter of fact, Potter
differentiates between seven natural abilities. Four of them are cognitive
and three of them are emotional ones.

The first cognitive natural ability is called field independency, and this
refers to ones ability to differentiate between the noise and the signal.
Given that the noise is the chaos of symbols and images (page 71) and
the signal is the information that emerges from it. The second cognitive
natural ability is called crystalline intelligence. This latter refers to ones
accumulated knowledge and experiences that allow its owners to solve
problems. It is something that increases with age because as we get older,
our experiences and knowledge accumulate with us. In addition, there is
another type of intelligence and this one is fluid. In fact, fluid intelligence
is the third cognitive natural ability. It refers to ones capacity to solve
novel problems that have nothing to do with prior experiences. It is
something that decreases with age because as we get older our brains do
not continue to operate effectively as they used to do when we are
younger. The last cognitive natural ability is conceptual differentiation and
it refers to how people classify and categorize things. People who classify
things using a large number of categories display, according to potter, a
high degree of conceptual differentiation. In fact, there are two strategies
that can be used in order to classify things. The first one is a leveling
strategy and the second one is a sharpening strategy. In the leveling

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strategy, we look for the similarities between previous messages and
novel ones. So here we are talking about a limited number of categories.
In contrast, the sharpening strategy requires the focus on the differences
between messages with the attempt to show a clear separation between
previous messages and new ones. People who use the sharpening strategy
exhibit a high level of conceptual differentiation and thus are more media
literate than those who use the leveling strategy.

The emotional natural abilities are three. The first one is emotional
intelligence. This latter refers to ones ability to control his or her emotions
when exposed to media content. People who exhibit a high degree of
emotional intelligence are able to control their emotions, perceive and
manage them and also understand others emotions and this what Potter
refers to as empathy; that is to say, they have the ability to see things not
only from their own perspectives but also from others perspectives. The
second one is tolerance for ambiguity. People with low tolerance for
ambiguity tend to get frustrated when encountering an unfamiliar
situation. In contrast, people who tolerate ambiguity feel at ease when
they are exposed to unexpected situations. Applying this to media, people
who do not tolerate ambiguity and when they are exposed to media
messages they try to see if these messages fit their expectations. If they
do, then these messages change from being expectations and
preconceptions to become a confirmation, but if these messages do not fit
their expectations, these messages are ignored. In contrast, people who
tolerate ambiguity do not mind being wrong. In fact, they are even willing
to analyze media messages and see why their preconceptions were not
correct.

The last emotional natural ability is non-impulsiveness which refers to

how quickly people make decisions about messages (Kagan, Rosman,
Day, Albert, & Phillips, 1964). People who are impulsive do not tolerate
uncertainty, they rather be wrong than uncertain so they rush in making
decisions about the media messages they receive. In contrast, people who
are not impulsive take their time before responding to media messages.

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These people are more concerned with accuracy than speed because they
are reflective and they care much about being right.

All things considered, children are treated as a special audience

that needs protection from negative media content due to their lack of
maturation and experience. But that does not mean that adults and
adolescents are immune to media risks. Potter asserts that media literacy
helps not only children but also adults and adolescents to lessen the
negative effects. Media literacy is something that can be developed. This
development is smoother among people who are willing to work on their
natural abilities and to improve them.

References:

Potter, James. (2011) . Media Literacy (5th Edition). California, SAGE

Publications, Inc.

Kundanis, Rose M. Children, Teens, Families, and Mass Media: The Millennial Generation.
Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum, 2003. Print.