Media Impact on Children

Background

"Media Impact on Children" is one of two graduate seminars that are taughtin the Free University of Berlin as an introduction to media research and media psychology. Typically this seminar istaught in the spring semester, whereas the fall seminar deals with theories of mass communication and media impact on adults. Although this class isnot a required prerequisite for the topical seminars that are offered in media research and media psychology, it is recommended that students take this class before they go on totopical seminars where single aspects are discussed in more detail.

In the "Media Impact on Children" class we discuss children's interactionwith different media (from books, comics,audio tapes and radio to television, computer and the Internet). An emphasis is put on television because it is the medium that is mostexte nsively investigated by media researchers and because television is oneof the areas that students are usually most interested in. Topics that are traditionally covered in this class are:children's patterns of media use (what media they use, how much time t heyspend with media, age differences), television and cognitive development,socialization and television (e. g.gender stereotypes, moral development, social development...), TV violenceand aggressive behavior, children and TV advertisement, children's perception of television news, educational value of television, helping children to become conscious and criticalTV users, etc.

When I taught this class earlier, students formed groups of 2-5 and choseone of the above mentioned topics to present to the rest of the class. Ihelped them with finding articles for the topics and provided them withvideo clips related to their topics that they could show. Students were given half of the time of the weekly lesson to present their topic to the class. The problem Iexperienced with this format was that the lessons became monotonous veryeasily because each group started with a rather lengthy presentation with little involvement of the audiencefollowed by a short time for discussion (that was not very well prepared).Also, some groups did not coordinate their presentations very well. In thefuture, I will change this format in two ways: I will emphasize that the students include some critical thinking, creative and/or collaborative activities to involve the class intheir presentations and I will model this presentation style by using thesetechniques myself in the lessons.

For this assignment I will focus on a lesson on TV violence and its impacton children.

Audience

Students in their first year of graduate study. Usually, the audience is amix of psychology and pedagogy majors and students in teacher education. Additionally, approx. 10-20 % are students with other majors (informationscience, communication science) who take this course to fulfill their minoror electives requirement.

The class size ranges from 30 to 40 students.

Objectives

After this lesson the students should be able to:

• give numbers for the proportion oftelevision shows involving violence

• explain how the proportion of violence in TV is determined anddiscuss problems of measuring TV violence

• compare and contrast methods for measuring the impact ofviolence on TV on children

• discuss the relationship of TV violence and children'saggressive behavior

Plan

4 min Recap: Turn to your partner andrecap what we have talked about last week

5 min Time for questions/issues/problems with lastweek's topic (whole class)

1 min Advance organizer (transparency): Topics covered and activitiesin today's class

10 min Show 3-5 video clips that involve different kinds and degrees of violence (physical, psychological, with/without showing blood, animation, realistic). Ask students to note for each clip individually how many violent scenes they hav e seen and why they would rate theseas violent

10 min Group discussion (whole class): What did students perceive as violence? What were cases that were difficult to decide upon? Why?

15 min Presentation: Instructor gives overview of studies that soughtto determine the proportion of violence in TV, definition of violencein these studies, methods used, findings, critiques. Conclude with the question that, even if we kn ow there is violence on TV, what does thatmean for the viewer's behavior

10 min Analysis/APC in groups of 4 (Roundrobin-technique): Discuss a short summary of a study on the impact of TV violence.

5 min Gather student's ideas on the white board

15 min Jigsaw activity: Overview of studies and findings on effect ofTV violence. Half of the groups (same as before) get articles that report studies that have found that TV violence leads to aggressive behavior, the other half gets artic les that report findings of no or positive effect of TV violence. Each group is asked to write a short summary of the main points of their articles to present them to another group.

10 min Fishbowl: Each two jigsaw groups that had different articlescome together to discuss and compare the main points of theirarticles.

5 min Wrap up: Instructor gives a summary of the content of the lesson

Time Length

90 minutes

Methods and Procedures

Turn to your partner and share your thoughts, group discussion, advanceorganizer, analyzing video clips, lecture, APC; jigsaw, fishbowl

Assessment

For this particular lesson, there will be no assessment.

For the course, students will be asked to

1. submit a short individual reflection paper (2-3 pages) about aspects ofthis class that have changed their thinking of the subject matter

2. complete a group project. This can either be:

a) a research project (e. g. an analysis of certain aspects of a TVprogram, a survey on media use among children, an analysis of theliterature on a topic of the student's interest)

b) a lesson plan for a lesson that fosters children's understandingof/critical thinking about television

The project will be presented in class and students submit a project reportwith a detailed description of what they have done.