ACJ Review: The Faces of Televisual Media

Volume 7, Issue 2004

The Faces of Televisual Media: Teaching, Violence, Selling to Children (2^nd Ed.)

Palmer, Edward L. & Young, Brian M. (Eds.)
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003
408 pages
Paper, 0-8058-4075-3, US $39.95

Reviewed by: Lucian Dinu, University of Alabama
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The Faces of Televisual Media is a valuable collection of writings on issues related to children and television. In three of its five parts, the book tackles television’s educational potential, its entertainment appeals and caveats, and concerns brought about by advertising directed to children. Two introductory chapters summarize the contents of the book and present the author’s view of future technological advancements in televisual media. Finally, the last chapter puts in perspective the informational content presented throughout the book and highlights some of the challenges facing researchers and policy makers with regard to children’s use of televisual media.

Overall, the book has much to offer. First, the breadth of information is impressive, although it does come at the expense of depth. Over the years, a massive body of research has accumulated on children’s interaction with television. Between the covers of a single book the editors manage to address some of the most important problems in research on children and the media.

The editors’ effort to give each of the three central parts of the book its own structure and logic is remarkable. Each section is introduced by a historical analysis, followed by content studies, then effects studies, and finally, challenges for the future.

Although all contributions are eminently readable, up to date, and extremely informative, each set of chapters dealing with one of the three sets of issues—teaching, violence, and selling to children—has its own highlights.

In the section dedicated to the educational potential of televisual media, V. Crane and M. Chen review research on the content of children’s television over time and identify quantitative and qualitative changes: More providers of more types of media offer a greater variety of programs today than 20 years ago, and more quality programs are now available to the children. Crane and Chen provide a good discussion on how different types of research—basic, formative, and summative—contribute to the development of children’s educational programs.

J. Lee and A. Huston compare the effectiveness of both television and computers in delivering cognitive and prosocial content. Lee and Huston offer a helpful section on similarities and divergences between computer and television as education tools, as well as an informative discussion on what is and is not known about the teaching potential of televisual media.

In the section dedicated to entertainment, A. Bryant and J. Bryant review the literature on the intentional and unintentional effects of TV entertainment on children. Reflecting the state of research to date, Bryant and Bryant devote most of their chapter to unintentional/detrimental effects, such as displacement of other activities, stereotyping, fear reactions, sexual attitudes, and the effects of violence in the media.

In their chapter, P. Vorderer and U. Ritterfeld acknowledge the prevalence of entertainment programming on children’s television and argue that to youngsters it is a form of play. In turn, their argument leads them to predict that interactive entertainment media will prevail, partly because interactivity allows the children to experience self-efficacy and control.

In the first chapter of the section dedicated to advertising targeted at children, M. Johnson and B. Young do more than just a history of children’s advertising on television. Their contribution offers an insight on the interplay between the development of television in America, the children’s advertising regulation/deregulation waltz and the themes recurring in research on what and how children understand from television commercials.

Finally, in a short chapter, S. Calvert presents some of the problems that may face future generations of children. Technological advancements will offer advertisers accurate tools to target child consumers individually, and the price to pay is privacy. Moreover, because the Internet content is less regulated than television, children may be exposed to advertisements for products that cannot be promoted on TV, such as alcohol and cigarettes.

Overall, Palmer and Young’s Faces of Television excels at reflecting the state of the art in research on children and the media. Its good structure, readability, and not in the least the caliber of the contributors—most of them leading scholars—make it an extremely helpful introductory book for the beginning researcher.