Representing Youth with Disability on Television
Glee, Breaking Bad, and Parenthood
Series:
Dana Hasson
Chapter 5. A Methodology to the Madness
Extract
← 68 | 69 →Chapter Five
A Methodology to the Madness
Television plays a major pedagogical role in our homes (Steinberg & Macedo, 2007). It is both contemplative and persuasive. Due to its impact on our lives, it is crucial to understand the messages it generates on a daily/nightly basis.
In 2010, the Kaiser Family Foundation, an organization that provides useful information on national health issues, tracked the amount of television consumed by 8- to 18-year-old children/teenagers. Rideout, Foeher, and Roberts, the authors of the study, noted that
8–18-year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time “media multitasking” (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours. The amount of time spent with media increased by an hour and seventeen minutes a day over the past five years, from 6:21 in 2004 to 7:38 today. And because of media multitasking, the total amount of media content consumed during that period has increased from 8:33 in 2004 to 10:45 today.
← 69 | 70 →This study reflects a critical aspect of the current media climate. As the viewing audience continues to set the direction in which television programming goes, this influence...
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