Chris Bott
200098482
Cmns 428
Assignment #1
Chris Bott 200098482
Prof: Stuart Poyntz
The purpose of the three different culture jams that I have created is to educate parents on the role of entertainment-education websites in the lives of their children. The intention of these jams is to make parents more aware of the multitude of underlying issues that surround these websites that their children frequently visit. Some children can innocently spend hours upon hours on these websites with their parents unaware of the many influences that they are being exposed to and the subsequent effects. Therefore, it is the goal of my culture jams to act as an educating tool for parents so that they may become more aware of what their child is being exposed to and hopefully act upon this.
What I have done with my culture jams is taken screen captures of several popular websites for children and edited them to include some subtle and not so subtle commentary about the intentions and effects of the websites. I feel that putting this information in this form where it is overlying the website which it is criticizing is much more effective than just simply displaying the information on a brochure for example. With this powerful information directly imposed on top of the website that parents see their children visiting everyday it is my hope that this important message will hit home to the parents and impact them to change their actions and consequently the actions of their children. It is this combination of subtle shock value and carefully articulated information that I believe is essential to the success of any culture jam. An over reliance on shock value will do nothing but produce shock; there will be no education and therefore no change in awareness and subsequently no change in actions or attitudes. The opposite is true as well, if there is simply a glut of information no matter how compelling it is, it will fail to incite any change in the intended recipient. It is thus my hope that my culture jam meets this balance and delivers an important and effective message to parents.
Parents were chosen as the primary target for these cultures jams because the websites which I am focusing on target children at a very young age, before they are really able to make an informed conscious choice about the media they consume. Therefore it is put upon the responsibility of the parents to monitor their media consumption, including what they view on the Internet. Now most parents are aware enough to limit their children’s access so they are not viewing offensive materials such as pornography; however the thought of limiting their child’s access to websites such as Webkinz and Nick Jr are rarely considered. It is because of this that I believe that it is imperative to target parents and make them more aware of what their child is consuming on the Internet. The goal is to have them take a more proactive role in limiting their child’s internet access, monitoring it and discussing the consequences of what they are consuming. This will benefit their children in the present and especially in the future as they will develop healthy and educated media consumption habits from an early age. Early intervention is key in shaping healthy media consumption habits of our children today.
One of the primary reasoning’s and message behind this culture jam is that these websites are often involved in massive cross marketing and promotion campaigns of the parent company who operates them. These websites that attract children with their fun games and please parents with educational activities are at the same time directing these children and subsequently their parents to other forms of media controlled by the parent company. This is effectively a way of controlling children’s culture and the cultural products they consume. This echoes the Kline article, Thralls of the Screen: The Rise of Mass Media for Children. Although this article does not focus on the children’s Internet sites that I am focusing on, it has the same message that children’s culture is being effectively controlled by these media giants across many different media platforms. I believe that it is very important to help parents realize the immense media business that their child is exposed to and is intertwined with.
Another major issue that my culture jams address is the problems that arise when these and other websites consume a large percentage of children’s activity time. This is a paramount issue because it takes away children’s time from other activities that are of importance such as physical activity both indoors and outdoors. This of course contributes to the growing problem of unhealthy and overweight children. As well, it takes away from time which children would be using to be creative and using their imaginations in play. Increasingly, these websites are taking creative and imaginative aspects of play out of children’s lives. This point is often debated with some feeling that the play provided by these websites is sufficient for the creative and imaginative process. I disagree with this. My reasoning behind this aspect of my culture jams follows closely to the general reasoning of the Kline article, Learners Spectators or Gamers? An Investigation of the Impact of Digital Media in the Media Saturated Houehold. I believe that these websites and others like them are not always as beneficial as some people would like us to believe.
As with all culture jamming there are definite limitations and drawbacks to my culture jamming as well. The biggest obstacle that all culture jams including my own have to overcome is to get the message across as intended. As stated above I do believe that my culture jam has the right design to do this but there is still the ever present chance that it will be misinterpreted. For example, an individual could not quite understand or fathom the argument I am trying to make and will therefore just pass off my culture jam as ‘noise’. As well someone may think that it is to sensationalist and write it off as simply being there for shock value and fail to consider the important underlying argument. The other major challenge for this culture jam and many other is of course placement. For the jam to be effective the right people must see it. For my jam to be effective I need parents of children who are viewing and using these websites to see my jam. To often culture jams are primarily preaching to the converted and not being seen by the intended audience that they want to initiate change in.
Overall, I believe that my culture jams effectively communicate an increasingly important message. I believe that my jams strike a good balance that allows it’s important message to be well received in its target audience of parents of young children. However, as with all culture jams it faces the challenge of being seen by its intended audience and assuring that its message is being interpreted as desired and acted upon.
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