At first glance, the study or teaching of children's media from a TV studies perspective can feel like an epistemological nightmare. This is in part because it requires a blending of two seemingly incompatible frameworks: quantitative, social science approaches, such as those from the fields of psychology, mass communications, law, public policy, and education, and the qualitative, interdisciplinary approaches favored by the humanities. Much foundational work on children's media emerges from the former category, which gives it the appearance of posing or answering questions that are either unfamiliar or not germane to the latter category. The challenge in explaining the relationship between children and media from a feminist perspective is to find ways to make these frameworks speak to each other in more productive, transformative ways.
Because I teach a social science general education course called “Children's Television” but am not a social scientist by training, I usually begin the...
University of California Press