Video Critical: Children, the Environment, and Media Power (Acamedia Research Monograph) [Paperback]

David Gauntlett (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1860205135 | ISBN-13: 978-1860205132 | Publication Date: January 3, 2006

Exploring the contribution that television can make to a child's understanding of the world, this book argues fiercely against the attempts of psychologists to explain complex social issues in individualistic terms. The findings of a new research method developed especially for this study, in which groups of schoolchildren were given video equipment to facilitate their making original video productions, are presented. Taking the environment as their focus, the videos suggest that the children's views of both environmental issues and the mass media are complex and contradictory.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Gauntlett is a lecturer in communications at the University of Bournemouth. He is the author of Moving Experiences.

Product Details

• Paperback: 188 pages
• Publisher: John Libbey Publishing (January 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1860205135
• ISBN-13: 978-1860205132
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,568,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guantlett's answer to why the Revolution won't be televised, February 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Video Critical: Children, the Environment, and Media Power (Acamedia Research Monograph) (Paperback)

In an even-handed examination of how mass media forms the boundaries of environmental issues, David Guantlett, with skill and clarity maneuvers through potentially difficult and theory-ladden "critical theory," incorporating a Herman/Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent) edge, examining the way television affects the way audiences frame the incredibly complicated and inter-penetrating social issues of environmental problems. Guantlett is not so much interested in whether the mass media is culpable of intensionally ignoring or avoiding environmental issues. Instead he discovers through a creative study that children audiences have internalized environmental problems and their solutions in a one-dimensional "narrative": the problem has been created by individuals and is to be then solved by individuals. So what's the problem with that? It seems clear enough that if there are environmental problems, they are nothing more that an accumulation and combination of individual lifestyle choices and subsequent actions. Right? Not so fast. Within this "individualistic" problem/solution framework, how do we account for and address instances of polluting industries that fall within government and legal regulations? Moreover, how do we address the environmentally problematic social institutions, such as the wide-spread car-centered transportation rubrics through an "individual" problem/solution framework? Is there not an equally complicit socio-political aspect to environmental issues? And why is this aspect, the environmentally comprimising social institutions, missing withing environmental news coverage? Guantlett's subltle, yet powerful analysis shows that the important "absent narrative" within television coverage of environmental issues is nothing as diabolical, cliche, or as simple as a conspiracy thoery, but rather the normal outcome of the workings of modern industial capitalism, corporate owned media, and thus an increasingly narrow ideological framework of acceptable media content. Guantlett's work is on the money - so to speak.

A worthwhile sidenote: anyone who can incorporate Horkheimer, Adorno, Marx, and Beavis and Butthead into a single chapter about mass media and society is a five-star book for that reason alone - enjoy!

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Critical Theory perspectives on Environmental Politics/Comm, May 3, 2001

By 

Vernon J. Martin (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Video Critical: Children, the Environment, and Media Power (Acamedia Research Monograph) (Paperback)

In an even-handed examination of how mass media forms the boundaries of environmental issues, David Guantlett, with skill and clarity maneuvers through potentially difficult and theory-ladden "critical theory," incorporating a Herman/Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent) edge, examining the way television affects the way audiences frame the incredibly complicated and inter-penetrating social issues of environmental problems. Guantlett is not so much interested in whether the mass media is culpable of intensionally ignoring or avoiding environmental issues. Instead he discovers through a creative study that children audiences have internalized environmental problems and their solutions in a one-dimensional "narrative": the problem has been created by individuals and is to be then solved by individuals. So what's the problem with that? It seems clear enough that if there are environmental problems, they are nothing more that an accumulation and combination of individual lifestyle choices and subsequent actions. Right? Not so fast. Within this "individualistic" problem/solution framework, how do we account for and address instances of polluting industries that fall within government and legal regulations? Moreover, how do we address the environmentally problematic social institutions, such as the wide-spread car-centered transportation rubrics through an "individual" problem/solution framework? Is there not an equally complicit socio-political aspect to environmental issues? And why is this aspect, the environmentally comprimising social institutions, missing withing environmental news coverage? Guantlett's subltle, yet powerful analysis shows that the important "absent narrative" within television coverage of environmental issues is nothing as diabolical, cliche, or as simple as a conspiracy thoery, but rather the normal outcome of the workings of modern industial capitalism, corporate owned media, and thus an increasingly narrow ideological framework of acceptable media content. Guantlett's work is on the money - so to speak.

A worthwhile sidenote: anyone who can incorporate Horkheimer, Adorno, Marx, and Beavis and Butthead into a single chapter about mass media and society is a five-star book for that reason alone - enjoy!