Telesaadete representatsioon lasteaialaste hulgas
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The Representation of TV Programme among Kindergarten Children“ Keywords: preschool children and television, representation, TV harm, TV opportunities, pre-school children Children are growing up in increasingly media- and technology-rich environment. Recent studies have shown that while the popularity of new media is growing, television remains the most dominant medium among pre-schoolers (Vandewater et al., 2007: e1006; Kaiser Family Foundation 2010). According to the Estonian parents the same trend seems to be the case in Estonia as well: television is the most used medium among pre-school children, being used by 96 percent of the children (Sampo, 2010). Despite the fact that television has become almost universal at homes and television occupies excessive amount of children`s free time, there has been done too few empirical researches considering the representation on TV programme among children. Especially the younger audience is not enough studied. Relying on previous indicators the aim of this thesis was to examine pre-school children`s relations with television and the representation of TV programme among preschoolers. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 18 children aged 4-7. Half of them were from a big city Tallinn and half of them form a small town Kuressaare. To understand and interpret the results better the children`s teachers were also interviewed. In addition to that, a focus group interview with 23 Estonian kindergarten teachers was carried out to analyse their opinions and experiences regarding children`s television use. The results indicate that television plays significant part in children’ s everyday life and kids not only watch children’ s programmes but also programmes that are targeted to adults. However, children prefer children`s programme over adult`s programme. The main threats of television that came out of the interviews with children were: 1) interrupted sleep and bad dreams 2) fears of some characters (monsters, witches) and incidents (shooting, fire, scenes of war) 3) taking after negative and violent characters 4) children watch sometimes too serious and hard content for children to interpret 5) physical impacts on eyes and body. From the positive sides the results indicate that: 1) children can learn vocabulary from TV shows 2) educational programmes broaden children`s mind 3) children get ideas for play and art activities from TV programmes 4) teachers can use educational videos for educating the children. Kids themselves see only few positive effects of television and they tend to see television as harmful medium. Only the smallest children think that television is good for them because of entertainment. Children aged 5-7 consider television as bad for them, because it can harm their eyes and cause bad dreams. Teachers observed both positive and negative features of children television viewing, but they do not categorize television as either positive or negative medium. Instead, they indicate that television plays both positive and negative roles in children’s lives depending on how much and what children watch. They suggest that children need to learn to use television as they learn every other skill in their young lives. Therefore studies that try to understand children`s media use are crucial as they provide scientific research foundation that parents, educators and child health professionals can use to guide children`s media use.
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