The Influence Of Adult-Mediation On Children's Television Literacy

Objective: The study took coviewing as an example mainly to explore the influence of adult-mediation on children's television literacy.Methods:The study consisted of two sub-researches.Firstly,we investigated family TV-watching situation and the parental mediation of children's TV-watching behavior with questionnaire.We sampled 1132 primary school students of grade 1-6 from 4 schools in Hangzhou,Ningbo,Wenzhou and Jinhua by cluster sampling.The questionnaire consists of two parts, respectively for students and their parents to answer.The students mainly to answer the questions refer to the viewing time in weekdays , the viewing content, and his/her perception of their parents1 mediating in his/her TV-watching behavior.The parents mainly to answer the questions refer to family TV-watching situation, including the viewing time and content of families during weekdays, the coviewing situation in family etc.The second part of the study was a 2(coviewing type)×2(grade)×2(gender) between subjects experimental design. We sampled 168 primary school students of grade 1-6 from two schools in Jinhua and Wenzhou by stratified random sampling.There was one control group,that was a non-coviewing group, and two experimental groups,that was a meaningful explanation group and a haphazard explanation group.In experimental groups,one experimenter and one child watched TV programs together, the experimenter used different coviewing styles in two experimental groups respectively.All the subjects should finish a televison literacy questionnaire after watching TV program.Results:. 1 .Only the score of restrictive mediation exceeded 3 in all the types of parental mediation.Parents who mainly use restrictive mediation accounted for 64% in all, that was the largest group,but they mainly restricted their children's viewing time,not the viewing content.2.For the overall and three types of mediation, there was significant gender differences(F_(5,1126) =4.67,p<.01;F_(5,1126) =3.68,p<.01;F_(5,1126)=2.88,p<.05;F _(5,1126)=3.67, p<.01) ,parents of students of grade 4-6 mediated more often and deeperly than parents of students of grade 1-3.3.Parents who were in different working situation mediated significant differently in meaningful explanation mediation ,as well as in the overall mediation (F_(2,981)=7.47,p<.01;F_(2,981)=5.86, p<.01) ,parents who was unemployed currently mediated significantly lower than employed and part-time employed ones. Parents who were in different parent-child coviewing frequency families mediated significant differently in meaningful explanation mediation(F_(3,984)=4.25,p<.01),who coviewing occasionally mediated significantly less than who coviewing usually or everday. Parents of different viewing time in weekdays mediated significant differently in restrictive mediation (F_{(3, 983)} =2.89,p<.05) ,who watched TV average within 1 hour a day mediated significantly less than others.4.For the overall televison literacy , the ability to distinguish fact from fiction of TV program and to understand the intent of TV program, there were significant simple effects of experimental treatments on the two levels of grades F_(2,167)=7.32, p<.01;F_(2,167)=31.34,p<.01; F_(2,167)=15.10,p<.01;F_(2,167)=30.04,p<.01;F_(2,167)=6.07, p<.01; F_(2,167)=20.81,p<.01):On the primary grades,the meaningful explanation group performed significantly better than the haphazard explanation group and the non-coviewing group;On the higher grades,the coviewing group performed better than the non-coviewing group,and for the ability to distinguish fact from fiction, the meaningful explanation group performed significantly better than the haphazard explanation group.There was significant main effect of experimental treatments (F_(2,167)=6.21,p<.05), the coviewing group performed better than the non-coviewing group.5.For the television literacy of advertising, there were significant simple effects of experimental treatments on the two levels of grades (F_(2,167)=6.73, p<.01; F_(2,167)=26.23, p<.01) : On the primary grades,the meaningful explanation group performed significantly better than the haphazard explanation group and the non-coviewing group;On the higher grades,the coviewing group performed better than the non-coviewing group. For the TV literacy of news, there was significant main effect of experimental treatments (F_(2,167)=15.04, p<.01) , the coviewing group performed better than the non-coviewing group. For the television literacy of cartoon, there were significant simple effects of experimental treatments on the two levels of grades (F_(2,167)=8.57, p<.01; F_(2,167)=5.13, p<.01) : On the primary grades,the meaningful explanation group performed significantly better than the haphazard explanation group, the haphazard explanation group performed worse than the non-coviewing group; On the higher grades, the meaningful explanation group performed significantly better than the non-coviewing group.Conclusions: 1. Generally,the parents's mediation of children's TV-watching behavior was not satisfied, the mediation patterns were limited, and the parents were lack of appropriate methods as well. The parents's mediation would be effected by children's grades,parents's working situation,the frequency of parent-child coviewing and parents's viewing time.2.Both the meaningful explanation and the haphazard explanation could improve children's television literacy,specially the meaningful explanation.But the influence of the two coviewing types were different on different grades students.3. We initially constructed a family coviewing mode,which consisted of the during watching part and the after watching part,and parents should positively mediate with open and democratic attitude.