The study of the influence of cartoon products on the socialization of children in the practice of sociological research

Udalova Ekaterina Sergeevna ORCID: 0000-0002-5543-2762 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor; V.G. Belinsky Pedagogical Institute; Penza State University 40 Krasnaya str., Penza, Penza region, 440026, Russia des-2312@mail.ru

Introduction

The question of the influence of mass media on personality and audience has remained relevant for science since the 20th century. At this time, theories emerged that interpret the nature and degree of media influence on a person and her behavior in different ways. Of particular interest to scientists was the question of the mechanisms of media influence on the socialization of children. Representatives of various sciences, including sociology, pedagogy, and psychology, investigated the features of this influence, taking into account age, gender, and social conditions of socialization and upbringing of children.

Special attention in such studies is paid to animated products (films and TV series), which vividly and affordably demonstrate to children various ways of interacting with the outside world. They form the child's first ideas about good and evil, examples of right and wrong behavior. Comparing himself with his favorite characters, the child gets the opportunity to better understand himself and others, and the events unfolding in the animated film contribute to the formation of his worldview. Thus, animated films can become an effective means of educating and socializing a child.

The emergence and spread of the Internet, various Internet media and technical devices have increased children's access to cartoon products. Now a child can watch a cartoon at any time and in any quantity, and the choice is becoming wider. This freedom of choice certainly places great responsibility on parents for the content their children consume. At the same time, this creates a new challenge for society and the state, requiring the development of effective tools to protect children from negative information impact.

Science plays an important role in solving this problem, including not only the study of this issue and the diagnosis of problems, but also the development of tools for effective and prompt examination of children's media content.

Thus, the issues of not only analyzing the content of children's media products (solving cognitive and diagnostic problems), but also creating effective tools for studying (approaches, techniques, methods) the content of children's cartoon products, the nature of their impact on the socialization of children (solving epistemological and applied issues) become relevant for science. Therefore, our goal is to identify the practices of sociological research of the influence of cartoon products on the socialization of children, which can become the basis for the further development of general recommendations for the effective examination of children's media products.

A brief review of research on the impact of cartoon products on the socialization of children

The problem of media influence on children has been developed by a number of foreign researchers throughout almost the entire 20th century. American scientists were among the first to be interested in the impact of violence scenes broadcast in the media on children ^[1]. Many years of research have been conducted, during which the negative impact of violent scenes in films on the value orientations and behavior of children has been revealed. The conclusion received by foreign sociologists (G. Bloomer, P. Hauser) deserves the attention of contemporaries back in the 1930s, the demonstration of scenes of cruelty and aggression especially affects the psyche of children in the absence of proper attention from family and school ^[2]. In the 1960s, A. Bandura empirically proved the influence of examples of cruelty of heroes demonstrated by the media on the behavioral attitudes of preschool children ^[3]. In the early 70s of the XX century, J. McIntyre, J. Tivan, studying high school students, revealed a correlation between their negative behavior and the choice of a television product ^[4]. Longitudinal studies have also been conducted confirming the negative impact of violent scenes on children's behavior ^[5].

The most famous studies of the problems of the impact of television on human consciousness were conducted by H. Eysenck, A. Bandura, L. Berkowitz, J. Gerbner and others ^{[6, p. 66]}.

In Russia, the problem of the impact of the media, animated films in particular, began to be considered later. In the USSR, the first studies of the influence of television on children were conducted in the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, the interest of Russian scientists in the topic increased in proportion to the increase in the importance of television itself. In the 1990s, a number of large-scale sociological studies of the impact of television on children were conducted. In particular, the research of N. P. Grishaeva, conducted in 1998-1999, deserves attention, the goals of which were to clarify the degree of influence of television on the formation of moral ideas of preschoolers, the place of television in the budget of family time, as well as the circumstances of watching TV ^{[6, p. 78]}. The popularity of leisure activities on the television screen among children, adolescents and youth in the 1990s is evidenced by the materials of many studies. Thus, according to the All–Russian study "Russian Teenagers in the information world" (1997-1998), in the structure of leisure, television viewing is in the first place (76.7%), while reading is in the fourth (49.1%) ^{[6, p. 62]}.

In the 2000s, the interest of Russian scientists in the topic increased even more. Among the Russian scientists who have studied various aspects of this topic, one can note N. I. Aleshkin, I. A. Shchukin ^[7], G. V. Antonov ^[8], O. A. Araptanova ^[9], M. E. Glukhov ^[10], M. I. Davletshin ^[11], Z. R. Dokhova ^[12], O. S. Klyuchevskaya ^[13], E. G. Laktyukhina ^[8], T. V. Leontiev ^[14], A. A. Machenina ^[15], S. P. Storozheva, L. N. Mikidenko ^[16], K. A. Tarasov ^[17], V. P. Tkach ^[18], A.V. Sharikova, V. P. Chudinov ^{[6, 19, 20]}), E. P. Ustinov ^[21] and others.

Familiarity with the history of studying the influence of the media (including cartoon products) on children allows us to assert that the scientific community as a whole has accumulated sufficient experience in researching such an important problem. In each period of study, the historical features of the development of the media were inevitably taken into account. For example, in our country in the 1980s and 1990s, it was television that played a significant role in the lives of children ^{[6, p. 62]}, therefore, television broadcasting and the evaluation of its content become the subject of interest to many researchers. And here content analysis becomes an effective method of collecting important information ^{[6, p. 69]}. It is obvious that survey methods are also a tool in demand among researchers to obtain data on the television orientations of children of different ages. Not only children were interviewed, but also parents, teachers, and educators ^{[6, pp. 62-65, 76]}. The result of such studies is valuable knowledge about the peculiarities of TV perception and behavior of children of different ages ^{[6, pp. 66-67]}. The emerging and rapidly spreading forms of communication media and the increase in the volume of information in recent decades have also actualized the issue of research practices. Therefore, we consider it important to identify and analyze modern possibilities for studying the impact of media content on children.

Research methodology

As the subject of our research, we will designate the object and methods of studying the influence of cartoon products on the socialization of children.

In the course of our research, the following tasks were set: 1. identification of methods used to study the influence of animated films on the socialization of children; 2. description and analysis of the object of research within the framework of the topic; 3. identification of the main problems and features of using various methods in the practice of studying the influence of cartoon products on the socialization of children; 4. designation of research practice areas on this topic.

To solve the tasks set, articles by domestic researchers published in the period from 2000 to 2024 were selected. When choosing a publication, the following criteria were taken into account: the topic of the study is the influence of media content on children, the genre of the article is scientific research. As a result, 16 articles were selected, which present the results of research from various scientific fields such as sociology, pedagogy, psychology, and linguistics.

The analysis of the texts of the articles was carried out through a combination of content analysis methods, traditional document analysis, and elements of structural and semantic analysis. The structural and semantic analysis of the articles made it possible to identify structural and semantic blocks of articles containing descriptions of the object and methods of research, to designate generic concepts as objects of research. Further, through content analysis, the frequency of choosing a particular research object and the methods used was determined. The units of analysis were both articles on the topic and sections of articles containing data on the object and methods of research; the unit of account was the frequency of selections of an object and method of study in articles. The analysis of the documents made it possible to identify the main directions of studying the influence of media content on children.

Main results

From 2000 to 2011, three articles on this topic were published, but since 2012 their number has increased to thirteen, indicating an increase in research interest in the problem. Sociologists (9 articles, 56%), psychologists (2 articles, 13%), teachers (2 articles, 13%), linguists (2 articles, 13%) and cultural scientists (1 article, 6%) showed attention to the topic.

The object of research was considered: animated films, TV shows, educational, interactive and gaming forums, preschoolers, students, teenagers, as well as legal and official documents related to television broadcasting for children.

When analyzing the choice of the research object, it is possible to designate a generic concept – media content, which includes animated products, TV shows for children, educational, interactive and gaming forums. Media content became the empirical basis for the majority of the articles studied – in 10 (63% of the total number of selected articles). In particular, animated products such as "cartoons", "animated series", "foreign animalism", "Russian children's animation" were the subject of study in 8 articles (50% of the total number of selected articles). A specific animated series (^{[8, 9, 12, 21]}) it was considered in 4 publications (25% of the selected articles), Russian animation (^{[3, 7]}) – in 2 articles (13%), foreign animation (^[5]) – in 1 article (6%), and the most popular domestic and foreign cartoons (^[22]) are in 1 article (6%).

Sociologists and educators were primarily attracted to the images presented in media products that shape or may shape children's values, beliefs, and behavioral practices. Linguists, on the other hand, consider a media product as a media text, which explores the linguistic means of forming social attitudes.

The cartoon product is interpreted by researchers in different ways. For example, an animated film is understood as a tool, means, or mechanism for constructing values, stereotypes, and representations among a children's audience ^{[22, 12, 21]}. A cartoon product can be a factor in the formation of certain qualities in children ^[16]. In addition, children's animation can be studied as a media text ^{[9, 23]}. Animated films contain images and meanings that can be interpreted in different ways. For example, in a specific animated product, different semantic components are identified and revealed ^{[8, 9, 22]}; in other studies, images selected by a scientist are analyzed in a variety of children's animation (the image of a family ^[14], elite gender representations ^[12], family spiritual and moral values ^[22], the image of a school teacher ^[15], etc.).

Exploring the content of images, analyzing the meanings available in cartoon products, the authors suggest that these meanings objectively affect the socialization of children and the formation of their ideas and assessments, which often has negative consequences. ^{[8, 21, 10]}.

We will also designate children as a generic concept when formulating the object of research in the selected articles. Children are the object of research in 6 articles (38%): "preschoolers" (1 article, 6% of the total number of selected articles), "third grade students" (6%), "high school students" (13%), "primary school children" (6%), "teenagers aged 11-12" (6%).

To study the influence of media content on children, scientists used the following methods: survey, traditional document analysis, narrative analysis, content analysis, structured observation, projective method, experiment, phenomenological method, hermeneutical method.

The most widely used methods turned out to be a survey (in 4 articles, 25%) ^{[11, 15, 16, 17]} and content analysis (4 articles, 25%) ^{[8, 13, 14, 15]}. The surveys were conducted in various forms, such as "online questionnaire", "mass survey", "essay", "interview". They allow us to identify the views, assessments, preferences, and media practices of children. The peculiarity and certain complexity of the use of surveys in this case is the need to take into account the age and mental development of children.

In two articles, the influence of media content on children was studied using the hermeneutical method (13%) ^{[9, 23]}.

The choice of the method was objectively determined by the scientific field of studying the influence of media content on children. The hermeneutical method and narrative analysis have proved effective in analyzing the problem by linguists and cultural scientists. Sociologists, as a rule, used various types of surveys and content analysis. Only two articles by sociologists-researchers used other methods of studying the influence of media content on children (13%): the phenomenological method ^[22] and projective methods ^[18].

The analysis of the articles allowed us to identify three areas of study of the influence of media content on children.

1) Analysis of images and content of media content, including animated products. It is assumed that what is broadcast with the help of media content objectively affects the socialization of children. Such studies are usually based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of documents, interpretive techniques that allow you to see the meanings in the created images.Phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches are quite successfully applied in the practice of studying images of cartoon products ^{[22, 23]}.

2) The study of media practices and media preferences of children. Various survey methods have proven themselves to be effective ways of studying here.

3) To establish the influence of the content of an animated product on the behavior and socialization of children by fixing the correlation between watching video products and changes in children's behavior ^{[7, 17]}. Despite the long history of such studies, especially in foreign practice, the question of how to objectively establish a causal relationship between watching a video product and the behavioral reactions of the viewer remains a subject of discussion ^{[24, pp. 326, 330]}. Perhaps it is impossible to prove a causal relationship between watching a media product, an animated film and human behavior, at the same time, it is impossible to deny the presence of an impact. Here, surveys and experiments were used as methods of study ^{[7, 17]}.

Conclusions

Media content, including cartoon products, and children are the objects of studying the influence of media content on the socialization of the younger generation.

Various methods are used to analyze media content, such as content analysis, narrative analysis, phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches. The interdisciplinary nature of the topic determines a wide range of research strategies. In addition, the large-scale and constantly growing volume of media content opens up unlimited research opportunities.

Children's perceptions, assessments, preferences and media practices are clarified through surveys and projective techniques. The choice of children as an object of research requires taking into account their age characteristics in the application of research methods and strategies. In this context, sociographic methods, projective methods, the case study method, as well as forms of surveys based on associations, the use of which should take into account the characteristics of each age period, are promising.

Parents can also become useful sources of information about children's preferences in the media space. On the one hand, they have a deep understanding of the lifestyle of their children, their views, preferences; on the other hand, they act as role models in shaping values and behavior in the digital environment.

The three directions of studying the influence of media content on the socialization of children outlined above reflect three main tasks of scientific consideration of the issue. Establishing a correlation between watching media products and changes in children's perceptions and behavior allows us to identify the research problem itself. The analysis of children's media habits and preferences helps to diagnose existing trends and problems of children's interaction with the media. The analysis of media content makes it possible to predict the nature of its influence, and, accordingly, opens up the prospect of correcting children's content when adverse elements are detected.

In general, the study of the influence of a cartoon product on the socialization of children requires an interdisciplinary approach. Only a comprehensive methodology will allow us to form criteria for analyzing children's media content, as well as develop scientific recommendations for conducting professional expertise in this area.