Reading habits in the digital age: marketing strategies to promote reading among children and young adults

Reading is a form of active learning, and cultivation of reading habits is vital for every child and young adult. However, according to the world’s most in-depth and trustworthy indicator of students’ abilities, PISA, reading skills among youngsters are barely improving. The project aims to deliver answers to the questions: what is the overall state of the reading habits of European children and young adults?; how is reading encouraged and promoted to children and young adults in the digital age?; what marketing and advertising strategies and initiatives are being introduced and practiced in Europe to encourage and promote reading among children and young adults?. To follow this aim we propose a survey overview on children’s and young adult’s reading habits and attitudes; bibliographical review of previous research on the topic of reading promotion, positive practices and marketing strategies; and a questionnaire survey, conducted among European organizations, involved in book and reading promotion. By observing the gathered data, we were able to conclude that reading habits and attitudes of children and young adults are predetermined at a very young age. The most important influencing factors that we examined were the active home literacy environment with access to books and literacy materials at an early age; the application of the reading aloud practice, starting at infancy; the kindergarten and school environment. What is more, we concluded that all adults, participating in children’s lives: parents; relatives; educators; librarians; social media influencers are role models with a strong influence on the shaping of the attitudes of youngsters towards reading.Ler é uma forma de aprendizagem ativa e o cultivo de hábitos de leitura é vital para todas as crianças e jovens adultos. No entanto, de acordo com o indicador mais aprofundado e confiável do mundo sobre as competências dos alunos, o PISA, as competências de leitura entre os jovens não estão a melhorar. Este projecto tem como objetivo dar resposta às seguintes questões: qual é o estado geral dos hábitos de leitura das crianças e jovens europeus ?; como a leitura é incentivada e promovida para crianças e jovens na era digital ?; que estratégias e iniciativas de marketing e publicidade estão a ser introduzidas e praticadas na Europa para encorajar e promover a leitura entre crianças e jovens adultos ?. Para cumprir este objetivo, propomos uma pesquisa geral sobre os hábitos e atitudes de leitura de crianças e jovens adultos; uma revisão bibliográfica de pesquisas anteriores sobre o tema promoção da leitura, práticas positivas e estratégias de marketing; e um inquérito por questionário, realizado entre organizações europeias envolvidas na promoção do livro e da leitura. Pela observação dos dados recolhidos, podemos concluir que os hábitos de leitura e as atitudes de crianças e adultos jovens são pré-determinados numa idade muito jovem. Os fatores de influência mais importantes que examinamos foram o ambiente ativo de alfabetização domiciliária com acesso a livros e materiais de alfabetização desde a infância; a aplicação da prática da leitura em voz alta, desde a infância; o jardim de infância e o ambiente escolar. Além disso, concluímos que todos os adultos, participando na vida das crianças: pais; parentes; educadores; bibliotecários; os influenciadores das redes sociais são modelos de comportamento com forte influência na formação das atitudes dos jovens em relação à leitura

The Development of an Academically-Based Entertainment-Education (ABEE) Model: Co-opting Behavioral Change Efficacy of Entertainment-Education for Academic Learning Targeting the Societal Landscape of U.S. Geographic Illiteracy

Educators and scholars continue to lament United States citizens' geographic illiteracy and are calling on Congress to address the crisis. However, despite recent public attention, a lack of national commitment to teaching geography in all public school grade levels persists. Therefore, non-formal educational avenues need to be pursued to address this crisis. One such avenue may be Entertainment-Education (E-E). E-E interventions have been used outside of the U.S. to impact social problems and detrimental behaviors by presenting positive role models in entertainment products designed to stimulate changes in viewers' behavior. For example, soap operas promote condoms use as a HIV prevention strategy (Tanzania), model culturally-sensitive actions to stop domestic violence (South Africa), and promote infant oral-rehydration therapy (Egypt). This study posits academic learning can be facilitated in a similar fashion as behavior change through an E-E methodology. Beginning with an examination of the E-E field by indexing E-E literature found in scholarly publication databases, this study demonstrates the 30-year health message focus of the field and presents a catalogue of E-E interventions cross-referenced by name and target country. The combination of these two products illuminates how U.S. audiences and non-behaviorally based outcomes have not been targeted, leaving academic subject learning as an area into which E-E can expand. The expansion of E-E methodology into geography education (or any other subject) requires understanding of how academic concepts interact with the structure of fictional narratives. Using a grounded theory approach, this study analyzes the U.S. television series NUMB3RS, which uses math to drive the story (as opposed to simply serving as context), to develop an Academically-Based Entertainment-Education (ABEE) model. ABEE is then applied to Google Earth, exploring how to leverage non-linear and visually dependent narratives as well as develop user-driven learning experiences. The implications of research presented here and through future refinement of the ABEE model may potentially (1) develop educative entertainment products supporting formal education and (2) bring geographic knowledge into the realm of popular culture through mass media, thereby impacting geographic literacy at a societal level in the U.S. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2011-05-9128

Animating Film Theory

Animating Film Theory provides an enriched understanding of the relationship between two of the most unwieldy and unstable organizing concepts in cinema and media studies: animation and film theory. For the most part, animation has been excluded from the purview of film theory. The contributors to this collection consider the reasons for this marginalization while also bringing attention to key historical contributions across a wide range of animation practices, geographic and linguistic terrains, and historical periods. They delve deep into questions of how animation might best be understood, as well as how it relates to concepts such as the still, the moving image, the frame, animism, and utopia. The contributors take on the kinds of theoretical questions that have remained underexplored because, as Karen Beckman argues, scholars of cinema and media studies have allowed themselves to be constrained by too narrow a sense of what cinema is. This collection reanimates and expands film studies by taking the concept of animation seriously. Contributors. Karen Beckman, Suzanne Buchan, Scott Bukatman, Alan Cholodenko, Yuriko Furuhata, Alexander R. Galloway, Oliver Gaycken, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Tom Gunning, Andrew R. Johnston, Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, Gertrud Koch, Thomas LaMarre, Christopher P. Lehman, Esther Leslie, John MacKay, Mihaela Mihailova, Marc Steinberg, Tess Takahash

Chinese Reality TV- A Case Study of GDTV’s The Great Challenge for Survival

The emergence of reality programming has a parallel development with Chinese television media at the beginning of this century. This study of Chinese “Reality TV” is based on a case study of a pioneer Chinese reality production, namely The Great Challenge for Survivor (GDTV, 2000-2006). The general concern of this thesis is an examination of the localizing of popular foreign outdoor survival formats (the Japanese top-rating Airway Boys and the international format Survivor) within a Chinese context. The study of this subject consists of field research into a major Party-state owned television broadcaster and a comparative analysis of the six broadcast seasons of the selected example. The research outcome presented here highlights some distinctive Chinese patterns in the outdoor survival reality strand prevailing early in this century and articulates the complex roles that a nationalized television station was required to play in the industrialized reform era. By recognizing the GDTV crew’s continuous efforts to improve production quality and to satisfy their assumed audiences’ needs, the thesis further addresses some key factors of the specific institutional system and broad media environment shaping local reality programme makers' decision making. Facing a “special television zone” in China, the local producer’s continuous modification of their reality programming was on the cutting edge of commercialization and globalization in the early 2000s. The production of the studied case was an exploratory enterprise which involved a set of negotiations, arguments and compromises while dealing with a range of issues which emerged in such areas as the cultural landscape, social environment, political discourse and economic power. To a large extent, the manifested transition taking place in this studied local production mirrors unprecedented social and economic changes occurring in contemporary China

Animating Film Theory

Animating Film Theory provides an enriched understanding of the relationship between two of the most unwieldy and unstable organizing concepts in cinema and media studies: animation and film theory. For the most part, animation has been excluded from the purview of film theory. The contributors to this collection consider the reasons for this marginalization while also bringing attention to key historical contributions across a wide range of animation practices, geographic and linguistic terrains, and historical periods. They delve deep into questions of how animation might best be understood, as well as how it relates to concepts such as the still, the moving image, the frame, animism, and utopia. The contributors take on the kinds of theoretical questions that have remained underexplored because, as Karen Beckman argues, scholars of cinema and media studies have allowed themselves to be constrained by too narrow a sense of what cinema is. This collection reanimates and expands film studies by taking the concept of animation seriously. Contributors. Karen Beckman, Suzanne Buchan, Scott Bukatman, Alan Cholodenko, Yuriko Furuhata, Alexander R. Galloway, Oliver Gaycken, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Tom Gunning, Andrew R. Johnston, Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, Gertrud Koch, Thomas LaMarre, Christopher P. Lehman, Esther Leslie, John MacKay, Mihaela Mihailova, Marc Steinberg, Tess Takahash

Media Space: an analysis of spatial practices in planar pictorial media.

The thesis analyses the visual space displayed in pictures, film, television and digital interactive media. The argument is developed that depictions are informed by the objectives of the artefact as much as by any simple visual correspondence to the observed world. The simple concept of ‘realism’ is therefore anatomised and a more pragmatic theory proposed which resolves some of the traditional controversies concerning the relation between depiction and vision. This is then applied to the special problems of digital interactive media. An introductory chapter outlines the topic area and the main argument and provides an initial definition of terms. To provide a foundation for the ensuing arguments, a brief account is given of two existing and contrasted approaches to the notion of space: that of perception science which gives priority to acultural aspects, and that of visual culture which emphasises aspects which are culturally contingent. An existing approach to spatial perception (that of JJ Gibson originating in the 1940s and 50s) is applied to spatial depiction in order to explore the differences between seeing and picturing, and also to emphasise the many different cues for spatial perception beyond those commonly considered (such as binocularity and linear perspective). At this stage a simple framework of depiction is introduced which identifies five components or phases: the objectives of the picture, the idea chosen to embody the objectives, the model (essentially, the visual ‘subject matter’), the characteristics of the view and finally the substantive picture or depiction itself. This framework draws attention to the way in which each of the five phases presents an opportunity for decision-making about representation. The framework is used and refined throughout the thesis. Since pictures are considered in some everyday sense to be ‘realistic’ (otherwise, in terms of this thesis, they would not count as depictions), the nature of realism is considered at some length. The apparently unitary concept is broken down into several different types of realism and it is argued that, like the different spatial cues, each lends itself to particular objectives intended for the artefact. From these several types, two approaches to realism are identified, one prioritising the creation of a true illusion (that the picture is in fact a scene) and the other (of which there are innumerably more examples both across cultures and over historical time) one which evokes aspects of vision without aiming to exactly imitate the optical stimulus of the scene. Various reasons for the latter approach, and the variety of spatial practices to which it leads, are discussed. In addition to analysing traditional pictures, computer graphics images are discussed in conjunction with the claims for realism offered by their authors. In the process, informational and affective aspects of picture-making are distinguished, a distinction which it is argued is useful and too seldom made. Discussion of still pictures identifies the evocation of movement (and other aspects of time) as one of the principal motives for departing from attempts at straightforward optical matching. The discussion proceeds to the subject of film where, perhaps surprisingly now that the depiction of movement is possible, the lack of straightforward imitation of the optical is noteworthy again. This is especially true of the relationship between shots rather than within them; the reasons for this are analysed. This reinforces the argument that the spatial form of the fiction film, like that of other kinds of depiction, arises from its objectives, presenting realism once again as a contingent concept. The separation of depiction into two broad classes – one which aims to negate its own mediation, to seem transparent to what it depicts, and one which presents the fact of depiction ostensively to the viewer – is carried through from still pictures, via film, into a discussion of factual television and finally of digital interactive media. The example of factual television is chosen to emphasise how, despite the similarities between the technologies of film and television, spatial practices within some television genres contrast strongly with those of the mainstream fiction film. By considering historic examples, it is shown that many of the spatial practices now familiar in factual television were gradually expunged from the classical film when the latter became centred on the concerns of narrative fiction. By situating the spaces of interactive media in the context of other kinds of pictorial space, questions are addressed concerning the transferability of spatial usages from traditional media to those which are interactive. During the thesis the spatial practices of still-picture-making, film and television are characterised as ‘mature’ and ‘expressive’ (terms which are defined in the text). By contrast the spatial practices of digital interactive media are seen to be immature and inexpressive. It is argued that this is to some degree inevitable given the context in which interactive media artefacts are made and experienced – the lack of a shared ‘language’ or languages in any new media. Some of the difficult spatial problems which digital interactive media need to overcome are identified, especially where, as is currently normal, interaction is based on the relation between a pointer and visible objects within a depiction. The range of existing practice in digital interactive media is classified in a seven-part taxonomy, which again makes use of the objective-idea-model-view-picture framework, and again draws out the difference between self-concealing approaches to depiction and those which offer awareness of depiction as a significant component of the experience. The analysis indicates promising lines of enquiry for the future and emphasises the need for further innovation. Finally the main arguments are summarised and the thesis concludes with a short discussion of the implications for design arising from the key concepts identified – expressivity and maturity, pragmatism and realism