LSE Review of Books Podcast launches three-part series on Brazil

In the first episode of a three-part series on Brazil, the LSE Review of Books Podcast takes a closer look at the city of Rio de Janeiro to uncover wider issues that face the world’s fastest growing cities. Before talking to LSE and Brazilian authors about their books on Brazil, LSERB podcast producer, Cheryl Brumley, made her first stop at the annual Urban Age Conference to hear how politicians, academics and planners from cities around the globe grapple with city transformations. The conference, put on by LSE Cities and the Alfred Herrhausen Society, is a globetrotting event which invites 70 experts to participate in a two-day investigation of cities. The conference took place in Rio amidst unprecedented urban transformation and ambitious redevelopment projects, spurred on by the impending World Cup and Olympic Games

'You don't talk about love in government'

This roundtable discussion explores the politics of Sure Start from its earliest days, and the thinking behind it. Tessa Jowell was the Labour Minister responsible for setting it up and she talks to the psychotherapist and author of Love Matters and The Selfish Society, Sue Gerhardt, and Sarah Stewart Brown, Professor of Public Health at Warwick University. They discuss the central importance of early infancy in determining the life chances and psychological wellbeing of both children and adults

Get MediaSmart®: A critical discourse analysis of controversy around advertising to children in the UK

In response to calls for increased regulation of advertising to children (occasioned by concerns over childhood obesity levels) a group of UK advertisers targeting young people have sought to demonstrate social responsibility by providing media literacy education resources for children aged six to eleven through the MediaSmart® initiative. This article draws on Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 2001) to analyse a selection of publicly available accounts of the 2002 launch and operation of MediaSmart® in order to explore how alternative discursive representations of MediaSmart® construct children and advertising in relation to one another, and how these constructions work to further the social practices of which the discourses in question are part. The analysis concludes that the competing discourses have a stake in the problem of advertising to children remaining open-ended, but suggests that the possibilities of its resolution lie in (a) the incorporation of children's own perspectives in controversy conducted on their behalf by adults, and (b) conceptions of media literacy which are more active and age-inclusive than those evident in the discourses currently available

The BBC's role in the changing production ecology of preschool television in Britain

CBeebies, the BBC’s brand for young children, has become a successful public service undertaking, lauded by parents and policy makers alike. Nevertheless, it operates in a complex and highly competitive "ecology," where recent funding crises in commercial television have left CBeebies as the main commissioner of U.K.–originated content. Having outlined the broader industry context of CBeebies, this article examines changes in its organization, target audience, scheduling and commissioning practices, and relationship with the BBC’s commercial subsidiary, BBC Worldwide, to explain how wider commercial, cultural, and technological forces have impacted the Corporation’s strategies for preschool content. It suggests that growing pressures to locate funding for "fewer, bigger, better" programs may have an adverse impact on the range of content and sources of supply