The purpose of this study was to investigate The Relations Between Conceptualized Parental Mediation and Child Perspectives on the Violence of Media Content.
For that purpose, 400 children attending in the third and sixth grades in six elementary scho...
The purpose of this study was to investigate The Relations Between Conceptualized Parental Mediation and Child Perspectives on the Violence of Media Content.
For that purpose, 400 children attending in the third and sixth grades in six elementary schools in Seoul and Suwon were surveyed. The measurement tools included the parental Mediation developed by Nathanson(1998) and tested for validity by Seo Jaehee(1998) and the Korean Broadcasting Commission(1994), the questionnaire by Kwak JinHee(2001) on Child Perspectives on the Violence Scale developed by Gunter(1994). The data were analyzed with the SPSS, statistic program and tested with Cronbach's α, Pearson's coefficient of correlation, multiple regression and simple regression analysis.
The findings were as follows:
In the first place, the parents at home were taking some practical actions for the Media mediation, and it was being carried out in the different ways in accordance with the children's ages and the distinction of sexes.
It was turned out that the higher academic backgrounds the parents had, the more actively they practised the Media mediation with great concerns, and it was also shown that the Media environment at home had an effect on the forms of the Media mediation.
Secondly, as the result of scrutinizing the perception of children towards the violence in the Media contents according to their different circumstances, it was revealed that the students in the upper grades regarded violence more positively than the lowers did, and the parents, academically better educated than the others, were likely to guide their children to perceive the violence of Media in their daily lives, even if they didn't take any specific ways of Media mediation.
The type of Media which children prefer to watch didn't have any effect on the perception of violence, but the rate of violence was higher in the houses where a lot of media items were equiped and the parents installed any of them in children's private rooms.
As a result, it was shown that the children's perception towards Mass Media was more affected by the rate of contacts with violent programs than the type of mass media.
Thirdly, the types of media mediation the parents have are closely connected with the way children perceive towards the violence of media.
The active and positive parental mediation was in proportion to the children's perception, whereas the passive and neglectful mediation was vice versa.
In the fourth place, in the case of that the parents join in the children's uses of mass media or make conversations with their children, the children come to have the negative recognition towards violence insead of having positive perception when their parents restrict them from using the media.
Not only does the media mediation have an immediate influence on the children's awareness of violence but it also affects the children's attitude to common violence.
Lastly, although the parents do the same media mediation to their children, it causes different effects according to the children's ages.
In the occasion of the students in the lower years, the negative and neglectful mediation affects the perception of violence immensely. In addition, if the children are guided by their parents with more concrete explanations and interaction while watching violent scenes in the media, the kids will consider the violence more optimistically, instead.
However, the process of forming children's general violent habits shows that parents' direct mediation creates the pessimistic attitude to children's violence.
On the other hand, in some ways, it can be possibly considered that the parents' media mediation has rather a reversed impact on the violence itself so that it makes the children regard the violence positively, but it has not been proven.
Therefore, the way of the effective media mediation is various and different according to children's ages, and it should be appropriately applied as the step of their development.