The quality of children’s media is crucial for the development of every country
Media literacy
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PODGORICA, 22 JANUARY 2019 – The quality of media programmes for children and young people in a country indicate the quality of that country, said Jan‐Willem Bult, Director of the Centre for Children, Youth and Media in the Netherlands.
Speaking at the beginning of the Prix Jeunesse Suitcase workshop on the production of quality TV programmes for children and young people for the representatives of Montenegrin media, organized by the Agency for Electronic Media and UNICEF, he said that the production of quality programmes for children and young people demands their active participation in that process.
During my everyday work with preschool and school children, as well as with youth, I learned a lot about them. We influence one another. I believe that the attitude of adults who produce children and youth programmes should be: I can learn from you, the same way you can learn from me. With an attitude like this you grow together and that is the only way you can produce a quality programme for children.
The Director of the Agency for Electronic Media of Montenegro, Abaz Beli Džafić, says that the intention of both the AEM and UNICEF is to provide support for media in Montenegro to improve their capacities for producing quality media content intended for children and young people.
We want Montenegrin TV companies to be media that can justify the trust of children and young people, and media which will allow them to develop their intellectual, social and analytical skills.
UNICEF Representative to Montenegro, Osama Khogali, mentioned four overarching principles that define quality media for children.
Media for children should be age-appropriate; they should address the child holistically, as physical, social, emotional and cognitive development are all linked; they should be positive and portray the strengths and potential in every child to cope with both large and small struggles in life rather than focusing on deficits or problems; and they should include the most vulnerable children in order to have positive representations of young people from diverse cultures and all socio-economic backgrounds.
Young reporters of the media literacy campaign “Let’s choose what we watch” had some concrete advice for the media.
I urge the media to make the media representation of childhood, the children and young people of Montenegro as realistic as possible by allowing the voices of children from various social backgrounds to be heard more often and by actively involving them in producing TV programmes for their peers.
Balša’s peer, young reporter Ranko Magovčević invited Montenegrin media to involve children with disabilities in creating their programmes.
Not only to speak about their situation and the problems that children with disabilities experience, but to participate in the discussion about various topics of interest for children and young people, as other children do.
Young reporter Dunja Sekulović believes that the media should involve children from minority groups in the production of children’s and young people’s programmes.
All children should be visible in our media so that the media landscape reflects reality.
Her friend Sofija Krivokapić concludes that it is very important to avoid having media programmes for children that promote stereotypes about the roles of girls and boys in society.
So, apart from having equal numbers of girls and boys on the screens, we would like to see not only girls who are pretty and boys who are strong, we also want to see male and female superheroes who resolve problems without violence, sending out a very clear message to children and young people that it is both possible and desirable.
Prix Jeunesse (https://www.prixjeunesse.de/) represents a unique event, the largest and the longest running festival of TV programmes for children and young people in the world. It was founded in Munich in 1964. For decades, Prix Jeunesse has been organizing training for the production of quality TV programmes for children and young people using the best and the most innovative examples of TV programmes awarded at this festival, including programmes that won a special UNICEF award for the active representation of children in the media.
The organization of this training is based on the results of the first nationally representative research on children, parents and the media in Montenegro, whose findings are as follows:
- Less than one-third of parents (29%) and children (27%) think that Montenegrin TV channels offer a sufficient number of programmes adjusted to the various age groups of children, as well as content which is interesting, useful, inspiring and educational for children;
- About 40% of parents believe that the media content for children too often emphasizes the role of a male person as a superhero and that it very often promotes violence, which superheroes use to resolve problems;
- One in three parents believes that media content for children often promotes gender inequalities, while one in four parents believe that female heroes are often represented as being passive, insecure and lacking problem-solving initiative.
- Parents claim that they would rather recommend a funny programme over an educational one to their children. The same criteria for a quality TV programme are chosen by children themselves, which points to the need to produce entertaining and, at the same time, educational media content for children and young people.
- The majority of parents (59%) believe that it is important for their children to watch TV content involving children of the same age as their own. Children also express an interest in watching programmes involving children of their age doing things similar to what they do themselves;
- Every second child wants to participate in the production of TV programmes, and as many as 42% of them have already created some video content. While one in two parents support the idea of their child participating in the production of media programmes for children, the same percentage do not want these programmes to be competitions, during which their child would be exposed to a high level of pressure from being assessed and criticised by an expert. This view is more common among parents who have higher levels of education;
- Less than one-fifth of children aged 9–17 prefer watching video content on TV, while the remaining children do not differentiate between TV and YouTube, or else prefer YouTube over TV. This indicates that there is a need to have video content for children published on social media as well;
- The majority of parents (72%) and children (66%) believe that their decision not to watch certain media channels or media content leads to that particular media losing its audience, consequently leading to a decrease in commercials being aired, i.e. a decrease in financial support and the interest of the audience for such media.
The Prix Jeunesse Suitcase workshop is being organized in the context of the media literacy campaign “Let's choose what we watch” launched by the Agency for Electronic Media of Montenegro with the support of UNICEF, aimed at promoting the development of media literacy in children and parents and improving the capacities of the media to produce high-quality media content with children and young people and to ethically report on issues related to children in Montenegro.