The purpose of this literature review is to summarize the various ways mass media researchers have described aspects of the relationship between children and television, with special reference to the implications for road safety content in the television programmes children watch. After briefly covering the history of mass media and persuasion campaign research, the review looks at children's viewing patterns. It goes on to describe television content, in terms of the demography of characters, their drinking and driving behaviour, the influence of aggressive and prosocial content or models on attitudes and behaviour, and how television content may cultivate for heavier viewers a picture of the real world (including the world of driving and road behaviour). Because audience predispositions help shape perceptions of content, the review then considers some of these, namely the child's age and comprehension skills, the perceived reality of television, the uses and gratifications of child audiences, the social context of television watching and the question of television literacy, discussing their implications for road safety content on television. The review goes on to look at the hostile television environment in which public information campaigns take place, the lessons to be learnt from social marketing approaches and the reasons why some public information campaigns have failed and some succeeded. Finally, the review discusses the implications of such approaches for television road safety messages directed at children. (A)
Samenvatting