La riflessione teorica sulla Children Television nella prospettiva dei media studies: modelli, categorie interpretative, valutazioni

[Autom. eng. transl.] Television for children is a subject of study extensively explored in scientific literature related to the interdisciplinary area of Media Studies. Rather than exhaustively reviewing the entire field of study, this chapter will build an exploration map of the main contributions that have framed, explained and evaluated what happens when the world of childhood meets the media. It is worthwhile at the outset to specify that the metaphor of the worlds is not at all accidental but rather reminds us, on the contrary, that in such a meeting multiple systems are involved - of life, of production, of consumption, of reception, of culture and of society - and how it is not at all obvious to find the right point of observation from which to enlighten them all, simultaneously and in their mutual interdependencies. The path we are proposing here will focus attention both on the different research perspectives and on the cognitive results that have been achieved through them. A systematization of the state of the art is beyond the scope of this chapter. What will be attempted to pursue will instead be a critical review of the scientific literature that relates the knowledge produced with the social context from which it emerged. Each approach presented will therefore be illustrated in the light of the specific conceptions of childhood and media that inspired it and of the specific models of responsibility and expectations that it is able to inspire. Depending on how both media and childhood are thought and described, differentiated expectations, judgments and responsibility frameworks emerge. Thus, literature will be tried not so much in its scientific autonomy as in its uninterrupted but not always explicit dialogue with those ideas of the world from which it springs and to which it returns. In concrete terms, the chapter will offer two possible and complementary points of entry to television and childhood literature. In the first place, the two main research traditions that have informed the field of study, the theories of effects of a socio-psychological matrix and the Cultural Studies, whose matrix can be traced back to the sociology of culture, will be presented and compared. developed in the British context. The chapter will then continue with a second possible point of entry to the literature on television for children, or a recognition of the normative criteria elaborated by the research for the evaluation of the quality of the media offer for children. In line with a review of the literature focused not on research itself but on its relationship with the social context, it will be realized how academic reflection has worked to translate scientific acquisitions into parameters and indications, valid both for the design of new products television stations for the evaluation of existing ones.