The aim of this closing chapter is to attempt to draw together the major findings and observations throughout the course of this investigation and to relate them to the five research issues defined at the outset. This process will also lead to a consideration of the implications of this study as well as suggestions for further research in the field. For ease of reference, the research issues are summarised below:

1. How can gender be located in the media and in ‘childhood’, and is it possible to construct a framework or model of how gender is manifested in society?
2. Are there any distinctive (gendered) patterns in the use of technical production features in advertisement texts?
3. Do media images carry gender connotations?
4. Is gender the primary consideration for advertisers?
5. Do young children understand the technical production features and gender representations employed in televised toy advertisements?

Chapter One began by considering the possible interrelationship between the elements of Text-Producer-Receiver within the context of children’s televised toy advertisements. It is arguable that these elements form a cyclic, mutually dependent process whereby the ‘text’, coupled with how it is ‘produced’, is closely related to and dependent on the ‘audience’ or ‘receiver’. This assumption still stands since advertisements are, by their nature, strongly related to given ‘receivers’, where the success of a product in the marketplace can often depend on whether a commercial has appealed to its target audience. That is to say, each element ‘feeds’ off the other within a structure of interdependency.

However, for the purpose of this investigation, a fourth element was added to the initial tripartite structure. With a focus on children and the notion that the formative play culture of childhood is significant in terms of the development of self-image and the perception of others, the whole idea of ‘gender identity’ can be placed in the centre of the framework. ‘Gender’ can, arguably, be seen as the binding force that drives the ‘form’ and ‘content’ of television advertisements, as well as the basis on which the texts are ‘decoded’ by their receivers. Hence, it is possible to modify the initial diagram, as demonstrated below:

TEXT

GENDER IDENTITY

PRODUCER  RECEIVER

The subsequent shape of this chapter will echo the structure of the investigation as a whole in that the three elements of Text-Producer-Receiver will each be considered in turn, based on the research findings, and ‘gender’ will provide the binding factor throughout. Before each of these elements is discussed, however, the question of how gender is located in the media, ‘childhood’ and society (Research Issue 1) will be briefly alluded to in order to ‘set the scene’ for the chapter as a whole.

From an initial review of the literature, it became clear that gender tends to be located within the media, ‘childhood’ and society in a very specific way. The whole concept of gender was considered in terms of ‘identity’, ‘play’ and ‘advertisements’ where the overriding pattern of perception and representation was one of conventional stereotypy (cf. Courtney & Whipple, 1983). Even if gender may have some innate biological basis it is clear that social frameworks of so-called ‘appropriate gender behaviour’ also make a significant contribution to the ways in which children come to learn about themselves and what is expected of them.

While care-giving adults may provide a strong guiding force in establishing how ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ should ideally behave (cf. Corsaro, 1997: 115), it also became clear that the children themselves often imposed tight constraints on their behaviour. These behaviour constraints generally follow what it means to be ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ within (Western) societies. Indeed, children’s peer groups emerged as one of the main ‘policing’ forces to ensure that individuals do not stray from the so-called gender ‘norm’ (cf. Chinn, in Medhurst & Munt, 1997: 299). It is arguable that the need for social acceptance and to feel a sense of integration or belonging is what maintains a series of relatively strict, prescriptive behaviour patterns. This is not to say, however, that these gendered frameworks are oppressive because young children often enjoy the distinction between ‘boys’ and ‘girls’, exhibiting strong tendencies to play in single-sex peer-groups (cf. Corsaro, 1997: 149-50).

These stereotyped gender tendencies might arguably be adopted by advertisers as a way to appeal to their target audiences at the most fundamental level, facilitating audience recognition of products that are either ‘his’ or ‘hers’. Essentially, the theoretical structure of gender is one of identifiable binary oppositions that define so-called ‘male’ and ‘female’ traits. Hence, if one considers the question of how gender is located in the media and in ‘childhood’, and how it is manifested in society (Research Issue 1), one might conclude that traditional stereotypes are fundamental. Their expression in terms of ‘oppositions’ also tends to be adhered to, while any crossover or deviation from the ‘norm’ is rarely tolerated. With this structure in mind, findings relating to the three key elements will now be considered in accordance with the remaining research issues.

Two main approaches were taken to analyse the advertisement texts in this investigation – the ‘quantitative’ approach of content analysis and the ‘qualitative’ approach of semiotic analysis. These methodologies were selected as the most effective way to address Research Issues 2 and 3, regarding whether it is possible to identify distinctive gendered patterns in the construction of media texts and whether these patterns or images carry gender connotations. The sample of 117 toy advertisements was deconstructed and analysed in detail, and some interesting patterns seemed to emerge.

As has already been stated, content analysis involves the coding and counting of various features found within a (media) text (cf. Silverman, 1993: 59). It was chosen as a means to analyse the subtle underlying formal features of advertisements, arguably concerned with those elements that might not be immediately obvious to young children but still have a subconscious influence on their perceptions of gender representations in the media. The emergent patterns in the toy advertisements were divided into the two realms of production and camerawork and post-production and editing (cf. Welch et al., 1979). The strongest statistical differences indicated that the boys’ advertisements used more extreme camera angles, more long character-shots, more cuts to produce faster pacing, and more male voiceovers, rock music and sound effects. The girls’ advertisements, in contrast, used more peds, more close-up character-shots, more dissolves to produce slower pacing, and made greater use of product jingles. In addition to this distinct gender divide, the mixed audience advertisements consistently emerged as being closer in composition and style to the boy-targeted advertisements, implying that the girl-targeted texts were the ‘marked’ category and therefore ‘different’ or ‘abnormal’ as a result (cf. Chandler, 1994a).

It is arguable that these content features produced a distinctive atmosphere or gender stereotyped ‘feel’ within each advertisement, framing the target audience in a specific way as either ‘male’ or ‘female’ and expecting them to respond to the ‘appeals’ in a predictable way. Hence, it is arguable that there are distinctive patterns within the construction of toy advertisement texts (cf. Research Issue 2). The production and post-production features focused on in the content analysis are easily identifiable in the sense that they are either present within or absent from the text. This presence or absence is a quantitative ‘given’ and not something interpretatively problematic. One can therefore confidently present the emergent patterns as something that have a tangible existence that could, in turn, be described as ‘gendered’. For the most part, the emergent patterns supported existing research (cf. Chapter Two) but in order to speculate about what these patterns might ‘mean’ to the audience, a different approach was required.

Semiotic analysis was regarded as the most suitable method to address the question of whether certain images and ideas within the advertising texts might carry gender connotations for the audience (cf. Research Issue 3). Where content analysis failed to provide interpretative flexibility, semiotics offered a more qualitative approach to the same sample of advertisements (cf. Chapter Five). The texts were deconstructed in terms of the major semiotic concepts in three main ways. Initially, three ‘typical’ girls’ advertisements and three ‘typical’ boys’ advertisements were analysed in detail and the emergent patterns were grouped in terms of binary oppositions. Secondly, moving away from small details, the overriding thematic codes within the sample as a whole were analysed. This resulted in a number of frequently and infrequently used codes that marked out the appeals of the advertisements as either ‘male’ or ‘female’. These patterns were aligned with and as distinctive as the binary oppositions identified in the more detailed comparisons. Thirdly, two identical product concepts were compared in terms of how they were given male and female ‘spins’ in order to appeal to one or other of the audience sectors (cf. Del Vecchio, 1997: 35 ff.).

What emerged in all three semiotic analyses was the fact that the traditional gender stereotype seemed to be adhered to by the advertisement producers. ‘Boys’ and ‘girls’ remained polarised as the two gendered audiences and the contrasts in composition and sales pitch were stronger than any ‘middle-ground’ similarities. Essentially, all contrasts were framed around the established binary opposition of male/female, and it is arguable that such oppositions carry gender connotations that are disseminated in the public sphere.

Based on the semiotic analysis, it is possible to argue that media images can be interpreted as having gender connotations even if the audience or ‘receivers’ are not overtly aware of the implications of such patterns or codes (cf. Jones, 1991: 231 ff.). Any possible connotations might be subtly or implicitly embedded within the advertisement texts, yet it is possible that the audience might subconsciously internalise these notions and incorporate them into their individual psyches. That is to say, the audience might accept how they are framed within advertising discourse as belonging to a particular gender group. This, coupled with the repetitive nature of advertising might, in turn, govern and reinforce ideas of self-image and perceptions of others. Since the (gendered) patterns are so strong they would appear to pervade the advertisement structure to the extend where they become ‘naturalised’, and character traits and preferences are subsequently seen in terms of the ‘male’ or ‘female’ gender categories.

While strong gendered patterns clearly emerged across the sample as a whole, where the total counts from the content analysis and the subsequent connotations alluded to in the semiotic analysis were definable in terms of being either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, something particularly intriguing emerged when considering the data in combination. This ‘curiosity’ will only be noted here, but it certainly needs to be questioned further in future research.

When considering how the various content codes operated across the sample as a whole compared to how they appeared within each individual advertisement, the ‘whole’ emerged as more obviously gendered than the ‘parts’. That is to say, the strength of (gendered) content counts was pronounced across a large sample but no single advertisement exhibited all the features that would make it ‘typically’ either ‘male’ or ‘female’. For example, it was not possible to find one isolated boy-targeted advertisement that made combined use of extreme camera angles, long shots of characters, cuts, a male voiceover, rock music and sound effects, with short shot duration. Nor was it possible to find one isolated girl-targeted advertisement that made combined use of peds, close-up shots of characters, dissolves, and product jingles, with long shot duration.

It is therefore arguable that each individual advertisement had relative structural autonomy within the confines of a much broader gendered ideology, based on a framework of the ‘purest’ examples of male or female product targeting but only utilising selected elements from that framework. This observation creates juxtaposition within the advertisement sample. While the individual advertisements may have been constructed relatively loosely to the extent where they could not be described as structurally ‘typical’, the overall philosophy of toy advertising remained tightly structured and highly prescriptive in terms of gender. Hence, one could argue that gender connotations operate on a subtle and unconscious level through the viewing of single advertisements, but become more apparent through repeated viewing or when multiple examples of the same advertisement type are ‘clumped’ together within one commercial break. It should therefore be apparent that the potential ‘effect’ of this pattern is applicable to the intensive toy marketing characterising the period leading up to Christmas, where the overall (gendered) patterns of many toy advertisements, viewed in combination, might inform children about gender in very prescribed and stereotyped ways.

Ultimately, it is possible to argue that, in terms of ‘Text’, the whole concept of gender is a central and powerful undercurrent in terms of form and content patterns. As previously stressed, the other elements of ‘Producer’ and ‘Receiver’ were considered as important as the actual texts, so questions were asked about whether ‘gender’ was a prominent consideration for the advertisers and the child target audiences (cf. Research Issue 5).

One thing that became clear when studying the production of advertisement texts is that multiple creators are involved, making it impossible to trace the origin of ideas. However, is seems feasible that these ideas are principally embedded in society (conventions, rules, history), where gender stereotypes might be an example of a socially generated framework. After interviewing individuals involved in the production of advertisements there was evidence of divided opinion as to whether gender was a vital consideration or something inconsequential. What was clear, however, is that the child-sector of the market is being considered increasingly important because it encompasses ‘purchasers, influencers and the future’ (Industry magazine), so finding the correct sales pitch is not a challenge to be taken lightly.

Advertisers often seek to understand child psychology, where ‘gender’ arguably has a significant function, in order to identify the subtle psychological differences between boys and girls. Once the differences are acknowledged it is likely that the exploitation of gendered ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ would be more successful where boys and girls would be targeted as ‘male’ and ‘female’ respectively. Indeed, it is likely that appeals to the universal ‘children’ are only utilised to sell products with mixed appeal.

The industry also seems to regard age as an important factor, though not in the conventional sense of calendar years. Rather age is equated with a certain ‘attitude’ and peer culture is seen as the source of this so-called ‘attitude’ (cf. Del Vecchio, 1997: 109; Clark, 1988: 190). Children listen to other children, so the peer group is the key to attaching either positive or negative connotations to a product, which is directly linked with the degree of market success. Gender is arguably a key element within the peer group culture, where single-sex play in early childhood is the norm, so advertising campaigns tend to be structured around such social fundamentals like gender.

However, the majority of individuals involved in the industry denied the selection of certain production techniques to target the audience by gender. One producer even claimed that such manipulation of the camera would be tantamount to sexism! Even so, it is still reasonable to suggest that certain camera techniques carry gender connotations, even though the camera operator may not consciously acknowledge them. If ‘some shots naturally work better when cut together’ (cf. Chapter Six) then it might also be possible that some shots (when cut together) might ‘naturally’ appeal to one gender more than another. Indeed, shot selection might actually correspond with the stereotyped notions of what different genders ‘like’.

So, when considering Research Issue 4, as to whether gender was a primary concern for the industry and whether advertisements were constructed on the basis of gender to appeal to certain audience sectors, one thing seemed to remain constant. The main concern of advertisers is to construct ‘effective’ and ‘successful’ advertisements to ensure financial gain. Since children tend to make gender distinctions in the way they interact with one another, gender stereotypy would seem a reasonable approach to take when advertising toys (cf. Lafky et al., 1996: 380; Courtney & Whipple, 1983: 21; Williamson, 1978: 41).

Interestingly, in one workshop exercise, the whole scenario of the producer-receiver relationship was turned on its head. The children (receivers) were encouraged to become ‘producers’ by designing their own toy advertisements. The main intention of setting up such an exercise was to see whether the children would be able to view advertisements from the creative perspective, recreating or translating onto paper those conventions used in televised advertisements. It became apparent, from an analysis of their designs, that they fully understood the technical conventions of television, evident in their interpretations of various camera angles, relative sizing and framing techniques (cf. Goffman, 1979), as well as rhetorical appeals (cf. Myers, 1994).

There were even strong parallels between the children’s designs and the ways in which actual products were presented on television, demonstrating that the children had sufficient knowledge of the advertisement texts to reinterpret then in the context of another medium. An overriding factor in the whole process was how the products chosen by the children were definable in terms of gender, particularly in the advertisements designed by the boys (cf. Singer & Singer, 1990: 80, in Goldstein, 1994: 117). Perhaps the importance of gender targeting was as subconscious for the children as it was for the advertisers themselves, taken as just another established convention of advertising.

The ways in which a group of children responded to the televised toy advertisements was then investigated. In the first workshop, the children from my sample primary school discussed a series of ten toy advertisements, with research focus placed on their responses to and engagement with the issues of technical production features and gender representations within the texts (cf. Research Issue 5). A similar focus was maintained in a second workshop, when the same children were asked to design their own toy advertisements on paper. The children’s responses will be now organised under two key headings, based on technical understanding and gender issues, following the research protocol of the investigation as a whole. A third section will briefly summarise other issues that appeared significant, both to the children and the investigator, in terms of having a possible influence on the investigation and how meanings were negotiated from the texts.

As in the previous discussion about the content analysis of the toy advertisement sample, the children’s responses to the advertising technical features will be discussed under the sub-category headings of production and camerawork features and post-production and editing features. Each of these will be discussed below.

Throughout the two workshop sessions, there was evidence that the children understood how and why certain production features were used in the advertisements. They were often able to identify and discuss specific camerawork techniques such as action-replay and shot sequencing, together with a deeper knowledge about the symbolic significance of such things as product logo. Since their comments about production techniques were largely unprompted by the interviewer, suggests that they were likely to recognise and engage with these techniques in the conventional home-viewing context. The fact that they were able to discuss these techniques so confidently and accurately indicated that this was somehow ‘familiar territory’ for them and that they had debated such things before participating in the workshops with the investigator.

The ways in which the children reinterpreted televised production conventions in their own designs was particularly intriguing. They experienced few problems translating the techniques from dynamic to static media, and the effects they produced were striking. The children, for example, made interesting use of shot sizes. Not only were the main elements of the products focused on, but there was also suggestion of the relative power dynamics between the characters appearing in the frame (e.g. Action Man and Dr. X). Shot sizes were also manipulated to create the effect of perspective (e.g. Beautiful Cat), while the ‘gaze’ of the characters within each frame effectively held the attention of the audience.

The children clearly understood how shot angles are used to create particular effects, since there were numerous examples of dramatic shots (overheads, high and low angles). Each of these ‘shots’ was used to create a particular ‘feel’ within the advertisement designs, following the ways in which they are used by advertisers in actual campaigns. There was often evidence that the children were recreating actual advertisements within their own designs, indicating that they attended to, comprehended and recalled technical production techniques.

Audio features seemed to be one of the most frequently mentioned post-production features and music was considered particularly important (cf. Davies, 1989: 186; Rolandelli, 1989, in Gunter & McAleer, 1997: 139). The children understood the various qualities that music can bring to an advertisement, in terms of creating an atmosphere or being good to dance to and attention-grabbing. Interestingly, the older children were able to distinguish between the music and the product, where the former could be ‘good’ even if the latter was viewed negatively (cf. Davies, 1989: 187). Music was even judged in terms of its suitability to ‘go with’ the product, perhaps demonstrating the children’s understanding that it can often have many connotations. During a discussion of their advertisement designs, the older children also showed a clear understanding of the functions of such sales techniques as rhetorical appeals, celebrity endorsement and voiceover. Essentially, the children demonstrated a high level of understanding in terms of advertisement composition.

The children’s perceptions of gender issues were diverse. There were a number of main concerns, including whether the children recognised and understood gender stereotypes, whether they perceived themselves and others in the same stereotyped ways that they were perceived by advertisers, and whether gender was perceived differently depending on age and peer group. These issues will be discussed below, followed by an additional section on how the target audiences for the sample advertisements were classified in terms of gender.

During a discussion about the selected toy advertisements, the children often seemed to judge gender in terms of the nature of the product and how the on-screen characters exhibited (stereotyped) traits (cf. Loudal, 1989, in Furnham & Bitar, 1993: 308). Essentially, their evaluations seemed to acknowledge the stereotype and assign conventional gendered patterns such as ‘cars for boys’ and ‘dolls for girls’. During the advertisement design workshop, the ‘likes’ of boys and girls were consistently discussed in terms of stereotypes. Overall, very strong gendered patterns emerged, comprising key elements that the children saw as constituting advertisements for boys and girls.

A particularly powerful gender marker seemed to be the use of colour, and the children often perceived it as being loaded with connotations of ‘gender appropriateness’ (cf. Durkin, 1995: 187). Pink was always seen as exclusively female, for example. The children saw colour as one of the main ways for a product to attract the attention of the intended target audience, and it was seen in terms of complementing the product context and philosophies. Some of the children even showed a rather sophisticated and subtle awareness of how different colours can be used to market the same product to boys and girls, where the former might consider playing with a Secret Diary if it was grey rather than pink (Appendix H.5.1.1). The general attitudes expressed by the children seemed to tie in with the traditional notion that colour can be used as a way to mark out gender in society, linking with the parental tradition of buying blue and pink baby-grows for male and female babies respectively.

During the process of acknowledging the stereotype, the children’s judgements appeared to be in line with advertisers’ perceptions. The notion of so-called ‘gender appropriate behaviour’ (cf. Baslow, 1986, in Jones, 1991: 231) was discussed and there was a strong undercurrent of ‘gender propriety’ throughout the course of the conversation (cf. Shipman, 1972: 36). Indeed, it is arguable that the re-enactment of ‘gender appropriate’ behaviour offers an illustration of how ‘gender performativity’ operates in highly regulated ways. It seemed that the children wanted to project acceptable outer personas that were explicitly gender appropriate, perhaps as a way to ‘please’ the investigator or as a way to ensure a high level of social acceptance and integration (cf. Brown, in Moyles, 1994: 60; Butler, 1990). Their behaviours could be interpreted as an example of ‘gender performativity’ (cf. Chapter Two) in the sense that they enacted specific roles for the benefit of ‘fitting in’ and being ‘normal’ rather than running the risk of standing out as ‘different’ or ‘abnormal’ (Butler, in Morton, 1996: 180; Sedgwick, in Medhurst & Munt, 1997: 302). That is to say, the children were ‘performing’ their gender roles in the most conventional (and consequently stereotyped) way.

On occasions, recognition of a deviation from the ‘norm’ was notable, primarily during discussions about the behaviour of the two ‘tomboy’ girls in the school (cf. McGurk, 1992: 42), but there was a sense that they were dismissed because they defied easy categorisation into a gendered bracket. One boy particularly enjoyed toying with the notion of gender labels and often ‘corrupted’ the established concepts of masculinity and femininity as a way to amuse and shock his classmates. Ultimately, however, the children seemed content to ‘perform’ their designated roles within a well-established social framework, not questioning the way they were positioned within the advertisement texts or in their daily lives.

One further point concerning gender perception is that the majority of the children’s recollections of on-screen character traits, actions and motivations tended to correspond with or be influenced by their own genders (cf. Martin & Halverson, in Durkin, 1995: 182; Courtney & Whipple, 1983: 47). However, this may not be surprising given the classic theory of same-sex modelling, where children are often fascinated by the behaviour exhibited by other members of their own gender (cf. Ruble et al., 1981, in Van Evra, 1990: 120; Manstead & McCulloch, 1981: 178). Indeed, it is arguable that this fascination might frequently inform children about what it means to be ‘male’ or ‘female’, where the re-enactment of such stereotyped behaviour patterns is positively reinforced by society at large.

It is arguable that, as the children mature, they would be more likely to reject prescriptive screen images on the basis of real world exceptions to these gendered portraits. Some of the children in the sample had already begun to question gender stereotypes on the basis of their own experiences and observations within their immediate social circle and environment. In addition, the children were able to demonstrate that they had moved on from the infantile black-and-white distinctions of ‘male’ and ‘female’ to acknowledge that individuals are able to exhibit varying degrees of masculinity and femininity.

Children of different ages reacted differently to the notion of gendered products, and this contrast was particularly clear in the toy advertisement workshop. The younger children who were interviewed (aged 7- to 8-years) passionately defended their ‘own’ products against attack. That is to say, the girls perceived the girls’ toys as ‘best’ and the boys perceived the boys’ toys as ‘best’. In contrast, the older group of children (aged 9- to -11-years) were relatively undivided, since they tended to reject the girls’ toys as ‘dumb’, ‘useless’ and ‘babyish’ whilst aligning themselves more closely with the boys’ products. This pattern may have been symptomatic of the advanced maturity of the girls in rejecting the female stereotype imposed upon them, or even of rejecting toys as a trapping of ‘by-gone childhood’. It also seems illustrative of the notion that ‘male’ is the ‘unmarked’ default category. The boys, perhaps following a similar maturational pattern, were divided in their reactions to the advertisement designs. While the older boys seemed quite happy to be teased about owning female products, the younger boys drew back in horror at such a suggestion! The (younger) children seemed to regard any compromise of stereotyped ‘gender tags’ as a way to undermine individuals (cf. Singer & Singer, 1990: 80, in Goldstein, 1994: 117). Ironically, however, despite this active debate about ‘gendering’, the children tended to consistently (if unconsciously) behave in stereotyped ways.

Perhaps children feel greater ease about gender role distinctions as they grow older because they feel confident in and acceptant of their own gender roles, and therefore do not place such importance on making a clear-cut distinction between ‘male’ and ‘female’. This point is interesting if one considers the age of the children who rejected the toys advertisements, in that they had arguably moved beyond the peak age for playing with toys (4- to 7-years-old approximately), where the advertisements were no longer meant to appeal to their needs. The advertisers might therefore be clearly catering for the ‘needs’ of young children who enjoy a defined existence within a distinctly polarised world of gender stereotypes.

The first stage of the content analysis involved the initial classification of the target audience for each advertisement in terms of whether the text was addressing boys, girls or a mixed audience. This task was undertaken by a group of adult coders and the emergent judgements were in strong agreement, producing a high intercoder reliability level of 98.3%. The ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ audience classifications were consistently seen as distinct and no overlapping of judgements occurred. The only time the procedure was less clear-cut was when the coders were required to classify mixed audience advertisements, where they tended to default to the ‘boy’ category. The advertisements were also considered in terms of ‘tokens’ and ‘types’. In this context, the boy-targeted products tended to appear most frequently and seemed to suggest a notion of male domination or preference.

The children were also able to clearly identify the target audience for each selected toy advertisement, and this was actually the only judgement that the children consistently made after watching the advertisement only once. (Other details such as music and voiceover often required more than one viewing). It is therefore arguable that the target audience is both obvious and important to the children, and that it is likely to provide a powerful guide as to the suitability of the products for them. However, few children were actually able to offer clear justification for their target audience classifications, perhaps indicating that gender is an implicit and instinctual guide to the way the social world is structured and that it does not occur to young children to question this framework. Instead, they seemed to accept gendered audience construction as ‘just the way it is’ and, to a certain extent, something that could ‘go without saying’.

In terms of the children’s advertisement designs, a second group of adult coders were asked to categorise the target gender of the product and the gender of the advertisement designer. The ways in which they achieved this were as definite as the codings for the toy advertisements. The youngest children in the school (aged 4- to 7-years) exhibited similar rapid-fire classifications when they categorised the older children’s advertisement designs according to target audience. One can only conclude that there must be certain powerful elements or indicators within the texts that have high levels of gender connotation recognised by both adults and children, even though these frameworks are not immediately definable by the audience. These guiding principles may subconsciously include some of the trends and connotations identified during the content and semiotic analyses (cf. Chapters Four & Five). Difficulties of explanation might stem from the fact that such gender connotations have been deeply ingrained in the social structure throughout history and seem to be regarded as a fundamental ‘given’.

The children’s (stereotyped) perceptions of gender only exhibited a degree of flexibility if they came from families with mixed sex siblings. It is possible, in such scenarios, that their ‘real life’ experiences of boys and girls contradicted the ‘typical’ representations seen on television, leading them to question the validity and accuracy of the on-screen portrayals. In many ways, the children’s viewing experiences tended to be enhanced if they were able to make connections between the advertisement content or format and their own familiar ‘realities’. This seemed to be the case during each of the workshop sessions (cf. Chapter Seven).

‘Age appropriateness’ was something that the children considered to be as, if not more important as ‘gender appropriateness’ when it came to evaluating the selected toy advertisements. The older children were particularly keen to make very clear distinctions between ‘them’ and ‘us’, or the ‘young’ children versus the ‘old’ children (cf. Del, Vecchio, 1997: Clark, 1988). Interestingly, many of the children claimed that the advertised toy products had ‘changed’ since they were ‘little’. One could argue, however, that this is a prime example of how the children were frequently unaware of their own maturation and the evolution of their perspectives and ‘world views’, assuming that everything and everyone has changed or is ‘different’ while they remain the same.

However, while some toy products were rejected as ‘babyish’, the children were able to appreciate others in the context of age, acknowledging that they would have played with such things when they were younger before hastily adding the ‘mature’ disclaimer of ‘but not anymore’! This is clearly illustrative of the concept of ‘age performativity’, projecting ‘maturity’ or ‘adulthood’ as appropriate and socially desirable. What became apparent when the children discussed ‘age appropriate behaviour’ is that there seems to be great social pressure imposed on them to reject the trappings of ‘childhood’ (such as toys) as quickly as possible in order to create an acceptably ‘old’ public persona. This is not to say, however, that the public persona is a true reflection of how the children behaved in private, and many of them may still have been actively engaged in toy-play behind the closed-door security of their own homes.

While it is interesting to note the types of ‘concerns’ and issues raised by the children, it is also interesting to consider how they went about negotiating the advertisement texts within their respective groups. What became clear during the workshop sessions was the fact that the children consistently worked together to produce consensual understandings of the advertisements, where ideas were bounced around and modified in accordance with diverse suggestions from group members. Only rarely were some of the children deliberately obstructive to the flow of conversation, and these individuals were generally ousted by the other group members.

The children often adopted cynical stances towards the main intentions of advertisements to sell things and offer incentives. As a result, advertising sales messages were criticised for being lies or exaggeration, and the investigator noted that those children who were able to make savvy and satirical comments often attained a degree of prestige within the peer group (cf. Buckingham, 1993a). Group composition may also have influenced the general flow of the conversation and the ways in which the children negotiated textual understanding. It was often clear that the children’s judgements followed either the dominant gender within the group, or the more forceful individuals, where both situations tended to stem from the established politics of the classroom.

Since this investigation has considered many different approaches to the study of young children’s understanding of television advertisements, there are a number of implications based on the research findings. These implications will be briefly discussed below in terms of advertisers and regulators, and in terms of children and education.

8.4.1 Advertisers and regulators

Perhaps the main implication for the advertising industry is that they are only half-realising the potential of the kid-sector of the market. In the context of toy advertisements, it would appear that advertisers are successfully ‘appealing’ to children under the age of about eight, where the responses to the advertisements (texts and products) were generally positive. However, the level of enjoyment experienced by the younger children as they viewed ‘their’ advertisements was dramatically counterbalanced by the negative and often hostile reactions of the older children (9- to 11-year-olds). This may well have been connected to the latter’s public declarations that they no longer played with toys, but it also questions exactly what children of this age feel they can relate to.

In the eyes of the law, they are still regarded as ‘children’, but they seem caught in limbo between being too old for toys and too young for more teen-oriented marketing. This is not to say that children of this age lead ‘empty’ lives because they cannot to relate to anything commercial, since they may be occupied with activities (such as listening to music, watching television (!) or going out with friends) which cannot be easily translated into ‘product’ or ‘advertisement’. Perhaps before advertisers can address this ‘gap’ in the market, actual product manufacturers may have to develop a concept that will appeal to this notoriously nondescript age group (cf. Acuff, 1997; Del Vecchio, 1997).

At the beginning of this investigation, reference was made to the AEF published reports (cf. Chapter One) about the call to ban child-targeted advertising altogether because of the perceived notion that children are vulnerable to such marketing strategies. The issue of children and advertising seems to have become as controversial as past research into the possible effects of television violence on young children (cf. Buckingham, 1996). However, it is arguable that the raising of such ‘concerns’ is tantamount to ‘scare mongering’ because it obscures child ‘agency’ in terms of their ability to make sense of the images seen in the mass media.

Based on the children’s responses to a number of advertisements in this investigation, watchdogs and regulators should feel confident that, in terms of advertising at least, the general trend in response is one of hard-line cynicism. Even the youngest children (aged 4) who participated in the investigation were aware that commercial messages should be taken ‘with a pinch of salt’, possibly reflecting the ways in which their parents had ‘educated’ them about the intentions of advertisers to ‘sell something’. It is arguable that to impose a complete ban on such advertisement texts would amount to a misguided censorship of an aspect the mass media that young children need to be aware of. A high level of understanding and a first hand experience of advertising could function as a means to arm children with the ‘defences’ to negotiate and live within a commercialised social environment.

8.4.2 Children and education

Perhaps the main issue to emerge from this investigation is that of ‘media literacy’ in young children’s lives. It is arguable that ‘media literacy’ is as important for children as the acquisition of ‘conventional literacy’ because the world is now, more than ever before, saturated with rich media images. To feel part of their social environment and to dispel any ‘mystery’ about the media, it is arguable that young children should learn how to ‘read’ the (commercial) images around them. Parents should acknowledge that the mass media are likely to prove both positive and stimulating in children’s lives provided that adult explanation and open-ended discussions accompany the viewing experiences. In a sense, the child’s active negotiation of the mass media should complement and enhance their understanding of society and self-image, as well as eventual integration into multi-media adult working environments. Perhaps, as children mature, their experiences of the media in conjunction with daily life might also encourage them to actively question social construction in each context (such as the rejection of stereotyped gender representations).

Media ‘literacy’ might also be seen as something that can be discussed within the educational climate of the classroom. Davies (1989: 67) noted that little media-based talk is ever sustained in the primary classroom even though it often provides a prominent outlet for young children’s self-expression. Educators have traditionally regarded the idea of ‘media literacy’ as a poor second to ‘conventional literacy’ and so far do not seem to have acknowledged that one can enhance the other. There is evidence in this investigation that the children liked to use television as a point of reference to explain their lives and opinions, yet this outlet is never positively utilised in the classroom. Perhaps one of the fundamental problems is that, unless classroom teachers are parents of young children themselves, they are unlikely to know anything about ‘kid culture’ in the media. Yet if they were able to contribute to media based conversations with young children in, for example, the context of ‘news’ discussions in the classroom, then the children’s oral skills and linguistic competence would be greatly enhanced, and the resultant discourse would be both rich and excited.

It is possible to identify a number of limitations related to both the methodologies employed in this investigation and the nature of the research. One should show at least some reflective awareness of these limitations, primarily as a way to inform future studies. As clarified at the outset, this investigation aimed to consider the three issues of Text-Producer-Receiver as they are located within a paradigm of interrelations. In order to accomplish this aim, a number of research methods were selected which, it was hoped, would offer the most effective approach(es) in each instance.

Content and semiotic analyses were selected as a means of approaching the ‘text’ element of the paradigm. While these methods were successful in terms of deconstructing and revealing some of the unobtrusive, underlying textual elements, generating clear and workable frameworks showing what might be ‘happening’ in the toy advertisement texts, it should be noted that they are subjective within the aims and context of the investigation. That is to say, the research findings were based on textual elements selected and defined by the primary researcher, in line with a number of research issues. Hence, while the researcher invited both adults and children to respond to the texts, the underlying concerns were already very much ‘framed’ for them before their responses were made. As such, the findings of the textual analyses should not be taken as a form of ‘absolute truth’ about how and why the advertisement texts are structured in a certain way, but should be taken as only one of many ways in which the texts could be deconstructed.

The ‘producer’ element of the paradigm was, from the outset of the investigation, ‘doomed’ in the sense that access to those who work in the advertising industry is frustratingly limited and limiting. It remains a fact that the advertising industry holds many more published research papers on advertising campaigns than those available to academics (cf. Miller, 1997), making a ‘knowledge trade-off’ seem highly unlikely. In addition, the ‘big money’ nature of the industry places still further restrictions on the ‘secrets’ advertising agencies are allowed to divulge, without giving away too much information. It seems that their policy is to remain a silent and closed world, not allowing anyone to ‘infiltrate’ from outside organisations. Immediately, this creates difficulties for anyone wishing to gain an insight into their intentions and philosophies. The professionals who agreed to be interviewed for this investigation tended to be both reluctant and defensive, offering little insight into their world.

Finally, the ‘receiver’ dimension of the paradigm was addressed by working with a group of young children, encouraging them to respond to examples of toy advertisements. One of the first points to note is the fact that the children who participated in this study formed only a very small sample, so the views they expressed should never be taken as representative of ‘all children’ within a given age group. However, this should not be considered too great a limitation, provided that reification is avoided and the children are always considered within the specific confines of the investigation.

In addition, the ethnographic-style methods of data collection utilised in this investigation were not as successful as was first hoped. The main intention of any ethnographic-style field study is to elicit spontaneous conversations from which the investigator can ‘learn something’. Unfortunately, given the underlying research aims of this investigation, the children’s conversations were constrained from the outset. This had an immediate impact upon the nature of the actual fieldwork exercises. Time spent with the children seemed to turn into ‘focus group’ sessions in which they were required to respond to ‘set questions’. This was not as revealing a technique as establishing a scenario in which the children could have set their own agendas for discussion and indicate what they considered to be important. One could therefore argue for the need to adopt more closely the techniques of ‘genuine ethnography’ in order to move away from ‘prompted’ responses.

Perhaps of greater consequence than group size was the school-based context in which the research was conducted. The nature of the school environment means that specific discourses are in operation, generally resulting in most children wishing to ‘please’ and offer the ‘right’ answers when asked questions by an adult figure. This scenario was further compounded by the fact that the researcher was aware of sometimes slipping into ‘teacherly mode’ by praising so-called ‘right’ answers and explaining things unnecessarily. It would have perhaps been more illuminating had the researcher been able to talk to the children in a more informal (home) environment, where it is likely that very different responses would have been made, but issues of access made the chances of this remote.

However, the greatest limitation of the research stemmed, somewhat ironically, from the actual research focus on gender. From the outset, gender was placed very explicitly on the agenda and it is impossible to know whether the children would have actually considered the issue important or relevant had the researcher not drawn their attention to it throughout. Indeed, both the questionnaires and semi-structured interview questions were highly gender prescriptive. The children were a little uncomfortable when discussing the issue, seen in the often awkward and reluctant ways in which they responded to the questions. Simultaneously, however, the children seemed to feel almost compelled to make gender-specific judgements because of the positive reinforcement given by the researcher. The children were in a sense being invited to perform the gender stereotyped roles identified in the textual aspect of the study. Added to this was the fact that the focus on gender privileged it over other issues contributing to the formation of identity, making the scope of the investigation very contained and even ‘narrow’. It is therefore stressed that ‘gender’ is only one of many possible angles that could have been taken.

As with any major research investigation, it is often difficult to know when to ‘draw the line’ and place that final full stop on the page. In a sense, it is exciting to draw an investigation to a close raising more questions because it means that a wealth of new research opportunities can be pursued in later projects. One piece of further research has already been suggested whereby the relationship between the ‘parts’ and the ‘whole’ of content counts across the toy advertisement sample needs further investigation. It might also be an interesting exercise to see whether a similar juxtaposition is notable across a sample of child-targeted advertisements for products other than toys or across a sample of adult-targeted advertisements.

It would also be an interesting exercise to investigate how a group of children would negotiate the ‘part’ elements of an advertisement, rather than view the text in its intended ‘whole’. The children, for example, frequently referred to and seemed interested in the audio features used in the selected advertisements. Perhaps a researcher could encourage children to view a series of advertisements with the sound turned down and ask them to match a separate sample of soundtracks to the screen images, or to describe the kinds of soundtracks that they would expect to hear in advertisements (and vice versa).

It would also be interesting to take a more production-based approach and work through an advertisement scene-by-scene with a group of children. The children could be encouraging to provide the narrative line, discuss how each shot was composed, and how each shot might relate to the way a text is supposed to be ‘read’. It might even be illuminating to print images of advertisement stills, at random, onto paper and ask a group of children to sequence them in the most effective way. Their responses could then be paralleled with the construction of the actual advertisement to determine their level of sequential understanding and why they chose to order the shots in a particular way.

Colour was often used as a significant point of gender reference, so further research could be conducted into why children tend to perceive colours in this way. This might be achieved by asking the children to decide whether certain colours are more ‘for boys’ or more ‘for girls’. Alternatively, a group of children could be asked to colour-code various items from toys and clothes to school equipment and household appliances to see whether the same gendered tendencies applied.

One final research suggestion involves a study of how the media might form a main point of reference for children in their daily lives and interaction with others. This might be studied, for example, by considering how the media ‘inform’ young children in spontaneous play scenarios. There was evidence of cross-media referencing in this investigation, but one criticism of this is that the contexts of the studies in which the children displayed this tendency were all media-based. It might therefore be argued that their use of mass media references was an inevitable aspect in their conversations about the medium of television. If, however, young children referred to the media in different contexts, such as spontaneous play, then the potential significance of television as one of their main points of reference could be judged more objectively.

In conclusion, there is a strong argument to suggest that gender related strongly to the interlocking elements of Text-Producer-Receiver within the genre of television advertising. Gender stereotypes arguably help to inform young children about the composition and function of the interactive social frameworks that they may, as yet, be too young to experience first hand. Children may only begin to question such stereotypes as they mature and encounter examples of gender contrary to their internalised schemata, but that during young childhood at least these stereotypes are an accepted framework.

Returning, for a moment, to the notions of gender roles and gender performativity (cf. Chapter Two), it is theoretically possible to argue that there are two different gender perspectives in operation. On the one hand, the actual toy advertisements can be described as being clearly in line with the structuralist view of the gender stereotypes that form a blue-and-pink dichotomy. The children’s responses to these stereotypes, however, tended to correspond more closely with the theories of gender performativity. That is to say, gender seemed a natural ‘given’ and the children performed their roles unquestioningly, although there was an added twist in the sense that they ‘satirised’ their own genders by exaggeratedly acknowledging the prescriptive nature of being a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’. While they noted the differences, it did not really occur to them to ‘mind’.

Throughout the course of the investigation, one notable point was that gender was implicit in the children’s discussions but made explicit by the research structure. It is not known whether the children would have opted to discuss gender had they not, at least indirectly, been prompted to do so. The children tended to regard gender stereotypes as ‘taken for granted’ and ‘acceptable’ but were excited when they realised that they could actively question them. To allude to gender stereotypes may indeed be to collude with their existence (cf. Chapter Seven), while the respective worlds of Barbie and Action Man remain as polarised as ever before, locked in a pink-and-blue dichotomy. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing in early childhood, since stereotypes offer frameworks within which children can gain a basic understanding of gender in society. Such schemata can then be modified in accordance with new experiences and changing perspectives, where gender perception is just one example of transient childhood theorising about the world, and television is just one source of knowledge.