Workshops as a Methodological Intervention to Assess Media Literacy amongst Children with Special Reference to Learning through Cartoons in India

Abstract

The reach of global animation industry on television in India has given kids of different age groups a choice of 350 plus animation shows (FICCI-KPMG IMEI report 2018). In India, the burgeoning mobile internet and Smartphone penetration has given rise to an alternate screen for media consumption amongst children. Therefore, it is important for children to be able to comprehend the messages in the cartoon programs. Media Literacy in children is about helping them to develop an informed and critical understanding of the nature of different media (particularly television and digital platforms). Livingstone argued that media literacy in children is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create messages across a variety of contexts (Aufderheide, 1993; Livingstone, 2004c, p. 18). In a mediated society, the focus is to develop children‟s understanding of how media functions and how it produces meanings to analyse the impact it has on little minds. Media literacy leads to critical thinking and increase awareness in everyday life (Center for Media Literacy, 2008). Therefore, it is significant to understand critically the techniques, languages and conventions used in various cartoon programs that children watch. According to the study of current trends and approaches to media literacy in Europe (2009), Media Literacy should empower children with the critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills to make them judicious consumers and producers of information. With an objective to assess the media literacy levels of cartoon programs amongst children, workshops were conducted with 500 children in the age group of 7-12 in Delhi-NCR, India. Workshops as a methodological tool for this study entails „action towards improvement‟ (Lomax, 1994: p.4). Amongst 500 children respondents, 24 focus groups were made having six children in each group. The four urban, senior secondary schools were selected from the four zones of Delhi region (North, East, West, South). The language preference of children were English and Hindi. The research paper underlines how workshops are used as an intervention to identify possible areas of improvement in terms of enhanced efficacy and/or efficiency amongst children.