From a young age until more recently, the typical image of a television audience, being a family viewing at home, sitting together and viewing in front of the screen could adequately describe my personal experiences of the television. As a child, I felt as if television was more than convenient leisure and I subsequently felt more than just a consumer of what was projected to me through colourful cartoons and advertising campaigns. Nick Couldry, in his ethnographic article ‘Theorising media, as practise’ (2004), outlines these experiences as key qualities of children’s television watching.
As a child with a technology-loving father, I was granted a satisfying diet of screen time, which was greatly cherished, as I was able to connect with characters and escape from the turmoil of the terrible twos. Television was an adventure, having unforeseen twists and turns however always having a happy ending.
Couldry’s discusses the diminishing parental mediation of their children’s television; he asserts that parents would decreasingly regulate the length of their child’s TV screen time. In relation to my viewing experiences as a child, fortunately, my parents were relaxed in this sense, which enabled me to experiment with my viewing habits and find content that I personally enjoyed (of course this was dependent on my sister being absent or not having the power of the remote).
Secondly, Couldry outlines that parents would not evaluate what their child is viewing with strict guidelines. Similarly, this belief reigned true for my experiences as a child, as from a young age I found myself watching everything from Jurassic Park to sport while also enjoying the kid’s channel.
From these vivid memories of curling up on the couch and watching Jurassic Park, some of my fondest memories involve arriving home after school, kicking my school shoes off and switching on the TV to Nickelodeon and not leaving the screen until dinner was ready.
My relationship with the television was mesmerising, and as I grew older my relationship did change. From a young age, I had a large amount of faith and trust in media outlets, I believed what I saw on TV was a reality. However, with the rapid increase of ‘Fake News’ in traditional media, I became a spectacle of my once loved TV.
Instead of watching for entertainment, I began to speculate and question what I was watching on television. I remember the first instance where my relationship with the television began to change, it was during a VICE documentary where the topic of false news and misconception was discussed throughout traditional media outlets, in particularly focusing on prime time news in the United States.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI
From watching this, I wished that my family would sit through and talk to me about what I had just observed, and give me some closure/ hope that all television is not a lie. I didn’t like what I saw and had lost positive expectation, from that point in time I chose to select my media consumption to come from a controllable place, my computer.
Thank you for reading!
Maddie Johnston 