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Detta paper, tar sin utgångspunkt i min avhandling TV for Children (Pettersson, 2013), och studerar hur diskurser om lärande är inkorporerade i TV för barn. Den tvärvetenskapliga teoretiska grunden för studien utgörs av TV studier (ex. Ellis, 2006, Corner, 1999; Lury, 2005), Barndoms studier (ex. James, Jenks and Prout, 1998; Kehily, 2008; Lee, 2001) och Visuell kultur (ex. Mitchell, 2005; Rose, 2001; Sparrman, 2002) för att diskutera hur barn representeras, visualiseras och tilltalas som lärande individer i public service TV-program för barn. Materialet som studeras är public service TV program sända för barn under 1980, 1992 och 2007 av SVT och UR och analysen fokuserar på hur föreställningar om barn ständigt är länkade till föreställningar om lärande i dessa program. Frågor som diskuteras är om barn trots att de konstrueras som sociala aktörer i programmen också i och med att de genomgående ska lära sig saker kommer att betraktas som otillräckliga. Här blir relationen barn-TV central då den i sig också bygger på diskursiva föreställningar. Samhällsdiskurser fokuserar ofta på TV och barn som en riskabel relation, i en sådan diskurs blir det omöjligt att skapa public service TV för barn som bygger på underhållning utan programmen för barn kommer att legitimeras med ett lärande tilltal och innehåll. Detta ger en barnkultur som bygger på vuxna förväntningar och förhoppningar mer än en barnkultur som bygger på vad barn själva anser sig vilja ha.

Public Service TV, pedagogy and Swedish Childhood - an international story of imagining a child audience

This paper draws on TV Studies (e.g., Corner, 1999; Lury, 2005) Visual Studies (e.g., Mitchell, 2005; Rose, 2001) and Childhood Studies (e.g., James, Jenks and Prout, 1998; Lee, 2001) to explore how children and childhoods are represented, visualized and negotiated as an audience for public service television. Television for children is often debated in terms of the risk and assets that the medium is thought to pose for its target audience. However, what is actually broadcast for children on TV is much more seldom looked into either by people engaging in public debate or by research (for exceptions cf. Bignell, 2005; Buckingham, 2000; 2002; Lury, 2005; Oswell, 2002; Rydin, 2000). The present study draws on TV-material broadcast for children in Sweden during 1980, 1992 and 2007, as well as programming from 2015 targeting the youngest audience (0-9 year olds).

When studying the Swedish broadcasting arena and its focus on a child audience one must bear in mind that some aspects are specific to the national context, such as a very long time period of a public service broadcasting monopoly (1956-1992 for Swedish television) and a thereby linked strong public service TV tradition for the child audience. The specificities of the national context in regard to broadcasting practices are the reason for the years under study.

When looking into the public service TV content for a Swedish child audience there are a few discourses that cannot be avoided, nature is for example always a valid content to target child viewers with independently if the programmes are home-grown or not.  To ask the viewers to be active is also common in all kinds of programming for this audience group. Last but not the least, TV for children is almost always educational one way or another.

What I would like to focus my presentation on is three different programmes, all acquired from large international actors on the global media market and all of them linked to Disney Play School in some way. The programmes, JoJo’s Circus, Little Einsteins and Bear in the Big Blue House are broadcast for the youngest Swedish public service TV audience. They can be viewed as commercial programmes, something that has been troublesome in the public service context, but to buy programmes is something that the public service broadcasting company has been doing continuously over the years (Rydin 2000). What I would like to discuss is what kind of educational notions these programmes draw on, for all of them have a clearly defined educational topic intertwined in the programming plot. How this is done, what is actually taught and with what measures are although something that divides them.

JoJo’s Circus seems to display a joyful fairy-tale school, but when studied the teaching used is in a traditional manner and children in this programmes are to do what they are told by authoritarian adults.

Little Einsteins can bee seen to focus on highbrow culture such as classical music and art, but in the programme the high culture ingredients gets lost in a fast moving plot and quite bossy child characters.

Bear in the Big Blue House uses a different way to communicate its educational topic. Here the viewer is invited to join the activity on more friendly terms and what is thought, differences in imagery and perspective, is displayed in a quite complex way.

These three international, and quite globally spread programmes are in this way displayed on Swedish public service children’s TV and they are, like so many of the other programmes that are broadcast for this audience, educational – or maybe even edutainment (cf. Buckingham & Scanlon 2005). But what is striking is that they display so vastly different educational perspectives and they thereby come to present quite different views on what kind of audience these programmes imagine child viewers to be. However, these programmes put light on how notions of childhood is inevitably entangled with educational aspects in society and this raises questions of how media produces and reproduces stereotype notions of what childhood is supposed to be like.

How children are represented and visualized in Swedish public service television is the key focus in this paper and the purpose is to discuss which children that come forward as targeted in the television programmes for a child audience. The overarching aim of this paper is to investigate which children are addressed and hence are thought to consume public service TV for children. Underlying this aim is the idea that the TV institution produces and reproduces notions of children (cf. Hall, 1997; Pettersson, 2013), which makes it important to study television. The ways in which the TV industry portrays children have implication for how children are positioned and viewed in society at large (cf. Prout, 2005). Sweden has a strong public service TV heritage and public service television companies are strong actors in the Swedish society also in present times (cf. Hadenius, 1998; Hadenius et al, 2011; Rydin, 2000). The Swedish public service companies, both the Swedish Public Service Television Company, SVT and the educational public service company, UR, have both actual and social contracts with the state and the public and they thereby have obligations to all citizens and specifically to the target group children, as stated in broadcasting policy. Therefore, how these institutions represent children and their childhoods are a matter of obligation for the companies on behalf of the public and it is a possibility of democratic rights for the category children. To be visible and represented in public discourse is a crucial way to exist as an actor in society and children have the right to do so if the UNCRC is consulted (cf. Barnombudsmannen, 1999; Casper & Moore, 2009; Rogoff, 2002; Söderlind & Engwall, 2005). When children are portrayed in stereotypical ways in public service TV some children and some childhoods are neglected (cf. Pettersson, 2013). In addition to this the child-TV relation is often discussed in terms of risk, both in public and in academic discourse (Pettersson, 2013). If there are problematic aspects within this relationship I argue that it is of crucial importance to investigate this potential risk focusing on the targeted children. This paper therefore aims to apply a child perspective (Halldén, 2003) on television and discuss how public service broadcasting in Sweden represent and address their targeted child audience.