Browsing by Subject "Television"

Abstract

Background: Rates of childhood overweight and obesity have increased dramatically across Latin America in recent years. In Honduras, the problem is more common among children of upper and middle socio-economic status (SES). Evidence suggests that television advertising of high-energy-density (HED) foods may be associated with increased rates of childhood overweight and obesity.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to characterize the advertising of foods during television programming that targets school-age children in Honduras.

Methods: Content analysis was performed on four different television stations accessible to children in Honduras, including one broadcast station and three cable networks. Programming for each station was observed and recorded for one complete week, during after-school hours (defined as 1:30 pm to 5:30 pm, Monday through Friday). Eighty hours of programming were recorded and analyzed. Foods were categorized as being high in energy density or not (HED or non-HED).

Results: A total of 2271 advertisements aired during the observation period; roughly half of these (49.3 percent) were product advertisements. Of the 1120 product advertisements, 397 marketed food-related products. Of these, 69.8 percent promoted HED foods. Children were targeted in the vast majority of advertisements for HED foods (92.1 percent). All of these foods were advertised on cable networks; none of the advertisements for HED foods were aired on broadcast television.

Conclusion: Cable television during after-school hours in Honduras included a high percentage of advertisements for HED foods. This may promote consumption of these foods by children, putting them at greater risk for overweight and obesity.

The development of television in postwar Japan synchronized with both Japan’s nation building project after World War II and its geopolitical positionality within the global Cold War. While much of the previous scholarship has been dedicated to postwar Japan and its political and economic entanglement with the Cold War, the dearth of research on how the Cold War culture, or the cultures of the Cold War, shaped the growing nation leaves room for further discussion. Following the “cultural turn” in Cold War studies and taking television as the vantage point, this thesis aims to unpack the correlation between television culture and nation building during the ideological war. The conviction that television should be understood as contextualized within the socio-cultural background leads to the emphases of the thesis not only on the technological features of the apparatus, but also on its social and cultural reception and implications. The thesis firstly traces the development of and discourse on television in postwar Japan to shed light on how television has been inextricably intertwined with the nation since its nascent stage; secondly analyzes the popularization of television as a household appliance and suggests television’s omnipresent role in mediating the relationship between nation and quotidian life; thirdly focuses on television’s live broadcast technology and its utilization during the national events to indicate television’s centrality to the construction of national imaginary. Resorting to both archival resources and secondary materials, to both historical documents and TV commercials, to methodologies in both media studies, visual studies and cultural studies, and to such theorists as Raymond Williams, amongst others, the thesis argues that 1) the development of television in postwar Japan was in sync with Japan’s nation building and economic booming; 2) television presents itself as a spectacle of national prosperity towards its audience, situates the audience in the “national time” and contributes to a national “imagined community.”

This thesis examines popular Indian and South Korean film and television media which depicts the nation in the context of postcolonial division. Specifically, it looks closely at portrayals of anti-colonial struggle and partition, cross-border encounters, and revisionist nationalist narratives. This analysis illustrates the potential of such media to simultaneously gesture towards reconciliation between populations that have emerged as enemies despite their origins as one nation, and fail to exceed the limits of post-colonial, post-partition ideas of the nation-state and its formation of citizenship. The possibilities of these portrayals lie in their ability to both predict and produce public sentiment, as they provide an outlet for national discourse negotiating exclusion and belonging.