Using telephone interviews among a random sample of 537 Dutch children aged 7–12 years old, we investigated the prevalence of fear reactions to television news among younger and older children and among boys and girls, what types of news items children in different age and gender groups refer to as frightening, and whether children's fear reactions to regular adult television news differed from their fear reactions to a special children's news program. Overall, 48.2 % of the children who reported watching (...) the adult or children's news programs, reported fear reactions to adult news, while 32.6 % reported fear of children's news content. For both types of news programs, younger children and girls more often reported fear than older children and boys did. The most prevalent fear-inducing news content categories were interpersonal violence, fires, accidents, and disasters, and visual depictions of the consequences of violence. (shrink)

A content analysis of 601 commercials was conducted in order to identify the appeals that characterize commercials aimed at children and teenagers. Our findings demonstrated that the use of appeals showed strong age differences and was highly gender-role stereotyped, particularly in commercials aimed at children. The most typical appeals in commercials aimed at male children were action-adventure, sports, and play, whereas commercials aimed at female children emphasized nurturing, physical attractiveness, friendship, and romance. Having the best, competition, and achievement were the (...) dominant appeals in commercials aimed at male teenagers, whereas romance, sexuality, and belonging to a group were emphasized in commercials aimed at female teenagers. (shrink)

Kijkwijzer is the name of the new Dutch rating system in use since early 2001 to provide information about the possible harmful effects of movies, home videos and television programs on young people. The rating system is meant to provide audiovisual productions with both age-based and content-based ratings. It is designed to enable self-regulation by the audio-visual sector. The development of Kijkwijzer, which took place under the auspices of NICAM, the Netherlands Institute for the Classification of Audiovisual Media, is based (...) on consumer research among Dutch parents, as well as theories and research on children and the media. The consumer survey that preceded the development of Kijkwijzer revealed that 70% of Dutch parents indicated that they would use a rating system. The majority of parents liked to receive information on the content of media productions, particularly about violence, frightening content, sexual depictions, discrimination, drug abuse, and coarse language. Parents also wanted age categories. Kijkwijzer distinguishes four age categories: All Ages, 6, 12 and 16. This article gives an overview and account of the various principles underlying Kijkwijzer version 1.1. It also offers suggestions for improvement of future versions of Kijkwijzer. (shrink)

In both the academic and societal debates, it is widely assumed that cognitive advertising defenses can reduce children's susceptibility to advertising effects. Empirical evidence supporting this crucial assumption is however missing. It is precisely this gap that the present study aims to fill In a survey of 296 children, we investigate whether children's cognitive defenses reduce the relationship between the amount of television advertising they are exposed to and their desire for advertised product categories. Interaction analysis in regression shows that (...) of all the cognitive defense variables, only understanding advertising's persuasive intent was effective in reducing the impact of advertising exposure on children's advertised product desire. However, this only applies to the older children in the sample. For the younger children, understanding the persuasive intent even increased the impact of advertising. (shrink)