Construction of gender
Assignment 2: Construction of gender
Due: 11:55pm ET Sunday Week 4
Purpose: Social scientists, including anthropologists, often debate whether the media reflects a society or culture or whether a society or culture reflects the media. Regardless of the position you take in this debate, it is a fact that a cultural anthropologists can learn a tremendous amount of information about a cultural group by examining the various media produced by and for that culture. In this Assignment, you will consider the role of children’s advertising in the development of gender identity. Children watch an average of 40,000 commercials a year on television. How do commercials shape the way kids think and feel about gender?
Instructions:
Choose a children’s show to watch. The show should be “over the air,”not streamed, so that you can view the commercials between show segments. Then, in a presentation, answer the following questions:
1) Identify the show you chose to watch and why you thought this show would be a good fit for this Assignment
2) Identify the target audience (age group, boys vs. girls, etc.).
3) What companies paid for commercials during the show and what do those companies advertise?
4) Does the commercial show kids and/or adults? What are the people doing in the commercial?
5) Reflect on the content of the commercials- what does it mean to be female or male, feminine or masculine, in American culture?
PLEASE NOTE:
Instead of writing a paper, as you did in assignments 1, you are to put together a presentation, covering the needed components, using one of the FREE online multimedia programs (prezi.com, creaza.com).
For prezi.com go to Try Prezi free; go to Students & Teachers click on Educational Licenses (bottom of the page); go to Edu Enjoy (click “Continue); Continue to Student/ Teacher Verification and create an account.
For creaza.com register for a free account and proceed to create a multimedia presentation.
Learning to create multimedia presentations is one of the skills that is useful to learn in your online education, and most students find this fun and a welcome change from writing papers.
