What is it about?
Popular media may be used as tools by parents to have conversations with their children about sensitive topics such as racism and sexism. The findings from this research suggest that parents with stronger media literacy and active mediation skills are more likely to have discussions about race and gender with their children after co-viewing popular films with diverse representations.
Featured Image
Photo by David Benson on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Family communication is an influential source of a child's understanding of gender and race. Media offer a diverse set of characters and stories that may be used by parents to discuss gender and race at a level that young children can understand. Past research suggests that parents are often hesitant to engage in difficult conversations with their children. Superhero films, in particular, enjoy great popularity and are often a shared family entertainment experience that may facilitate parent-child discussions about sensitive or complex topics such as gender and race identity, stereotyping, and inclusion.
Perspectives
Beloved characters and films are memorable and meaningful to children and adults alike. The potential use of media for parent-child communication about sensitive topics was particularly interesting to us as researchers to explore how parents may navigate discussing complex issues with their children. At the time we conducted this research, racial tensions and discussions of police violence in the U.S. were heightened in media and political discourse. As media psychology and communication scholars, we understand the potentially significant roles media play in cognitive processing, interpersonal communication, and real-world attitudes and beliefs about social identity, racism, and sexism. Films such as Black Panther and Wonder Woman offered up a more diverse set of characters that we imagined may provide the space for parents to discuss race and gender, as well as superhero media representations, with their young children. We hope that scholars, parents, and media practitioners find this article useful and that it sparks further conversations about media and diversity.
Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz
University of Missouri Columbia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Parent–child communication about gender and race through the films Black Panther and Wonder Woman: The roles of parental mediation and media literacy., Psychology of Popular Media, April 2022, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/ppm0000405.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
