Professional Practise: Dissertation Proposal Ideas

So, Ive been thinking more about what I am going to focus on for my dissertation in my final year. I have to produce a proposal for my dissertation this semester, outlining exactly what it is I am looking at and how I will research my topic.

I have decided that I would like to focus my Dissertation on children's television. For me, this is something I have always been interested in (and have certainly watched a lot), whether it be production, style, content, I have always been interested in why children's television is made in the way it is.

I started looking at the ideas of realism within children's television. I asked myself why are there so many children's programmes that do not feature humans within their content and why are the characters we see often a fantasy type creature which has been imagined by a writer or producer instead of having a real human being. Why do producers of children's television do this? What are the benefits of this? Is this for educational reasons? Are there psychological reasonings behind this?

These are all sorts of questions which I would like to look at and think that this could be these start of the development of my dissertation question/topic.

I have also been thinking about violence within children's television and how this affects the child at specific ages. Also, the change in children's television over time also interests me and I'd really like to look at how the production values within the genre have changed, how technology has changed the content which we see today and the use of puppetry within children's television.

I have been looking at some websites and have been doing some research to see how much information there is on these subjects. I'm not quite certain on how I want to focus my Question, and I'm hoping that my tutorial this week with Chris will help me focus my ideas and start to build a question which I can shape as my dissertation comes along.

Here are some of the reports I've been looking at for some inspiration...

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1397497/index.html

http://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/Facts_for_Families_Pages/Children_And_TV_Violence_13.aspx

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/06/in-praise-of-kids-television

http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/earlyyears/Edgar_Paper_20081223.pdf
(This document is a report/case study looking at 'Television, Digital Media and Children's Learning'. This report is really informative and contains a lot of statistics which I am interested at looking at. Although focused on the US, the paper also looks at the affects within other countries including the UK. This also refers to video gaming and commercial television which is something I could also touch on.)


I am going to discuss my ideas with Chris to see if he cant advise me on which areas would be most suitable for writing purposes. I am keen to start research on the subject and looking forward to learning more about the theory behind the production of children's television.