Do Children Media Content Overstepping the Mark? An Analysis of Gender Based Problematic, Evil, and Criminal Themes Presented in Children Cartoon Shows.

Abstract

The current paper was designed to explore the gender-based criminal and evil activities, bad manners and problematic themes in children cartoon shows. Approximately 34 hours long 150 episodes of three channels namely Disney, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon were randomly collected out of which 523 problematicthemes related to gander-based attitudes were recorded. The study found that themale characters were more dominantly shown in displaying different criminal, evil and problematic attitudes as compared to female characters. A great number of Crude mannerisms, illegalities, defiance, as well as other forms of social and ethical rebellion were found in the content. There are an excessive number of instances where scamming, lying, cheating, stealing, and other egregious behaviours have been associated with the possession of a higher intellect in males. Circumvention of societal norms and practices are typically depicted as praise-worthy behaviours.