Children’s childhoods: Exploring childhood through children’s interpretations of television advertisements in North Cyprus

In this study, I explore different aspects of childhood within a particular cultural and social space. I bring the sociology of childhood into dialogue with media studies to explore childhood in the lives of children themselves. In doing so I highlight the parallels that can be drawn between each discipline’s approach to children and audiences, respectively. I use the similarities between the two disciplines and methodologies that are compatible with both in order to explore how children interpret constructions of childhood and depictions of children in Turkish media content in North Cyprus. To this end, I conducted 10 focus groups involving 40 children between the ages of seven and twelve. In these focus groups I asked children to interpret television advertisements that depict children and, using the discussions around these interpretations as a springboard, I encouraged them to talk about their experiences within their socio-cultural environment. I used discourse analysis to analyse the advertisements used in the focus groups and to incorporate the children’s interpretations into my analysis as well as analysing the focus group transcripts using the cultural, social and economic backgrounds of the children as the context for my analysis. In addition, this study examines the fluid and ambivalent power dynamics between parents and children, both in terms of the actual exercise of power and in terms of constructions of meaning with regard to childhood. I argue for the importance of involving children’s views and perspectives in research on childhood and demonstrate how doing research with children can work towards helping them to be heard. I also consider this approach to childhood as a step towards having children’s social agency recognized in different institutions within society.