Vioence in MBC3 Cartoons and Its Effect on Child’s Anxiety

Abstract

The researcher conducted a study entitled "Violence in Cartoons Displayed in Specialized TV Channels and Its Impact on Child’s Anxiety." The present study aimed to identify the content of the cartoon series subject of study in terms of values, types of violence, and duration. The study sought to highlight the most important points  implied in in the cartood seiries titleled “Pwer Rangers Samurai” in terms of      concept/idea, place, production, advertising, characters, and language to identify the impact level of the scenes of violence on the development of anxirty (a state, a feature in children) and reach a set of suggestions that contribute to the alleviation of the impact of the scenes of violence displayed on MBC3 on the child's behavior.

The researcher adopted survey and an empirical approach. The sample included 100 male and female children aged 6-8. The sample was divided into two groups, control and experimental. The study was carried out in the second semester of the academic year 2017-2018, and the analytical sample is a TV cartoon for children aired on the specialized channel MBC3. The research reached a number of conclusions:

1. Parents guidance for the chidren when watching violent TV sceneces alleviates children’s anxiety state or trait and the violent bahavior.
2. It was found out that gender factor plays an important role in the emergence of the anxiety state and trait for female children whose parents do not play a guidance role when watching violence.
3. The study showed that parents’ intervention to alleviate the aggressive scenes is more effective for males than for females. The anxiety trait is not affected by the gender factor, while the violent behavior is affected by the gender factor as it is stronger in ale children than it is in female children even with the intervention of the parents.
4. The number of violent scenes in the series subjet of study reached 62 over 17 minutes. 23 scences of verbal violence made 37.09% of the scenes of violence, while the scenes including physical aggression were 39 scences making 62.9% of the violence scenes.
5. The most prominent values in “Power Rangers Samurai” are the negative values of hatred, mockery, and betrayal. The perecentage of hatred reached 34.78%, the mocjery perecentage reached 26.08%, and the betraila percentage reached 21.73%.