BODY AND MEDIA
Media Education at School
Valentina Percivalle, Maria Assunta Zanetti
Cem, Centro Educazione Media, Pavia, Italy
Department of Psychology, University of Pavia, Italy
Paola Rossi
Department of Physiology, University of Pavia, Italy
Keywords: Body, Media, Media Education, Cooperative Learning.
Abstract: This research aims to investigate how the messages from media (TV, web, radio and so on) influence our
choice, in term of look, diet, dietary habits and sport. In particular, the work that we present is focused on
the use of Media Education to promote a new awareness in adolescence about the influence that the
messages from media have on our behaviours. In this way, we can promote new competences about
comprehension and production of communication both by face-to-face way and both by media. Moreover,
we can promote a new and more functional image of body in adolescence.
1 INTRODUCTION
As results from many researches, the messages that
we receive from media, old or new, have a big
influence on the dietary habits and on choices of
look and sport of subjects in developmental age. In
fact, we receive every day messages, from
advertising, TV or web, about low-calorie diet food
versus hyper-calorie foods. In particular, the second
one are called “The Big Five” and they increase the
strength of persuasion of advertising on our dietary
habits. They are sweets, snacks, soft drinks, fast
food, cereals (Buijzen, Shuurman, Bomhof, 2007).
As Gotmarker shown (1996), the probability to
become obese is 4, 6 times higher for children who
watch TV for 5 hours a day than a children who
watch TV for 1 hour a day.
Moreover, Halford (2004) has shown that
children with obesity eat more than children not-
overweight, after watching food advertisings.
On the other side, on TV, we watch a lot of spot
that shown dietetic foods and techniques for weight
loss:
Therefore, these messages are incongruous and
so they have an influence on our behaviours and on
our choices (Hastings et al, 2003).
Moreover, we receive a lot of messages about the
importance of take care to our body in an aesthetic
way, for example with diet, cosmetics and sport.
These messages don’t show good habits of take care
our body, for the achievement of a good image of
himself.
Above all in adolescence, it’s simple to find boys
and girls with body disaffection, dieting and eating
disorder, dietary risk behaviour. So, on one hand, it
is important to improve their knowledge about
correct dietary habits and good habits of exercise
and sport. On the other hand it is important to work
to promote self-esteem and self-efficacy in order to
improve their competences to cope anxiety related to
the experience of their body and its changes in
adolescence.
Media Education seems to be a good strategy to
achieve these purposes: in fact Media Education
promote the competences about decoding false
messages from media and creating communication.
In this way, Media Education allows to reflect on
body and on the influence of the messages about
body on their life and on their behaviors. (Yari,
O'Dea, 2008).
Our research, from a comparative analysis of
research already present on the ground on these
issues, aims to: observe the influence that media
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Percivalle V., Zanetti M. and Rossi P. (2010).
BODY AND MEDIA - Media Education at School.
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messages have on the construction of self and
body’s image; verify the effectiveness of training,
focused on the analysis and production of media
messages, to increase the awareness of young people
about the influence that the media play in the
construction of our habits, dietary or not;
encouraging reflection in children and adolescent
about the body and its significance, in order to
prevent the assumption of dietary risk behaviours
and/or eating disorders; increase the skills of young
people as regards the decoding and the production of
media messages, using the logics and the techniques
of media industries. We can say that through the
methodology of Media Education we want to
achieve two main purposes: improve the
communication’s competences of young people both
in comprehension of messages and both in
production of messages, using technical tools and
logics of the media industry.
2 PARTECIPANTS
The research has involved five classes of junior high
school of two schools near Pavia, for a total of 107
subjects. The research was conducted by two
psychologist and a nutritionist.
3 METHODOLOGY
The project is articulated in three steps: 1) Context
analysis; 2) Training; 3) Post training analysis. In the
Context analysis, the purpose was the analysis of the
ideas about media and their messages (pleasure, use,
habits of use, reliability).
In particular, the analysis was focused on
messages from TV, radio and web. Moreover, the
purpose was to investigate the importance that the
adolescent give to their body and beauty and how
they take care to their bodies (diet, sport, cosmetics,
look).
The analysis is divided in two steps: 1) focus
group and 2) questionnaire.
The focus group provided the psychologist the
necessary information for developing a
questionnaire, as a tool for evaluating the beliefs
about media and body and the real habits about the
use of media and body’s care.
In particular, as we can find in literature
(Buijzen, 2008), we want to investigate the
knowledge about advertising (Bijmolt et al., 1998)
and the scepticism (Obermiller e Spangeberger,
2000)
The questionnaire provided an individual profile
for each subject, in which we can observe what
students think about media (pleasure, scepticism,
knowledge) and about the importance of body and
what they do for their body and they look.
The individual profile gives an idea about the
congruence or the incongruence of beliefs and habits
of the students. In this way, we can observe how
much subjects are influenced by media messages on
their behaviours about diet, sport, look and how
much they are aware of this influence.
The training is articulated in five meetings with
students and teachers. These meetings are focused
on: decoding of a advertising spot (slogan, jingle,
message, the representation or the image of body
and beauty); analysis of how we can take care to our
body, for example with correct dietary habits and
sport with a nutritionist; production of spot about
body by using technical tools and logic of media;
analysis of the psychological effects of a negative
image of your body with a psychologist.
As we know from the literature, for improving
the awareness about the functioning of media is
important to show how they work and how we can
work with them in order to product information and
communication (Buckingam, 2007).
During the encounters the classrooms are divided
in four groups, working with cooperative learning
(Johnson, Johnson, 1994).
During the research the group can attend a web chat-
platform, in which they can find information about
body, exercise, sport. Moreover, they can chat with
the experts for counselling on line. (Carling,
Andersson, 2006). At the end of the project the
groups can share their product (video spots) with the
other classrooms.
The Post training analysis is focused on the
administration of a questionnaire, that wants to
evaluate the efficacy of the training to improve the
awareness about media and their messages, in
particular about spots and their influence on our
choice about body (diet, sport, food) and look.
4 RESULTS
The research is articulated in pre and post test
analysis with a questionnaire that it is administrated
before and post training.
The results has shown an improvement in
awareness of the experimental group about the
potential influence of media messages in defining
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the dietary habits and preferences of choice about
look and sport. Most of those, after the training,
recognizes the potential of false advertising and the
logics underlying the creation of them.
After the training, in particular, is increased: the
knowledge about media industries, the percentage of
students who are skeptical about the positive
features of some products; the percentage of student
that recognize the logics of advertising.
The majority of participants have also
demonstrated their ability to distinguish between
food habits and management of their bodies in order
to promote individual well-being and, instead, those
dysfunctional.
In fact, also for example, after the training is
increased the percentage of students that recognize
the correct dietary and sport habits.
5 CONCLUSIONS
For the future, we want to replicate this research. In
particular, we think that it is important to improve
the research, working with the web and its messages.
In fact, from the literature, we know that, the web
have a big influence on the adolescent’s behaviours
(for example, sites that inform us about sport, diet,
eating disorder, sites pro “ana” and “mia”).
It’s important to analyse with adolescent the
messages that we receive from web, in order to
observe how these messages are reliable and based
on scientific bases.
REFERENCES
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Carling P., Andersson G. (2006), Internet and
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