[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-151632-en":3,"doc-seo-151632-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":92},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},151632,1374391974564,"Clementine","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/14000253aa45c000a9e?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1779874745381141002",8,"Research & Report","Multimodal representations of gender in young children’s popular culture","This article examines how learning and representation emerge through young children’s popular culture. Using multimodal, social semiotic analyses, it explores two media texts tied to a specific brand and shows how gender and gender differences are constructed across separate media contexts and through their interactions. The findings indicate that semiotic resources generally depict girls as different from or inferior to boys. It also highlights how a young girl’s play actively produces meaning and challenges restrictive ideologies in everyday media.","MedieKultur | Journal of media and communication research | ISSN 1901-9726  \nArticle – Theme section  \nMultimodal representations of gender in young children’s popular culture  \nFredrik Lindstrand, Eva Insulander, and Staffan Selander  \nMedieKultur 2016, 61, 6-25  \nPublished by SMID | Society of Media researchers [In Denmark | www.smid.dk](In Denmark | www.smid.dk)[ ](In Denmark | www.smid.dk)[The online version of this text can be found open access at www.mediekultur.dk](The online version of this text can be found open access at www.mediekultur.dk)  \nAbstract  \nThis article poses questions regarding learning and representation in relation to young children’s popular culture. Focusing on gender, the article builds on multimodal, social semiotic analyses of two different media texts related to a specific brand and shows how gender and gender differences are represented multimodally in separate media contexts and in the interplay between different media. The results show that most of the semiotic resources employed in the different texts contribute in congruent ways to the representation of girls as either different from or inferior to boys. At the same time, however, excerpts from an encounter with a young girl who engages with characters from the brand in her role play are used as an example of how children actively make meaning and find strategies that subvert the repressive ideologies manifested in their everyday popular culture.  \nKeywords  \nApps, children, gender, learning, multimodality, popular culture, social semiotics, television  \nArticle: Multimodal representations of gender in young children’s popular culture  \nIntroduction  \nNeedless to say, the contemporary media landscape seems to offer young children a vast range of possibilities today. Internet and digital media provide a multitude of options in terms of activities, interaction and consumption. For those with the economic, technological and social means (cf. Buckingham & Willett, 2013), there is a rich treasure chest of stories, characters, services and products on offer, waiting for them to invest their time and interest. Additionally, based on the globalisation of ‘the market’ and related to the continuous development of what Jenkins (2006) refers to as ‘convergence culture’, the cultural logic behind ‘international trans-media’ or ‘cross-media franchises’ (Aarseth, 2006; Jenkins, 2006; Lemke, 2004, 2009) has resulted in a parallel stream of toys and other products related to the media texts with which children are invited to engage. The combination of media textsand related ‘material’ artefacts enables children to choose the particular popular cultural pond into which to plunge.  \nWhen we first approached the field of younger children’s popular culture in a research project examining how ‘the Middle Ages’ are construed in different learning settings, we were interested in the potential of popular culture as a resource for learning 1  \n‘Alice’, a three-year-old girl at one of the Swedish preschools we visited, helped us delimit the scope of our interest further. She was down on her hands and knees and neighed like a horse as she was playing with a friend among the shoes, boots and Wellingtons in the entrance hall of her preschool. Our presence disrupted the play for a moment as she shifted her focus of attention towards us. The following conversation took place:  \nAlice: (neighing) I am Galahad!  \nResearcher: I see... And who is Galahad?  \nAlice: Mike the Knight’s horse, silly!  \nResearcher: OK! And, sorry for asking, but who is Mike the Knight?  \nAlice: A knight.  \nResearcher: What is a knight?  \nAlice: A person.  \nResearcher: How can you tell that a person is a knight?  \nAlice: He rescues princesses, from dragons and other dangerous things.  \nResearcher: Wow! And do princesses save knights too?  \nAlice: No, never. They are only rescued.  \nIn conformity with what others have concluded before us regarding the potential of popular culture as a resource for learning (cf. M","cbCaiizvQmjggSJe","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiizvQmjggSJe","pdf",1406811,1,20,"English","en",105,"# Introduction\n## Media landscape and convergence culture\n## Popular culture as a learning resource\n## Multimodal representation in children's play","[{\"question\":\"What research questions does the article address?\",\"answer\":\"The article focuses on learning and representation in relation to young children’s popular culture.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the study analyze gender in the media?\",\"answer\":\"It applies multimodal, social semiotic analyses to two media texts connected to a specific brand and compares how gender is represented across media contexts and their interplay.\"},{\"question\":\"What do the findings suggest about girls and boys in children’s popular culture?\",\"answer\":\"Most semiotic resources used in the texts contribute to portraying girls as different from or inferior to boys, while children’s active meaning-making can subvert restrictive 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