Leonie Rutherford - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Leonie Rutherford
The current generation of young children has been described as \u27digital natives\u27, having be... more The current generation of young children has been described as \u27digital natives\u27, having been born into a ubiquitous digital media environment. They are envisaged as educationally independent of the guided interaction provided by \u27digital immigrants\u27: parents and teachers. This article uses data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) to study the development of vocabulary and traditional literacy in children aged from 0 to 8 years; their access to digital devices; parental mediation practices; children\u27s use of digital devices as recorded in time-diaries; and, finally, the association between patterns of media use and family contexts on children\u27s learning. The analysis shows the importance of the parental context in framing media use for acquiring vocabulary, and suggests that computer (but not games) use is associated with more developed language skills. Independently of these factors, raw exposure to television is not harmful to learning
The Lion and the Unicorn, 2018
When Brian Selznick won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for the artist of the best American picturebook ... more When Brian Selznick won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for the artist of the best American picturebook for his illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007), it opened a discussion about what defines a picturebook. In Perry Nodelman's view, "Hugo Cabret seems more like a graphic novel than like what [he] and many others think of as a picture book" (5). "But then," he adds, the novel "uses none of the techniques of comic-book artists" (5). In fact, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is often defined by what it is not. Selznick describes it as "not exactly a novel, not quite a picturebook, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things" (Croker 6). 1 The media combination in The Invention of Hugo Cabret marks the text as intermedial. Intermediality entails "the merger and transformation of elements of differing media" to produce "a new mixed form which is more than the sum of its parts" (Heinrichs and Spielmann 6). It has also been described as the "medial equivalent of intertextuality" (Grishakova and Ryan 3). Intermediality, then, is the intertext that transgresses not only the boundaries of text but media (Lehtonen 16), to create a new medium unlimited by convention. While the words and images that constitute the picture-book form mark it as inherently intermedial, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is distinguished by the nexus it establishes between book and cinema media and the ways in which it celebrates and strengthens the relationships between old and new media. This is produced at both the thematic and formal levels of the text, as this essay will demonstrate. The essay will address the assumption of media displacement, gradual adaptation, and innovative and creative reimagining in Selznick's text, elucidating its original engagement with intermediality. Set in the early 1930s, The Invention of Hugo Cabret focuses on the relationship between twelve-year-old orphan, Hugo, who lives alone in a Parisian railway station, and Papa Georges, who keeps a small toy booth
Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature, 2000
ohn Rowe Townsend, speaking ofchildren's literature professionals. once made the distinction betw... more ohn Rowe Townsend, speaking ofchildren's literature professionals. once made the distinction between 'book people' and 'child people'. He distinguished between those critics for whom texts and those for whom children (their utilization of, or pleasure in, texts) are the object of critical attention. Televised narrative is now the dominant form of children's fiction, yet the media equivalents of the professional 'book people' are yet to find a significant voice in the professional and academic journals. Recent articles on children's film in Lion and Unicorn, together with special issues, like this number of Papers, on 'Children and Media' (my italics), go some way towards filling this silence. However, it is important to note that the publications which address screened narrative for children are generally those specializing in children's literature. The mainstream media and communicationsjournals, when they deal with children's programs at all, almost exclusively publish research informed by the cognitive paradigm. Regulatory and cultural policy is the other major area to feature in discussions, as witnessed by the most recent number of Media Information Australia, incorporating Culture and Policy (Keys & Buckingham (eds), 1999) with its special theme section, Children's Television Policy: International Perspectives. Regulatory policy, in the area ofchildren's culture, is itself influenced by research within the cognitive! developmental paradigm.
Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, 2004
No. 111 — May 2004 provides a frame through which television hybrids can be examined in terms of ... more No. 111 — May 2004 provides a frame through which television hybrids can be examined in terms of their possible role as demonstrators of ‘appropriate’ behaviour for television audiences. Viewers of these programs, in other words, are offered selectively edited entertainment packages featuring both exemplars of ‘good’ behaviour (lawful, public-minded, non-confrontational, and so on) and the public humiliation of those individuals perceived to be acting shamefully. Here the undesirable elements of society (typically including marginalised groups such as the poor) are invariably represented through, and reduced to, the grainy images of closed circuit television (CCTV) footage, while ‘normal’ members of society are allowed space to express the trauma of their victimhood at the hands of these undesirables. Palmer’s wider concerns here include the issue of whether such television tendencies suggest both an abandonment and inversion of the community-building role traditionally played by the documentary project and, in turn, whether these can also be seen to be symptomatic of a transformation in the nature of public space itself, as partly evidenced by television hybrids’ normalisation of the surveillance regimes which are integral to new community policing initiatives. This is an obviously ambitious argument to make, and Palmer is not always convincing in making his case. His chapters on video diary and makeover programs, and his concluding discussion on Big Brother, are not persuasively integrated into his wider thesis. Discipline and Liberty also draws upon a model of the relationship between television and its audiences within wider social-political contexts which is not clearly articulated. Palmer instead often writes as if the negative social-political implications of hybrids can be determined through a textual analysis of the programs themselves, couched within an outline of changes in documentary production agendas within British television institutions. Palmer spends much of the book suggesting a closing of the democratic spaces determined by television, and a narrowing of the potential for the agency of viewers, but nevertheless closes with a call for revival of the political voice of media audiences. Outside of these aspects of Palmer’s argument (and the incompleteness of his discussions are partly because there is simply not the space to detail these comprehensively), the value of Discipline and Liberty lies in its application of a distinctive perspective on documentary hybrids — one which aptly demonstrates the value of integrating discussions of governance into the wider debates over their nature and significance. — Craig Hight, Screen and Media Studies, University of Waikato
Review(s) of: Media Fascinations: Perspectives on Young People's Meaning Making, by Rydin, In... more Review(s) of: Media Fascinations: Perspectives on Young People's Meaning Making, by Rydin, Ingegerd (ed.), Northern Perspectives Series 4, Nordicom, Goteberg University, 2003, ISBN 9 1894 7120 2, 167 pp. Distributor: Nordicom.
Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Division of Chemical Science, 1968
Media and communications in Australian families …, 2011
… , Incorporating Culture & …, 2011
Some 30 years ago, Australia introduced the Children's Television Standards (CTS) with the t... more Some 30 years ago, Australia introduced the Children's Television Standards (CTS) with the twin goals of providing children with high-quality local programs and offering some protection from the perceived harms of television. The most recent review of the CTS ...
Papers: Explorations in Children's Literature, 2001
Discusses the role of The Children's Television Foundation in shapin... more Discusses the role of The Children's Television Foundation in shaping children's drama genres in the 1990s.
… child: texts and contexts in fictions …, 1996
Metro Magazine: Media & Education …, 2004
Abstract: The 1990s has often been dubbed 'The Decade of the Environment'. Pollution, d... more Abstract: The 1990s has often been dubbed 'The Decade of the Environment'. Pollution, deforestation and desertification, ozone destruction, endangerment of species of animals and wildlife, vanishing wildernesses, and energy conservation are some of the visible environmental concerns ...
Metro Magazine: Media & Education …, 2008
The article analyzes the presentation of youth in the film "Lawn Dogs," directed by Joh... more The article analyzes the presentation of youth in the film "Lawn Dogs," directed by John Duigan. In the film, the child as victim is defined by socio-economic contexts. The author explores the discursive moves by which means the film witnesses or occludes the traumatic ...
Writing the Australian child: texts and …, 1996
FINDING THE MOTHER, FINDING THE CHILD AUDIENCE: SIGNIFYING PRACTICES IN TWO RECENT" FAMILY&q... more FINDING THE MOTHER, FINDING THE CHILD AUDIENCE: SIGNIFYING PRACTICES IN TWO RECENT" FAMILY" FILMS LEONIE RUTHERFORD DEMOGRAPHIC analysis of cinema audiences reveals that the group that regularly attends the cinema as a social event falls into the ...
The Teen Reading in the Digital Era pilot study investigated Australian teenagers’ practice using... more The Teen Reading in the Digital Era pilot study investigated Australian teenagers’ practice using traditional print and digital platformsfor long form recreational reading. Following Naomi Baron we used long form reading to refer to sustained, attentive reading of textsthat are around 2000 words in length or more. In practice this generally means books, longer fiction or non-fiction available in print ordigital formats. In the digital era, books and other long form narrative and informational texts can be accessed on a variety of platforms,including print, tablets, phones and dedicated eReading devices. The study, therefore, focused on how and where print books (pBooks),eBooks and other long form digital texts are sourced, whether by purchase, borrowing or sharing, and the geographic, economic andcultural factors that influence such choices.
Publishing Research Quarterly
The concept of #ownvoices writing has gained traction in contemporary publishing as both a genre ... more The concept of #ownvoices writing has gained traction in contemporary publishing as both a genre of reader interest and a focus for debates about authors’ rights to write cross-culturally. This paper examines tensions the #ownvoices movement reveals between the commissioning, publishing, and critical reception of a book, using debate about Craig Silvey’s Honeybee, an Australian novel focalized through a young trans protagonist but written by a straight male author. Drawing on the theory of recognition, it analyzes author and publisher media interviews, social media, and literary reviews in mainstream publications, which are given context through with selected interviews with Australian publishers. Misrepresentation and appropriation are concerns for many readers, while judgements about aesthetic quality vary. Structures within the book industries limit the economic representation of diverse creators which, in turn, has implications for the diversity of experience represented in youn...
Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature
The current generation of young children has been described as \u27digital natives\u27, having be... more The current generation of young children has been described as \u27digital natives\u27, having been born into a ubiquitous digital media environment. They are envisaged as educationally independent of the guided interaction provided by \u27digital immigrants\u27: parents and teachers. This article uses data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) to study the development of vocabulary and traditional literacy in children aged from 0 to 8 years; their access to digital devices; parental mediation practices; children\u27s use of digital devices as recorded in time-diaries; and, finally, the association between patterns of media use and family contexts on children\u27s learning. The analysis shows the importance of the parental context in framing media use for acquiring vocabulary, and suggests that computer (but not games) use is associated with more developed language skills. Independently of these factors, raw exposure to television is not harmful to learning
The Lion and the Unicorn, 2018
When Brian Selznick won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for the artist of the best American picturebook ... more When Brian Selznick won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for the artist of the best American picturebook for his illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007), it opened a discussion about what defines a picturebook. In Perry Nodelman's view, "Hugo Cabret seems more like a graphic novel than like what [he] and many others think of as a picture book" (5). "But then," he adds, the novel "uses none of the techniques of comic-book artists" (5). In fact, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is often defined by what it is not. Selznick describes it as "not exactly a novel, not quite a picturebook, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things" (Croker 6). 1 The media combination in The Invention of Hugo Cabret marks the text as intermedial. Intermediality entails "the merger and transformation of elements of differing media" to produce "a new mixed form which is more than the sum of its parts" (Heinrichs and Spielmann 6). It has also been described as the "medial equivalent of intertextuality" (Grishakova and Ryan 3). Intermediality, then, is the intertext that transgresses not only the boundaries of text but media (Lehtonen 16), to create a new medium unlimited by convention. While the words and images that constitute the picture-book form mark it as inherently intermedial, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is distinguished by the nexus it establishes between book and cinema media and the ways in which it celebrates and strengthens the relationships between old and new media. This is produced at both the thematic and formal levels of the text, as this essay will demonstrate. The essay will address the assumption of media displacement, gradual adaptation, and innovative and creative reimagining in Selznick's text, elucidating its original engagement with intermediality. Set in the early 1930s, The Invention of Hugo Cabret focuses on the relationship between twelve-year-old orphan, Hugo, who lives alone in a Parisian railway station, and Papa Georges, who keeps a small toy booth
Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature, 2000
ohn Rowe Townsend, speaking ofchildren's literature professionals. once made the distinction betw... more ohn Rowe Townsend, speaking ofchildren's literature professionals. once made the distinction between 'book people' and 'child people'. He distinguished between those critics for whom texts and those for whom children (their utilization of, or pleasure in, texts) are the object of critical attention. Televised narrative is now the dominant form of children's fiction, yet the media equivalents of the professional 'book people' are yet to find a significant voice in the professional and academic journals. Recent articles on children's film in Lion and Unicorn, together with special issues, like this number of Papers, on 'Children and Media' (my italics), go some way towards filling this silence. However, it is important to note that the publications which address screened narrative for children are generally those specializing in children's literature. The mainstream media and communicationsjournals, when they deal with children's programs at all, almost exclusively publish research informed by the cognitive paradigm. Regulatory and cultural policy is the other major area to feature in discussions, as witnessed by the most recent number of Media Information Australia, incorporating Culture and Policy (Keys & Buckingham (eds), 1999) with its special theme section, Children's Television Policy: International Perspectives. Regulatory policy, in the area ofchildren's culture, is itself influenced by research within the cognitive! developmental paradigm.
Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, 2004
No. 111 — May 2004 provides a frame through which television hybrids can be examined in terms of ... more No. 111 — May 2004 provides a frame through which television hybrids can be examined in terms of their possible role as demonstrators of ‘appropriate’ behaviour for television audiences. Viewers of these programs, in other words, are offered selectively edited entertainment packages featuring both exemplars of ‘good’ behaviour (lawful, public-minded, non-confrontational, and so on) and the public humiliation of those individuals perceived to be acting shamefully. Here the undesirable elements of society (typically including marginalised groups such as the poor) are invariably represented through, and reduced to, the grainy images of closed circuit television (CCTV) footage, while ‘normal’ members of society are allowed space to express the trauma of their victimhood at the hands of these undesirables. Palmer’s wider concerns here include the issue of whether such television tendencies suggest both an abandonment and inversion of the community-building role traditionally played by the documentary project and, in turn, whether these can also be seen to be symptomatic of a transformation in the nature of public space itself, as partly evidenced by television hybrids’ normalisation of the surveillance regimes which are integral to new community policing initiatives. This is an obviously ambitious argument to make, and Palmer is not always convincing in making his case. His chapters on video diary and makeover programs, and his concluding discussion on Big Brother, are not persuasively integrated into his wider thesis. Discipline and Liberty also draws upon a model of the relationship between television and its audiences within wider social-political contexts which is not clearly articulated. Palmer instead often writes as if the negative social-political implications of hybrids can be determined through a textual analysis of the programs themselves, couched within an outline of changes in documentary production agendas within British television institutions. Palmer spends much of the book suggesting a closing of the democratic spaces determined by television, and a narrowing of the potential for the agency of viewers, but nevertheless closes with a call for revival of the political voice of media audiences. Outside of these aspects of Palmer’s argument (and the incompleteness of his discussions are partly because there is simply not the space to detail these comprehensively), the value of Discipline and Liberty lies in its application of a distinctive perspective on documentary hybrids — one which aptly demonstrates the value of integrating discussions of governance into the wider debates over their nature and significance. — Craig Hight, Screen and Media Studies, University of Waikato
Review(s) of: Media Fascinations: Perspectives on Young People's Meaning Making, by Rydin, In... more Review(s) of: Media Fascinations: Perspectives on Young People's Meaning Making, by Rydin, Ingegerd (ed.), Northern Perspectives Series 4, Nordicom, Goteberg University, 2003, ISBN 9 1894 7120 2, 167 pp. Distributor: Nordicom.
Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Division of Chemical Science, 1968
Media and communications in Australian families …, 2011
… , Incorporating Culture & …, 2011
Some 30 years ago, Australia introduced the Children's Television Standards (CTS) with the t... more Some 30 years ago, Australia introduced the Children's Television Standards (CTS) with the twin goals of providing children with high-quality local programs and offering some protection from the perceived harms of television. The most recent review of the CTS ...
Papers: Explorations in Children's Literature, 2001
Discusses the role of The Children's Television Foundation in shapin... more Discusses the role of The Children's Television Foundation in shaping children's drama genres in the 1990s.
… child: texts and contexts in fictions …, 1996
Metro Magazine: Media & Education …, 2004
Abstract: The 1990s has often been dubbed 'The Decade of the Environment'. Pollution, d... more Abstract: The 1990s has often been dubbed 'The Decade of the Environment'. Pollution, deforestation and desertification, ozone destruction, endangerment of species of animals and wildlife, vanishing wildernesses, and energy conservation are some of the visible environmental concerns ...
Metro Magazine: Media & Education …, 2008
The article analyzes the presentation of youth in the film "Lawn Dogs," directed by Joh... more The article analyzes the presentation of youth in the film "Lawn Dogs," directed by John Duigan. In the film, the child as victim is defined by socio-economic contexts. The author explores the discursive moves by which means the film witnesses or occludes the traumatic ...
Writing the Australian child: texts and …, 1996
FINDING THE MOTHER, FINDING THE CHILD AUDIENCE: SIGNIFYING PRACTICES IN TWO RECENT" FAMILY&q... more FINDING THE MOTHER, FINDING THE CHILD AUDIENCE: SIGNIFYING PRACTICES IN TWO RECENT" FAMILY" FILMS LEONIE RUTHERFORD DEMOGRAPHIC analysis of cinema audiences reveals that the group that regularly attends the cinema as a social event falls into the ...
The Teen Reading in the Digital Era pilot study investigated Australian teenagers’ practice using... more The Teen Reading in the Digital Era pilot study investigated Australian teenagers’ practice using traditional print and digital platformsfor long form recreational reading. Following Naomi Baron we used long form reading to refer to sustained, attentive reading of textsthat are around 2000 words in length or more. In practice this generally means books, longer fiction or non-fiction available in print ordigital formats. In the digital era, books and other long form narrative and informational texts can be accessed on a variety of platforms,including print, tablets, phones and dedicated eReading devices. The study, therefore, focused on how and where print books (pBooks),eBooks and other long form digital texts are sourced, whether by purchase, borrowing or sharing, and the geographic, economic andcultural factors that influence such choices.
Publishing Research Quarterly
The concept of #ownvoices writing has gained traction in contemporary publishing as both a genre ... more The concept of #ownvoices writing has gained traction in contemporary publishing as both a genre of reader interest and a focus for debates about authors’ rights to write cross-culturally. This paper examines tensions the #ownvoices movement reveals between the commissioning, publishing, and critical reception of a book, using debate about Craig Silvey’s Honeybee, an Australian novel focalized through a young trans protagonist but written by a straight male author. Drawing on the theory of recognition, it analyzes author and publisher media interviews, social media, and literary reviews in mainstream publications, which are given context through with selected interviews with Australian publishers. Misrepresentation and appropriation are concerns for many readers, while judgements about aesthetic quality vary. Structures within the book industries limit the economic representation of diverse creators which, in turn, has implications for the diversity of experience represented in youn...
Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature