A Study Of Cognition Of Chinese Children To Net Advertisements

At the main body of this dissertation, the author has discussed the developing status of the group of Chinese children cyber citizens, has studied the Chinese children cyber citizens'discrimination and the understanding of image advertisement on the education web sites and their understanding of authors of web sites and their purpose. The researcher also has inquired into whether children cyber citizens be able to identified the sponsor of web sites when they saw branded web sites as advertising, and what they considered the primary purpose of the messages on the web sites.The participants in this study were 35 fifth-grade students in a public school with Internet experience. The researcher showed them image advertisements in four commercial educational web sites, after that the researcher asked them to answer the questionnaire. These four web sites were one children branded website, a commercial children educational website, a children page of a comprehensive website, and a special website containing the children group. Content on the sites included product promotion, entertainment, information, and education. Participants were asked to describe the contents of the sites, to identify the sites'authors, to explain the intent of the online messages, and to identify some advertisements. Their responses were coded using a coding scheme previously used by M. C. Curran in a 2000 study of children's understanding of advertising both on television and on the Internet, and by Kathryn Lynn Morrison in a 2003 study of children's cognition of complex product of sites that merge education, information, entertainment, and advertising.Results showed that participants could not differentiate the image advertisements from educational contents, they had a sophisticated understanding neither of the author that published the advertisements of web sites, nor the persuasive intent of advertising. They main thought the intent of these web sites are inform, nor commercial. The results of this study have implications for scholars of communications, policy makers, web site designers, and educators. Current guidelines for advertising to children online are voluntary. Web designers are self-monitoring as they communicate intended or unintended messages to children. Scholars of communications also should pay more attention to children cyber citizens.