Childhood and Children’s Retrospective Media Consumption Experiences: The case of Norway

Looking back in the aftermath of World War II in Scandinavia, in Norway for this case, a strongly regulated market policy resulted in modest levels of consumption. With the advent of the American Marshall Plan in the 1950s,

The Marshall Plan, which was operational in the post-war period 1948–1952, was the United States’ primary programme for rebuilding and creating stronger economic foundations for the countries of Western Europe.

Television officially arrived in Norway in 1960 when the state-owned public service NRK opened its first broadcast station in Oslo. The first regular public service television broadcasts started in 1960. They did not include advertisements and the transmission time was limited. In according to Enli et al. (2013), Norway identified with the alternative paths chosen in other countries, ending with a late introduction of television which was framed as a continuation of radio’s universal nation-building project and the belief in a public broadcaster. The absence of discussion of alternatives to NRK’s television, with neither private ownership nor commercials, was unlike other countries. In addition, the public service institution was acting as an agent of enlightenment and nation building.

The prospect of television was exciting for the Norwegian population, including children. However, the new technology was an ongoing topic of discussion in the Scandinavian media. According to Strandgaard Jensen (2010, 2013), adults wanted to control and supervise children’s consumption of various cultural products. Children were in various contexts the objects of the adults’ agenda – they were the adults’ child-raising projects. Rollwagen (2016) also explored this question in Canada: Who spoke for children as television consumers, and what did they say? She noted that children, as symbols of innocence and the nation’s future, were often at the centre of the media debates and, not at least, that children were perceived as innocent and with plasticity. Rollwagen suggests that, in Canada, concerns about children’s television consumption were connected to nationalist anxieties, fears that American cultural content would overwhelm and influence Canadian children. For Norway, a representative from the Christian Democrats in the Parliament of the late 1950s, who himself had watched US television, was concerned about dumbing-down and brutalization. This representative also characterized the medium as an extremely dangerous instrument from which no home could protect itself (Enli et al., 2013, p. 214). Nevertheless, in the coming period the public broadcaster NRK became a prominent tool for Norwegian language, culture and enlightenment.

My participants experienced changes whilst growing up in a time that was still characterized by restrictions and regulations, and the levels of consumerism were relatively low compared to the more extensive consumerism of the present day, which is characterized by liberalization and a profusion of media. This was reflected in the focus group interview or emerged as content that was mentioned and discussed during the focus group interview: ‘We grew up with only one channel!’ as Elisabeth (born 1969) states. Television’s late establishment, and the fact that Norway chose a one-chanel system, testifies to its status as among one of the least densely populated and least wealthy countries of Europe of that time. (Enli et al., 2013: 215).

Accordingly, the knowledge gained from the focus group interviews is interwoven with large social formations in society’s structures. Thus, past societies emerged through the analysed narratives, specifically Norwegian society in the 1950s and 1960s, and in the 1970s, as the change in the media landscape from listening to radio to watching TV becomes clearly visible. In analysing the experiences, I use narrative analyses, which refers to a family of methods for interpreting texts that have a storied form in common. Here, a dialogic/performance analysis was preferred because it is a rather broad and varied interpretive approach where context and components are interwoven. It integrates how talk among speakers interactively produces and performs as narrative. Furthermore, this approach requires a close reading of context; the investigator becomes an active presence in the text, and the context becomes important as well (Riessman 2008: 105–106). The next section will examine the methodology for this case study in more detail.

Information relating to the study participants’ experiences was collected through focus group interviews.

Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD) granted permission for the interview survey to be conducted. The research project was registered with the Data Protection Office for Research which gave permission to process personal information. The informants’ consent to participate was acquired, based on written information on the research and an interview guide. To ensure anonymity, the informants’ names are changed.

The advantage of using networks in focus groups is that the participants in the network know each other, and can therefore elaborate on each other’s perspectives due to common perceptions and experiences (Barbour & Flick 2007: 66–68). In my two focus group interviews, I chose to interview academics (each interview had four subjects) from my social network. They had previous knowledge of reflecting upon children and childhood. The first focus group had four subjects born between 1952 and 1961 (one male, three females), the second had four subjects born around 1970 (one male, three females). The focus group subjects were born in different parts of Norway but at the time the interviews were conducted, they all lived in a city in central Norway. Finally, the participants spoke from a particular position of power when it came to pedagogical or sociological knowledge. In other words, I operated with key subjects in the sense that the interviewees had knowledge and a rather reflective approach to the selected topics.

Nevertheless, the participants were not necessarily similar subjects, rather they formed a small strategic cross-section that is the opposite of a representative sample. Thus, there was variation within a more or less homogenous group. The objective was to look for patterns of meanings in the sample of variations under examination. In this way, an attempt was made to follow the recommendation of Trost & Jeremiassen, who state: ‘one should ensure that the sample is as heterogeneous as possible within a relatively high degree of homogeneity’ (Trost & Jeremiassen 2010: 148–149).

My short interview guide had open questions designed to shed light on the broad research question referring to how children are construed as consumers, from a retrospective point of view. The guide was intended to form a frame for questions that were of interest in highlighting the theme, but at the same time, be open for the group’s contributions to media experiences. Radio and television experiences were highlighted and, considering the informants, these constituted an important part of popular culture in their childhood. The categorization of the experiences was also given priority during the interview. In common with other researchers who have studied children’s experiences of popular culture, I emphasized precisely the specific, perceived experiences and the interpretations of these (Mitchell & Reid-Walsh 2002).

The concept of popular culture is used here as a collective term for different cultural products, expressions, and areas that had widespread distribution and were popular in their time, such as games and toys, books and cartoon series, and radio and television programmes (Edwards 2000).

I used an experienced-based interview during which the individual actors were encouraged to recall their own experiences. The aim of my role as a leader and active participant during the focus group interview was to grasp particularly relevant points within each participant’s story and encourage interaction in the group. The role meant that it was impossible to be a neutral observer, nor was that the intention. Adopting a flexible position within an interview and at the same time remaining aware of processes taking place within the group can be a pragmatic way of dealing with this process. As an interviewer, I therefore had an active role (Kvale & Brinkmann 2009). Hence, in this regard I was also an actor who contributed my perceptions and experiences of popular culture, especially in the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. Nevertheless, the informants were still the primary focus. Their perceptions and experiences form the basis of the analysis. The concrete experiences were prioritized in the analysis, especially in cases where members of the focus groups had the possibility to inspire each other and comment upon each other’s experiences.

During the analysis, categories were developed on the basis of the collected material and how the recollections were analysed from a cultural understanding to facilitate the identification of patterns of meanings. However, adult’s experiences and accessing children’s perspectives retrospectively may present a number of challenges. The experiences comprise both experiences in the past and experiences from the past. In this regard, there are some complex methodological problems to deal with but due to space constraints, these will not be examined in depth in this article. Nevertheless, as historian Lisa Jacobson states, although they are adult reminiscences shaded by the passage of time, autobiographies and oral histories allow for more expansive commentary and reflection than most surveys. Furthermore, more traditional sources also enhance our sense of children as agents of historical change (Jacobson 2004). Here, it is necessary to consider the diversity of the various sources. The passage of time, as Jacobson mentions, allows us to reflect on continuity and change by listening to the voices of actors and their accounts of their life experiences (as media experiences) in the past. Therefore, once again, concurring with Jacobson, I will move away from a model of consumer passivity and instead explore the meanings that are reflected in the experiences. For this purpose, focus group interviews provide relatively deep insights into the concept of children’s activities, for example, enabling reflection on different media experiences among informants looking back in time. For both generations of participants in the focus group it was obvious how this method inspired the memory of a different media technology in their childhood, creating complex meaning making.

The two generations belong to two cohorts, witnessing different collective events and both living through broader economic, cultural, or political shifts, which distinguish them from each other. The first generation grew up within an expanding welfare state, though with more restrictions on consumptions and with parents less affluent, at least within a chronological comparison to the next generation. The values and behaviour of this generation reflect what they learned along the way, from parents, peers, schools, media, and from the trends that have framed these interactions. Moreover, this generation was influenced by state-run radio, the Norwegian public service radio, and then through the public state-run television channel. In practice, this meant that the informants listened to the same radio programmes, all broadcast by NRK, and that from the early1960s they watched the same television programmes on the only television channel available, also run by NRK.

A radio programme called Barnetimen for de minste [Children’s Hour for the Little Ones], aimed at the youngest children, was first broadcast in 1947. The idea behind the programme came from Australian radio, specifically from a programme that was originally called Nursery School on the Air (Bache-Wiik 1999: 107). The programme was well framed within NRK’s close relation to the state and the radio’s universal nation-building project as well as in key values of enlightenment and universality.

All of the participants related to Barnetimen for de minste, and it was the act of listening to the radio, generally with brothers and sisters or other children, that they remembered clearly. They all remembered the signature tune for one of the programme’s narrators, and focused on recalling a specific mood. Barnetimen for de minste structured everyday life for children and adults alike. It was transmitted at a time when children and most mothers spent the greater part of the day at home, as was also the case for the study participants. Radio ratings for the 1950s showed a huge response. Research has documented that 80 per cent of the target group for the programme listened to the broadcasts (ibid.). The programme was therefore an activity that not only structured everyday life but also created a collective or shared memory for children living in Norway in the 1950s and 1960s.

One informant, Jan (born 1952), pointed out how the programme became part of generationing, both between children and between children and adults. His mother made a list of who should sit closest to the radio when the programme was on. The list was followed to the letter and no deviations were permitted. Jan’s recollection shows how children as actors create meaning in the consumption of media products:

There were three siblings in our family, and on the calendar at home there was a list of who would sit next to the radio, in the armchair closest to the radio, and hence who could have the Cola bottle that we were given, and also the bag of peanuts we were given, on the shelf that the radio was on. So every third week we each got to sit there, and could have the peanuts in the Cola bottle, right up to the top. So Lørdagsbarnetimen [Children’s Hour on Saturday], and for that matter also Barnetimen for de minste, were extremely important events.

In addition, Jan’s recollection also uncovers a strong emotional involvement, shared among the three siblings in his family. For slightly older children there was Lørdagsbarnetimen, one of the biggest media successes in Norwegian radio’s history. Studies have shown that on any given Saturday in 1953, 94 per cent of all children in the country listened to the programme. All in all, 47 per cent of all adults over 16 years of age had listened to Lørdagsbarnetimen as a child (ibid. 106–107). Thus, listening to the programme was a shared experience for children who grew up in Norway in the 1950s and 1960s, and the experience might have led to the creation of collective memories. Both radio programmes, Lørdagsbarnetimen and Barnetimen for de minste, later became virtual cult products.

Later, in 2009, only 8 per cent of the target age group for Lørdagsbarnetimen (Saturday television for children between 3 and 11 years of age) listened to this radio programme. Interestingly, for adults over 60 years it was more than 50 per cent (NRK 2010).

The constructed narratives showed at least how important the media activity was for the children’s everyday lives. Consumption of media took place in a social setting, in this case in a family context, and as mentioned above, it was situated and created opinions and facilitated the formation of meanings against a background of social interaction where children were the principal actors.

In both content and form, distortions or exaggerations of fact also shape the perceptions of one’s experiences. By simply looking at the form and content of the informants’ narratives, we can ascertain their subjectivity, and the role of the passions and strong feelings that are produced. The development of cultural processes incorporates the manner of narration, including the words, concepts and metaphors used to convey the actors’ meaning making.

Among the participants in the first focus group interview, we find clear early memories linked to television, such as the first time they watched television. Passion and strong feelings, or the intimate and passionate relation, in this case to the introduction of new media technology, were clearly visible. The interviewer (born 1952) recalls the first memories of television, which was when the American president John F. Kennedy was buried in 1963. Her family did not own a television, so together with her three siblings she watched television at a neighbour’s house:

I have a very clear recollection of the first time I watched TV. It was when John F. Kennedy was buried, and we sat at a neighbour’s house. The screen was grey, and I also remember that I sat on a bench in a row with others, arranged as it would have been sitting in the cinema, with the adults in front and the children at the back. The sombre broadcast was enhanced by the fact that the room had been made light-proof. The reason was that it was generally accepted that television images were best viewed in a darkened room.

Methodological considerations on the passage of time through the use of narrative analysis raise at least two important questions: When analysed as narratives, did the informants’ accounts reflect stereotypical images rather than popular cultural experiences? Or were their stories rather founded on imagined representations of the past, instead of genuinely reflecting on cultural experiences? Here the historian David Lowenthal (1985) points out how our imagined representations of the past are often transformed into ‘a foreign country’. The imagined representations of a former childhood survive, he states, and the past is sometimes given meaning in light of the time in which the narrator is living, i.e. the circumstances of the narrator’s point in time in the present. For example, the contemporary media flow generation and the new concepts of childhood will have some degree of impact. This was also contrasted by the informants in reference to younger generations, who rather communicate in a different way, within a broad media landscape.

When the informants of the first focus group grew up, they were the first generation to spend time in front of the television. As had been the case with Norwegian radio, there was only one channel that broadcast programmes. This was also the case for the next generation as well, though with broader changes in the structure of family life and welfare state institutions more generally.

This generation came of age in an inherited welfare state that was economically, culturally, socially, and politically well established, with more affluent inhabitants. Throughout their childhoods, they witnessed the continuous grow of the welfare state, with an extended access to educational and social services, changes in family life and child institutions, and last but not least, changes in technology and communications. In addition, they experienced a weakening of traditional norms and values, with a new upbringing amidst a more international and interconnected world. Further, the second generation in this study, born around 1970, was born into a media landscape where not only the cinema, telephone and radio were present, but the medium of television as well. However, in 1970, only 20 per cent of the population had access to television, varying from approximately 30 per cent in the capital of Norway to 14 per cent in the northern part of the country (Dahl et al. 1999). In analysing the memories, my focus continues to be on identifying when passion and strong feelings appear.

It is obvious from the focus group interviews that television was the most important medium for this generation when they were young. Whilst the phenomenon of watching television for the first time was clearly visible in the oldest generation of the focus group informants, it was absent in the youngest generation. As one female informant put it: ‘The TV was turned on every day so it was not that special. Watching TV had already been taken for granted.’ Or as others said: ‘I don’t know what my first TV memory was.’ Nonetheless, some memories consist of technological passions, as Mette illustrates: ‘I looked at the back of the television and thought: Is it possible to look back there; what is going on behind it? Sometimes I did that – I didn’t tell anybody that I researched the back of the TV.’ She tried to get her body as close to the back of the apparatus as possible, simply trying to understand its functioning. She continues with the topic of her media fascination:

We had to turn on the TV before the beginning of the programme, to warm it up (…): To press the bottom, and then wait. ‘It’s coming soon’ I can remember the adults always said. We were sitting there, the whole family, waiting; first came a tiny light, then in a paler color and bigger light spread all over the screen. Often the screen was not sharp, so then we had to give it a moment, or better hit the box (i.e. the TV apparatus), in order to make the picture clear again. I don’t remember all the programmes. Instead I remember much more how we tried to be ready to watch Children’s TV, those few minutes the programme lasted. That was from only 18.00–18.20 or 18.25 in the afternoon (…).

Watching television was an important part of everyday life, with passions and strong feelings for both the technology and content. As Elisabeth illustrates: ‘I could sit there for a while, for it was really that much fun. Stars that we didn’t know. Or stars that we already knew. Only hanging out. Sitting there. It was amazing!’ Another informant tells about her feelings in this way: ‘I was sitting there, in front of the screen, listening to Ratata, and imaged that I was an actor in a film.’

In this study, both generations entered into an historical process where some media technology was already present, while other technologies arrived during their childhood. The second generation experienced the arrival of cassette tape recorders during their formative years. A prominent feature was the introduction of the cassette tape recorder, making it possible to produce mix tapes of favorite songs from the radio and television. ‘We bought a cassette recorder. I remember, we were sitting there and singing, we were singing along, over and over again,’ as one female respondent put it.

Making music mix tapes was a practice that peaked between the late 1970s and early 1990s, up until the point when burning CDs instead became widespread. The labour put into producing a mix tape, either for oneself or a friend, for example, obviously produced a cultural value that was bound to the individual (Bolin 2015). Jonny was fascinated by the content of a programme for older children that followed Children’s TV, the youth programme Flimra: ‘It was… it was the stars standing there, with long hair, a little bit frightening, accompanied with spooky sounds or the like.’ Jonny remembers mix-taping from this and other programmes: ‘I had an older brother and an even older brother-inlaw playing music. I inherited all his music instruments after him, and in the same way also the music. (…).’

Being together with one’s family and being inspired by the content of a programme created strong feelings, and this is clearly visible as a main narrative. The informant Mette was only six years old in 1974 when the Swedish pop group ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with its hit ‘Waterloo’. The new hit from ABBA, ‘I do I do I do I do I do’ was their first major hit after ‘Waterloo’, released in 1975. Mette says:

ABBA was the greatest of the greatest. After they had won the Eurovision Song Contest, my parents bought an album. Then they had a party at home. I woke up in the night hearing the song from ABBA: ‘I do I do I do I do I do’. I can remember I got out of bed, sat on the edge of the stairs, a stairway with about four or five steps. I thought I was in heaven! (laughing). The next day, I can remember, I started collecting ABBA photos. My grandparents were bakers, so I could get hold of different types of boxes. One of the biggest boxes was folded together and I wrote ABBA on the top, with huge, wonderful letters. I collected all my ABBA photos in there, more than two thousand photos. (…). The end of the 1970s was the greatest ABBA period for me.

In this case study, the representations had a basis in the particular period of time, in the question and in the informants’ experiences of the past. Hence, the main narrative and imagined representations were fuelled by both fact and fiction, or the memories contained facts but also contained distortions or exaggerations of facts. Nevertheless, it is necessary to analyse these particular elements in the narratives (i.e. distortions and exaggerations) as components in the formation of past experiences when they appear, in order to understand children as media users. Narrative forms and narrative elements such as anecdotes or jokes are of interest because they can be a source of important information on media experiences within the consumer culture that the informants were a part of and they created. In this case, it shows above all, passions and other strong feelings.