Discussion
Today, animated shows span a wide gamut in the spectrums of character action, pace, and fantastical content. Research question one asked what actions and graphic changes appear most often in modern animated shows. In comparing the frequencies of character action, three of the four shows characters that are mostly stationary; the exception is SpongeBob Squarepants which demonstrates characters mostly moving at a walking pace or faster; this result is consistent with the show’s fast pace. In regards to graphic changes, across all shows, characters physically change most often in relation …show more content…
Firstly, unlike in most content analysis, only one coder viewed the sample and coded data. Bias may exist on the part of the coder, and there is no inter-coder reliability for this study. Furthermore, a small sample size was used not only in terms of the episodes chosen, but the number of shows overall; only four different animated programs were coded in this analysis, for a total of eight episodes. Another consequence of the small sample size is that the two episodes sampled from each show may not be representative of the shows themselves. TV shows tend to evolve over time, as due standards for on-air content. The results of the present study are limited to the chosen sample. As previously stated, the nature of content analysis forbids causation or generalizations of findings in terms of effects. As such, these findings may not be applicable to other shows on air. Given the wide range of pace and content of the shows sampled, it seems unlikely that generalizing to other shows in any capacity would yield consistent, significant results. In short, the formal and content features of the four shows examined here are not indicative of the features of other popular animated programs on