MECCSA-PGN Executive Committee Members
Kerstin Leder
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies
My name is Kerstin Leder, and I’m a PhD student in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. My academic interest lies in audience and reception studies; the title of my thesis, as it stands at the moment, is ‘a cross-national and cross-generational audience study of the nature and functions of media-related fears and anxieties’.
Television’s repute in promoting a sense of a ‘mean world’ has been the topic of a long series of researches led by George Gerbner (Annenberg Institute). Critics have pointed to a number of problems in his claims, but his central assertions – that ‘fear’ is singular, cumulative, negative, and produces passivity – have not to date been properly examined, and tested.
By speaking to three-generational families in Germany and Wales, I’d like to explore the varying roles of film and television in relation to people’s anxious perceptions of the world, as well as the different meanings that ‘fear’ may encompass, in consequence of this.
Among the key organizing questions of my work are the following:
- What kinds (modalities) of fears and anxieties might be media-related?
- How are media-related fears connected to people’s wider understanding of and actions within the world?
- Are there any distinctive generational fears?
- What does it mean for certain fears to be welcome or unwelcome to the generations?
- In what ways do the specific media environments of Germany and the UK affect the ecology of fear?
I’m hoping to finish my PhD in September 2007. Incidentally, I’m not as scary as my topic, so if you’d like to get in touch, it’s kkl @ aber.ac.uk
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