Negative+Representations,+Stereotypes,+and+Bad+Role+Models+Matt+Geiger

For my research project 2 I screened an episode of iCarly, iPsycho. I noted every negative representation, stereotype, and bad role modeling for children seen in this particular iCarly episode.

NOTES: i Carly Episode iPsycho

Beginning of the episode trying to make kids come to the birthday party by tweeting them and video-casting live, and letting them know online exactly where they are. This is extremely dangerous to let people know exactly where you are (especially children) online.

When Carly and Sam are filming icarly at the party, they do a cowboy scene. To be funny, Carly plays a "dumb ditzy girl character" This is a negative representation shown of some girls being stupid

Throughout the episode Spencer and Gibby do stereotypical masculine things like home improvement, carpentry, construction, and camping out. This stereotypical attitude may be showing children, "this is what guys should do"

In the show, Gibby and his younger brother need to go save the iCarly gang from being trapped. In the episode they take a train (just the two of them) to go save them by themselves. This is not safe at all for children to be taking trains by themselves and gives a negative representation to children that they can just go places by themselves without telling an adult. Once Gibby gets to the house and finds out that his friends are trapped, he doesn't contact any adults, he just tries to deal with it himself. This is a very negative children telling them to maybe do things on their own rather than contacting an adult when they need them.

In the episode a very large portion of the end is a fight scene. This fight scene is very violent, has blood in it and is very inappropriate for young children. This could teach children to solve your problems, you must physically fight "bad people". This fight scene was inappropriate, physical and very long.

CONCLUSION: When looking back at this episode, when seen without looking in depth and screening specifically for negative influences on children, iCarly projects some serious issues on children. One big issue that I worry about when looking at what this episode can project on children is independence. With the show having very few adults in it, almost in all instances the characters do things, that children should normally do with adults. If children tried to act like the kids in iCarly, their parents would have to file missing persons reports several times a year. I also worry about technology safety. In the very beginning of the episode when they were trying to get people to come to the party by posting where they were online, this is a terrible and very dangerous idea. Children need to know that anyone can come to these parties and posting that online or any personal information is dangerous. Children that follow iCarly probably have issues by posting stuff they shouldn't online. From this episode alone, children are getting negative ideas from the show that could give them major issues in reality.