Unveiling the implicit message: A look at racial, Hispanic/Latino, and Mexican portrayals on "Sesame Street"

In this master's thesis I analyzed Sesame Street, a well-known and popular model for many children's educational television programs as well as a racially sensitive show, by way of a content analysis. I documented all races represented by the people and human-looking, animated characters and puppets. Furthermore, my study proposed to look at the portrayal of the Hispanic/Latino group and Mexican group; My findings revealed that the population on Sesame Street did not mirror the United States population distribution. Other results revealed the Hispanic/Latino group very rarely reflected their cultural customs, were mostly female and the majority was portrayed in lower class settings. Only eight characters of Mexican origin were portrayed and therefore the data outcomes had no extensive analysis. Yet, the resulting small number of Mexican characters supports the finding that Sesame Street seems to reduce the portrayal of Hispanics/Latinos to a very flat dimension.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication Studies

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Year

2002

Author dc:creator

• Zepeda, Magdalena Maria

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dolores V. Tanno

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

https://oasis.library.unlv.edu/rtds/1470

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:oasis.library.unlv.edu:rtds-2469