Discartoonrepresentaciones sociales de las personas con discapacidad en los dibujos animados. Un estudio de caso desde la Educomunicación

Zusammenfassung

Introduction The main objective of this doctoral thesis is to investigate the social representations of disability, in general, in cartoons, taking the case of Family Guy as an example, as it is one of the series where most characters with this condition appear. After an initial review of the literature, it was found that there was a niche for research on disability and cartoons, so it was decided to watch some episodes and, given the high content of the subject matter, it was concluded that the most suitable approach would be to analyse all the episodes, limiting from season 1 to 16 because, between them, there were 309 episodes of 20 minutes each. Objectives and hypotheses Before analysing the chapters, a script was prepared with 25 questions for in-depth semi-structured interviews with people with disabilities, family members, professionals in the field and professionals with disabilities. Validated by 4 experts, 12 interviews were conducted in which, in addition to general questions, they were shown a video with several cuts from the series, and after an initial reading of the transcripts and having checked the main themes and concerns, as well as the researcher's own interests, the second method was developed: a matrix in the SPSS programme with 28 indicators, also validated by 4 experts, to mark each time one appeared in the chapter, and also to transcribe the specific scene in a document. Finally, and as an accessory methodology, an online questionnaire was distributed among associations of people with disabilities, with 31 closed and open questions, asking about the same subject matter as in the interviews and showing the same video, to which 155 people responded, although only 152 were valid. The methodology used was mixed: for the interviews, a quantitative analysis of the percentages and a qualitative analysis by means of content and discourse analysis, and the Atlas. Ti. For the chapters, qualitative for the critical discourse and content analysis, and SPSS for the quantitative. And for the survey, Google Docs itself generated the quantitative data automatically. In the critical discourse and content analysis of the chapters, the data were divided into three groups: general data, direct data (when there was interaction with the character with a disability), and indirect data (when there was no interaction, only referring to him/her). Main results As a general result, the first 4 hypotheses were partially validated, and the whole of the 5th hypothesis regarding the reproduction of traditional patterns towards disability. The non-validated parts of the hypotheses refer to the general content analysis of the series, as the interviews and online questionnaires validated them 100%. Conclusion. Having analysed the data, the main conclusion was that the cases in which there is a traditional and negative representation of disability occur to a greater extent when there is a direct interaction with the person. Furthermore, it shows the concern of the people interviewed and surveyed about how these representations and stereotypes could affect childhood and adolescence. Therefore, a specific educational-communication strategy on disability that develops the critical spirit of citizens in the face of humour content that is not always interpreted in the same way is deemed necessary.