Abstract:

The term social deviance refers to norm violations which cause negative reactions; it is a deviation from the rules of the society. Throughout history, deviants, or in other words norm violators have been labeled, stigmatized, imprisoned, and excluded. They were always subjected to a sort of control, although the means and the mechanisms of this control have changed over time. These means and mechanisms lead us to the term social control, whose primary purpose is to control deviance. This study focuses on how cartoons or animated movies, whose primary target audience is children, engages in this social control or represent social deviance, and how children are affected by the messages they are exposed to. In order to analyze these problems, a case study which consists of a focus group study with nine children at the age of six, who have seen a selected sample movie, has been conducted. After the children had seen the movie, they were asked questions whose purpose was to understand what messages they received from the story about deviance, norms and social control, and how they interpreted those messages. The responses indicate that mass media functions as an agent of social control, and that it is an effective tool to make individuals internalize the norms of the society. Keywords: Social deviance, social control, mass media, cartoons, media effects

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