Disney Kids A Study On The Reception Of A Global Media Giant By Ethiopian Children In Addis Ababa

With the penetration of global media contents particularly Hollywood films in Ethiopia inrnthe early 1990s and afterwards, local audiences have been able to be exposed to Americanrnmovies. A significant part of this audience is made up of Ethiopian upper-middle-classrnchildren in Addis Ababa who are exposed and attracted to the animation featuresrnproduced by the all time leading manufacturer of children’s films and literature, thernAmerican based Walt Disney Company. Disney Kids: A Study on the Reception of a GlobalrnMedia Giant by Ethiopian Children in Addis Ababa attempts to investigate how the specifiedrnchildren in Addis Ababa, in the midst of their everyday lived reality, make meaning out ofrnthe animation and cartoon films that are produced in another setting. The study, by usingrnfocus group interviews and in-depth individual interviews, explores how Ethiopian uppermiddle-rnclass children make sense out of global texts and images as represented by Disney inrnthe context of their everyday life.rnThe findings of the study exhibit that local culture, values, and interests have a significantrnrole to play in the interaction between the global and the local. Intricate responses ofrnrespondents reveal that there is no easy way of establishing a definitive nature of thernglobal’s penetration to the local. This challenges the fundamental premise of the mediarnimperialism thesis that the authentic, traditional and local culture of ‘Third World’rncountries like Ethiopia are becoming battered out of existence as a result of the dumping ofrnlarge quantities of media products by Western, particularly American, mediarnconglomerates like that of the Walt Disney Company.

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