Starlets, Subscribers and Beneficiaries: Disney, Latino Children and Television Labor

Christopher Chavez, Aleah Kiley

Abstract


Children’s television networks are invested with moral value not attributed to other networks, yet they depend on the labor of children to advance their economic goals. Using a case study approach of Disney’s cable channels, we found that Latino children perform labor on behalf of the corporation in three ways: as subscribers to Disney’s cable networks, as actors in programming designed to deliver those subscribers, and as beneficiaries in the company’s corporate social responsibility efforts. We found that the logic by which Disney assigns various forms of labor to different types of Latino children helps to advance the company’s economic goals, rendering Latino children hypervisible in some spaces and invisible in others.



Keywords


children’s television, Disney, Latino, labor, media industry

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