This thesis explores the identity creation along the timeline of Nickelodeon, one of the most successful and influential cable television networks and producers of children’s media in the world today. Nickelodeon’s success was directly related to an intensive rebranding and marketing campaign in which specific attention was paid to the meaning and experience of childhood. Nickelodeon attempted to define childhood through their presentations and imagery. This construction was a childhood free from responsibilities and fears of adulthood; it was also one detached from many of the world’s inescapable realities. Nickelodeon’s childhood constantly returned to ideological presentations, despite the company’s repeated pledges of focus on diversity.

This thesis uses historical analysis and textual reads to refine the image Nickelodeon has presented, and examine it in a critical light. The positive and negative aspects of Nickelodeon’s behind-the-scenes decisions and on-screen representations will be closely analyzed under theoretical lenses. In doing so, I hope to begin to understand the complexity at work in challenging hegemonic assumptions through mainstream media, and the powerful nature of ideology behind such productions.