Locating Moana through children’s eyes: “Seeing with others” in cultural identity and global media in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis investigates how children aged 5 to 12 in Aotearoa New Zealand interpret cultural representations in global animated media, with particular attention to Disney’s Moana (2016). Through a child-centred, transnational lens, the research examines how young audiences make sense of ethnicity, culture, and identity in mediated stories, and how these interpretations are shaped by their personal, familial, and educational experiences. The study draws on Jesús Martín-Barbero’s (1987, 2006) theory of cultural mediations, along with theories of globalisation and transnationalism, to understand how meaning-making occurs across local and global cultural flows. It also engages with children’s geographies to attend to questions of spatial belonging, migration, and place-based identity. The study is based on qualitative data gathered from 94 research participants through face-to-face and online data collection with a diverse group of 54 children representing over 30 ethnic backgrounds, including a large subset of participants from 10 Brazilian-background families living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Children were invited to interpret a range of 24 characters drawn from 16 Disney and Pixar media texts (15 animated films and one television series), with a particular emphasis on Moana. In addition, perspectives from 36 parents, as well as three primary school teachers and one principal, were collected to examine how families and educators use media for cultural learning and identity negotiation. Findings reveal that children actively interpret cultural cues through visual, emotional, and relational frameworks. Characters such as Moana and Maui were often identified as being “from here”, drawing on landscape, school-based learning, and everyday cultural knowledge. Brazilian families used global media texts to support cultural transmission, while children articulated desires for characters who resembled them not only in ethnicity, but also in language, values, and personality. Across the thesis, tensions emerged between cultural recognition and confusion, reflecting the complex dynamics of growing up in a legally bicultural and yet multicultural society, such as Aotearoa. This study contributes to scholarship on children’s media reception, transnational identity, and cultural representation by highlighting the voices of young viewers and the interpretive environments in which global media are made meaningful. By bringing together children’s perspectives with those of their families, and situating these within the cultural context of Aotearoa New Zealand, the thesis underscores how global animated films like Moana are not passively consumed but actively negotiated. It offers new insights into how identity, belonging, and cultural knowledge are shaped through everyday interactions with media, particularly for children growing up in transnational and multilingual households.