Kaitlynn Mendes, Cynthia Carter and Máire Messenger Davies
In liberal, democratic societies, citizens have rights, but also responsibilities – one of the most important being to keep oneself informed on key public issues and debates. It is only in so doing that citizens are able to form sound judgements and opinions that form the basis of their contribution to democratic processes, most notably during elections when they are choosing politicians to represent them. In order to undertake this role, it is the responsibility of news organisations to provide trustworthy, fair and accurate reporting upon which citizens may make sensible political decisions. This symbiotic relationship is widely regarded as central to the health of democratic societies (Allan, 2004; Lewis, Inthorn and Wahl-Jorgensen, 2005).
Before examining how children’s news fits into a broader discussion around news and citizens, we begin this chapter by briefly considering the thorny question of children’s citizenship. Do news organisations in the UK view children as citizens or, at the very least, as ‘citizens in the making’ (Buckingham, 2000a)? If so, why is it that children have so few news outlets that directly address them and their interests and concerns as young citizens? If journalists don’t see children as citizens, perhaps it is not surprising, as previous research has suggested, that by the time children become adults, few are participating in the parliamentary political system by voting in general elections (Carter and Allan, 2005; Cushion, 2006).1 ‘Children’ can be defined in many ways, but for the purpose of our study we focused on young people between the ages of 8 and 15.
From there, we turn our attention to a consideration of research on children’s news, where it has been noted that such programmes tend to contradictorily provide children greater depth and understanding of news events while also sometimes oversimplifying or evading certain stories their producers deem to be too sensitive or boring for their audience (Buckingham, 2000a; Matthews, 2009; Messenger Davies, 2007). We then report on preliminary findings of a study we have conducted with over 200 primary and secondary school children across the UK in which we explored their views on children’s news and its relationship to children’s citizenship. The chapter concludes by calling for greater interaction between children’s news and its audiences to make the news more engaging and relevant to young citizens.
When examining academic research regarding the relationship between children and citizenship, Bennett (2008) has proposed that there are two distinct paradigms that emerge. Researchers in the first paradigm suggest that children are politically ‘disengaged’ or ‘apathetic’, an accusation that has been levelled at citizens in general, not just children (Bennett, 2008; Iyengar and Jackman, 2003; Putnam, 2000). Yet, it is difficult to build a culture of participation when children feel that issues about which they care most are not addressed (Kirby et al., 2003 cited in Cockburn, 2007: 447). For some young people, their sense of exclusion from the adult public sphere of political debate results from feelings of powerlessness over unfolding political events – they are rarely given a space to voice their opinions. Children pick up on this and some react by declaring that they find the news to be ‘boring’, a term that needs to be unpacked. We would argue that ‘boring’ often means that the news doesn’t speak to them in a language that they can understand, on the issues about which they care most (Carter, 2007; Messenger Davies, 2007). This point serves to highlight the continuing importance of a children’s news media in which children’s concerns and interests are reflected, where they can discover other children’s opinions, and where they are enabled to discuss issues in what might be regarded as a children’s public sphere.
Studies with children and young people that ask them about their levels of political engagement actively challenge the view that they are apathetic (Buckingham, 2000a, 2000b; Chekoway et al., 2003; Cushion, 2006; Hine, 2004; MacKinnon, 2008). This research belongs to Bennett’s (2008) second paradigm where children and young people are seen to be both politically engaged and ‘disconnected.’ That is to say, government and mass media are seen to be failing children as citizens because they don’t know how to speak to them in a way that will tap into their willingness to participate in the public sphere (Bennett, 2008: 2). Although many children are already engaged in a wide range of collective projects in their schools and communities, adults often fail to view these activities as ‘political’ or constituting children as politically ‘engaged,’ since they rarely connect to a more traditional (party-based) notion of politics. A claim sometimes made is that children are more interested in being passively entertained than in being politically active. In our view, this is an assumption that clearly needs sustained interrogation. After all, politics and entertainment are not necessarily mutually exclusive; games, music, and other forms of popular culture can be useful methods for teaching and experiencing a growing sense of citizenship (Sweetser and Kaid, 2008).
Educators, according to Buckingham (2000a: 223), must enable young people to build connections between the personal and political in order to prepare them for participatory forms of citizenship. We argue that the news media also have a critical role to play, providing children with opportunities to express themselves publicly and to see their interests reflected in the news. Politics, in this sense, necessarily extends beyond the bounds of Whitehall,2 highlighting issues and events that affect children directly or indirectly as citizens of local and global communities.
Much is being made of the potential of online environments to draw children to the news, thus enhancing their citizenship. For instance, a now substantial area of research has focused on issues of children’s increasing access to and use of online communication (Buckingham, 2007; Livingstone, 2002; Livingstone and Bovill, 1999; van der Voort et al., 1998). Issues that arise include a growing ‘digital divide’ amongst children and what role gender, age and economic status might play in creating and exacerbating social inequalities (Livingstone and Helsper, 2007), the ways in which new technologies may help maintain social links and identity (Wilska, 2003), the everyday use of technology located in children’s local and global worlds (Holloway and Valentine, 2003), and how ICTs might be impacting children’s experiences and practices of citizenship (Coleman et al., 2008; Hermes, 2006; Livingstone, 2007).
Although it may be tempting to think that children who use the internet for information automatically become engaged in civic life, research has so far suggested that this is not necessarily the case. Instead, it has been proposed that children first need to be socialised in their everyday lives in order to develop the necessarily critical tools to engage with politics (Buckingham, 2000a, 2000b). This is particularly the case, it is argued, when talking about online forms of engagement (Livingstone et al., 2007: 12). Hermes (2006: 295), for example, has noted that ICTs do not necessarily produce new citizens. Instead they may provide new and important citizenship practices that bridge the public and private spheres, and can be variously used for information, entertainment, consultation and communication.
While much has been written about adult news, when examining the media research literature, it becomes apparent that few studies have investigated the structure and content of children’s news programmes or their audiences (Matthews, 2003: 131). Scholars have examined children’s representation in adult news (Carter and Messenger Davies, 2005; Wayne et al., 2008), the potential negative emotional effects of adult news on children, with particular attention paid to stories about violence (for an overview of this research see Villani, 2001; see also Carter, 2004; Carter and Messenger Davies, 2005; Lemish and Gotz, 2007; van der Molen, 2004), children’s newspaper reading habits (Raeymaeckers, 2004), and the potential of news to politically socialise young people (Buckingham, 2000a, 2000b; Chaffee and Kanihan, 1997).
Cowling and Lee’s (2002) report analysing television schedules over a 50-year period from 1952 to 2002 for the UK Institute of Public Policy Research states that children’s news programmes, as a proportion of total programmes, decreased so much in the last 20 years of their study that by 2002 only 0.2% of all children’s television could be classified as ‘news.’ Despite the fact that broadcasters have been seen to theoretically support children’s news provision, current affairs programmes and other educational content, in practice very little of this type of content is currently produced.
Some media critics such as Hirst (2002) have pointed out that the dearth of children’s news programmes is due, in part, to their high cost compared to dramas, cartoons or other types of shows, all of which can be sold, resold and almost endlessly repeated worldwide, thereby reducing overall production costs quite substantially. In addition, Hirst suggests that advertisers in the commercial broadcast services appear to prefer to advertise in a slot next to a ‘fun’ programme rather than a ‘serious’ one, thereby providing even less incentive to create non-fiction programmes. Whereas this stance does not seem to be as pronounced with public service broadcasters, in his study of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) children’s news programme, Newsround, Matthews (2008) found that in order to maximise the audience, producers often chose to highlight ‘entertaining’ stories over ‘serious ones’ (2008: 269). What this seems to indicate is that even public service providers cannot escape what are, in effect, commercial pressures to maintain (and hopefully increase) audiences. Extending this point, Buckingham (2000a: 45) has argued that one of the strengths of children’s news programmes is that they tend to emphasise understanding and context in relation to the stories they report. At the same time, it is also true that they sometimes oversimplify or evade stories that they judge to be either too sensitive or uninteresting for their audience.
Although commercial interests might be a major factor in the paucity of children’s news programmes, various studies have concluded that this is not because children are indifferent to the news. Barnard (2007: 7) asked young people between the ages of 15 and 29 in 10 countries about their news media use, and found that most are curious about the world and actively follow the news (although more tend to trust their families and friends more than the news media). A recent Portuguese study of 500 children of different ages, classes and social backgrounds also concluded that children avidly follow the news ‘not only because it allowed them to be “updated” but also as a way of occupying their time’ (Ponte, 2008). Because assumptions regarding children’s news are often made on professional intuition and short term market research rather than on sustained academic study (Wartella, 1994), children’s programming ‘frequently says much more about adults’ and children’s fantasy investments in the idea of childhood than they do about the realities of children’s lives’ (Buckingham, 2002: 7–8). This highlights the importance of asking young people what sort of news stories and formats engage them, instead of simply relying upon adults to speak for them. Rather than assuming that young people are not interested in what is happening in the world, or are disengaged or apathetic about politics, it is important for researchers to listen to what children and young people say about their views on a range of political issues.
In recent years, there have been a number of studies examining Newsround, the UK’s only children’s television news programme, and its associated website (Buckingham, 2000a; Carter, 2007; Messenger Davies, 1997, 2001, 2007; Harrison, 2000; Matthews, 2003; 2005; 2008; 2009). On the subject of the programme’s production values and news selection criteria, Matthews (2003: 138; 2008) contends that, like most children’s television shows, it is based on a view about what is appropriate for the age range of its target audience (in the case of Newsround this is 8–12-year-olds). While Matthews identifies several production values shaping Newsround content, we will focus on three pertaining to the issues raised in this chapter. The first one is that of personalisation, where children’s voices are used to attract larger audiences. Stories tend to include children’s emotional, more often than reasoned, reactions to the events reported, argues Matthews, because Newsround editors and journalists believe emotions stimulate greater programme interest from their audience (2008: 272).
Secondly, Matthews contends that Newsround stories are always simplified for the child audience. At times, this results in de-contextualising events, making them more ‘palatable’ rather than ‘intelligible.’ Complex or potentially ‘boring’ information is removed (2008: 274). This simplification often goes hand in hand with the third criterion, choosing stories that Newsround producers believe to be of primary interest to children, based on the desire to maintain good audience ratings. While these characteristics might result in an oversimplification of news, Matthews notes some benefits. For instance, the producer’s desire to highlight how local, national and international events might impact on children’s lives means that children are often represented in relation to stories where they might be completely excluded in adult news (2003: 139). Still, Matthews suggests that Newsround sometimes has the tendency to exaggerate children’s participation thus creating a false impression of their contribution to public discussion (2005; 2008). That said, Buckingham (2000a: 54) suggests that out of various UK and US children’s news programmes that he examined in his research in the late 1990s, Newsround was the least likely to give children a voice.3 When children’s voices were included on the programme, he found that they tended to take the forms of witness testimony and vox pops. Children are rarely afforded the opportunity to directly engage in public discussion, Buckingham contends, even within a news programme that is specifically designed for them. When voices of ‘the public’ are included on Newsround, he found, they are often those of adults expressing concern about or plans for children (2000a: 54).
Our research on Newsround tends to challenge this last point, recognising that the programme made a number of changes in its production style in the period between Buckingham’s research in the late 1990s, and 2007–8 when we conducted our study (Milani, 2008).4 Many of the children with whom we have spoken feel that Newsround generally does a very good job when it comes to giving them a chance to speak (although there is, of course, always room for improvement), while also confirming that the same is not true with adult news. Additionally, many of our over 200 respondents from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, between the ages of 8 and 15, stated that adults shouldn’t just assume that because children have not yet reached voting age their views are necessarily uninformed or what they have to say is unimportant to public debates. As 13-year-old Karishma from Bournemouth told us:
I think that even though we can’t vote, kids our age have important things to say, for example we have things to say about education and how it can be improved, transport, how it could be cheaper or free for us, and we do have opinions on the government and how they could change or improve services for young people.
While some researchers’ assessments of Newsround seem rather negative, others have found more positive things to report. For instance, Carter (2007: 122) has examined young people’s use of Newsround’s website message board ‘In the News.’ She found that it successfully engages some young people (particularly teenagers) in discussions with each other on a wide range of issues and events, demonstrating their knowledge and enthusiasm for critical, public debate. Our study has produced similar results, with a sizable majority of those in Newsround’s target audience agreeing that the programme and its website makes them feel that their views are being taken seriously and consistently engages with their interests.5 According to 10-year-old Kathryn from Portrush in Northern Ireland, Newsround is largely successful in its attempts to connect with its core audience, ‘because all of the other news programmes don’t listen, and they focus on adults, and children are just as important as adults.’
Additionally, we have found that many of the younger children we have spoken to respond well to ‘entertainment’ features such as games, polls and quizzes which can be found on Newsround’s website, as a way to enhance their learning. Though as previously stated, some might argue such features cannot possibly provide serious avenues for civic involvement, children in our study have suggested ways that these ‘entertainment’ features could be used in politically meaningful ways. Proposals include having a quiz after each news story to see how much children have learned from it, using data from online polls to demand political change, or using the red button on the television remote control to find out more information on a topic. Such features could be used as effective means of drawing them to civic websites that they might not otherwise have visited.
Before we conclude this chapter, we want to focus on what we believe to be one of the more important features of children’s news – that is, that such programmes provide children with opportunities to share their ideas, thoughts and feelings as young citizens. Returning to Buckingham’s (2000a) study of children’s television news programmes in the US and UK, he established that some routinely asked children to contribute content or interact with journalists via e-mails, letters, or phone calls. Nevertheless, while certain programmes offer children these types of ‘access,’ it appears that children rarely have much control over the choice of content or editing (2000a: 54).
Although we agree that children ideally should take a more active role in children’s news production, it is perhaps unrealistic to expect that they (or any audience member, regardless of age) could be consulted in depth on every news item broadcast or published online. Likewise, one should bear in mind that most children probably don’t want to contact children’s news producers. For example, in their study examining the ways in which Finnish children tend to interact with the news, Hujanen and Pietkainen (2004: 394) note that although children are aware of technological opportunities to contact newsrooms, they generally feel that contact should be made by ‘someone else,’ or ‘others,’ and not themselves. When children interact with children’s news, they are most likely to do so by taking part in competitions, polls, and questionnaires (2004: 394) – a finding our own research supported. So while children may lack real ‘access’ to children’s news production, or they may not be interested in gaining such access, it is perhaps more important to judge a programme based on how ‘in tune’ it is with issues that interest its audience.
That said, many of the children in our study insisted that children’s news producers should continue to encourage greater interaction with their audiences, through further development and promotion, for example, of their website message boards, feedback emails, and user generated content/citizen journalism. Additionally, a further suggestion for improving Newsround was mentioned by several children, clearly expressed by 9-year-old Flora from Glasgow, who says ‘I think my ideas are important, but Newsround doesn’t make me feel they are. To change this, maybe they could have child presenters on the show.’ A similar point is made by 12-year-old Amina in Glasgow who offers a number of constructive ideas for improving the television programme and website. For example, she suggests that ‘Newsround should have news competitions for the best articles and they could be put up on the website occasionally. Kids should be involved more in Newsround. I think they should get kids to present more as well.’
In our view, much more could be done to improve and extend the provision of news for children (and teenagers) around the world in order to engage them, as early as possible, as young citizens. To support this position, the chapter began by first exploring the relationship between children and citizenship, identifying two paradigms that tend to shape much of the research – one assuming that young people are largely politically apathetic or disengaged, as evident in their withdrawal from civic activities such as voting once they are eligible; and the other concluding that children are politically engaged but largely ‘disconnected’ from mainstream politics. Although researchers have noted that children are often politically active, these activities tend to differ somewhat from those of previous generations. For many young people, political activism on global and local issues tends to be more interesting for them than traditional party politics.
The chapter then went on to discuss how new media technologies could be used to politically engage children, helping them to express themselves as citizens. New technologies and forms of entertainment such as polls, quizzes and games can be employed to draw children into news and citizenship websites by offering entertaining ways to learn. Finally, the chapter ended with a discussion of research examining children’s news, including a few of the findings from our study with primary and secondary school children across the UK. While some researchers suggest that children’s news often does little to make space for children’s voices, others have shown that children, especially those in Newsround’s target audience, are largely content with the current provision, and that it engages with them in meaningful ways. This view is certainly consistent with our research.
We conclude this chapter by urging researchers to recognise the importance of including children’s perspectives in the development of children’s news programmes and websites so as to sharpen academic insights into the ways in which children’s news might enhance their civic engagement. This necessitates rethinking certain assumptions about children’s intellectual capacities and their rights, envisaging a more active, political role for them in the public sphere. There is similarly a need for researchers to make the case for a renewed citizenship-based commitment to media education in schools to help children become more critical media consumers and to equip them with the skills and confidence needed to contribute, should they want to do so, as young ‘citizen journalists.’ Children’s news that extends children’s right to speak, helping their voices to be heard and taken seriously, will make an important contribution to the richness and diversity of our democracy.
1 Amongst 18–24-year-old voters in the 2005 UK General Election, a mere 37% voted, down from 39% in 2001.
2 The term ‘Whitehall’ is often used to refer to the UK Parliament and associated ministries and departments of government that are located along Whitehall in Westminster, London.
3 Nick News and Channel One News in the USA and Wise Up, First Edition and Newsround in the UK.
4 This project was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the BBC as part of a ‘Knowledge Exchange Programme’ funding pilot studies to encourage partnerships between academics and the BBC. Partners in our project include Stuart Allan, Bournemouth University, Cynthia Carter, Cardiff University, Kaitlynn Mendes, De Montfort University, Máire Messenger Davies, University of Ulster, Roy Milani, BBC and Louise Wass, BBC.
5 The same cannot be said for the teenagers we interviewed, many of whom suggested that the BBC ought to have a news programme or website aimed at their age group.
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