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Conflict, Media, and Child Well-Being

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Handbook of Child Well-Being

Abstract

This chapter explores the various roles the media have in children’s lives in times of war and conflict, and their influence on children’s well-being, from two different perspectives: A child- centered and a media-centered orientation. From a child’s perspective, it reviews and analyzes the existing scholarship on children as audiences of media coverage, as producers of texts in response to the media, and as images of themselves in the media. From the media’s perspective, it reviews and analyzes both the content of special news programs for children as well as the views of producers of such programs. Research that examined the effectiveness of some media intervention initiatives for conflict resolution, peace building and promotion of social tolerance among children is reviewed. The construction of children as a special audience that needs protection from the harsh and disturbing coverage of war and conflict is balanced against evidence that children are, indeed, informed and engaged with the world around them and desire to be informed and have outlets to express their views. Children, we argue, should be considered as serious potential participants in the public sphere, who require – and deserve – a lot more from their media.

This chapter is based, among other sources, on our edited collection Lemish and Götz (2007). Children and media in times of war and conflict. Cresskill: Hampton. We thank Hampton Press for permission to use excerpts from our published work.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Mass Communication & Media Arts, Southern Illinois University, 1100 Lincoln Drive Carbondale, Mail Code 6606, Carbondale, 62901, IL, USA

    Prof. Dafna Lemish

  2. International Center Institute for Youth and Educational Television (IZI), Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation, Rundfunkplatz 1, Munich, 80335, Germany

    Dr. Maya Götz

Authors
  1. Prof. Dafna Lemish
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  2. Dr. Maya Götz
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Correspondence to Dafna Lemish .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Asher Ben-Arieh

  2. Research Institute of Quality of Life, University of Girona, Girona, Spain

    Ferran Casas

  3. Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Ivar Frønes

  4. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

    Jill E. Korbin

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Lemish, D., Götz, M. (2014). Conflict, Media, and Child Well-Being. In: Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frønes, I., Korbin, J. (eds) Handbook of Child Well-Being. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8_144

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