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Transformation or Simplification: The Production of Environmental Knowledge in Children’s News

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Environmental Communication for Children

Abstract

This chapter investigates children’s news and explores the adaptation and transformation of environmental news content for children. My aim is to examine how news about the environment is turned into a consumable object for children, who are not the target audiences for mainstream news outlets but who are increasingly addressed by child-specific news programmes. Of particular concern here is the possibility that ‘mainstream’ or ‘adult’ environmental news content is simplified when it is transformed for a child audience. In order to determine the extent to which simplification is part of this adaptation process, the chapter undertakes a close analysis of texts produced by three children’s news programmes that regularly report on the environment: CNN 10, the BBC’s Newsround, and the ABC’s Behind the News or BTN. Identifying positivity as a prevailing feature of the environmental news coverage in these three programmes, the chapter questions whether consolatory strategies are at work in these texts, or whether we can read such positivity as part of a more radical transformation.

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  1. Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Erin Hawley

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Correspondence to Erin Hawley .

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Hawley, E. (2022). Transformation or Simplification: The Production of Environmental Knowledge in Children’s News. In: Environmental Communication for Children. Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04691-9_3

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