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What Does the News Teach Young People About Sex?

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The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education

Abstract

One of the greatest concerns about children’s sexuality is the ways in which they learn about sex; such concerns also draw upon arguments that children’s experiences with pornographic content create a distorted idea about sex, gender relations, and the female body. In this chapter, I examine how young people understand the ways in which sexuality and sex are constructed in mainstream news media. Evidence I gathered with a research project indicates that news media provide particular constructions of sexuality embedded in certain discursive frameworks. I argue that children use these ready-made discursive frameworks in the process of developing a set of literacies through which they both decide whether they will interpret a representation as sexual and they also construct their personal sexual narratives.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 9A, Lykoudi str., Ano Patissia, P.C. 11141, Athens, Greece

    Despina Chronaki

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  1. Despina Chronaki
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Louisa Allen

  2. School of Sociology Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Mary Lou Rasmussen

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Chronaki, D. (2017). What Does the News Teach Young People About Sex?. In: Allen, L., Rasmussen, M.L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40033-8_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40033-8_20

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-40032-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-40033-8

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