The Images of Children in Romanian Newspapers

Abstract

Children and youth are present in almost every form of media. The starting point of this thesis was the desire to investigate how children and young people are presented in the media, especially in the newspapers coverage. The media is both a source of knowledge as well as having a significant contribution to our identity.

The ways the media present children and young people can influence the way their identity is constructed in the public discourse, as well as the public’s general assumption towards children and young people.

In this master’s thesis I have analyzed the ways in which the Romanian media present the children. In this study I have used both qualitative and quantitative contents analysis. Children and young people are rarely present in the Romanian newspapers that this study is based on.

Thus this study reveals a certain under-representation of children and young people in the newspapers. As a solution for this, several newspapers focused on children and young people by creating pages dedicated especially for them. These pages are placed at the end of the newspaper or come along with the newspaper. The articles presented here focus on children as gifted, present attraction sites destined for children and young people. The materials are written both by professional journalists and by the children themselves.

An important finding of this study was that the high focus on violence in the Romanian newspaper coverage of children. One of the clearest findings in my study was that children and young people were often mentioned in connection with crime and violence.