https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7154-5433
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ABSTRACT
Media are a central source from which children and adolescents form their perceptions, knowledge, and attitudes about relevant topics such as flight and migration. However, it is largely unclear how news media for children/adolescents report on migration and refugees, and in which way this reporting differs from reporting of news media produced for adults. Thus, a standardized analysis was conducted of (audio)visual content published in 2018 by nearly 40 German journalistic outlets. News media for children/adolescents (N = 434) and adults (N = 2,626) were analyzed regarding the regional focus of reporting, frame elements, evaluation of immigration, and verbal contributions and characteristics of the refugees reported on. Results show that, on the one hand, the reporting of news media for children/adolescents and adults was similar in many ways. On the other hand, news media for children/adolescents reported to some extent in a more balanced, diverse and reflective manner than those for adults. Thus, the reporting of news media for children/adolescents seems to be better suited for triggering in-depth opinion-formation processes among young people. Moreover, it might contribute better to the integration of (underaged) refugees.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The term “integration” was included in Google Alerts to identify articles focusing the integration of refugees. This term was not included in the search query in Google News because pretests have shown that in Google News too many irrelevant articles were selected by this term (e.g., integration of the unemployed into the labor market). Moreover, relevant articles about integration were also identified by the existing search string.
2 The codebook is available at https://mekrif.jff.de/fileadmin/user_upload/mekrif/Basisstudie_Codebuch.pdf.
3 Most of these items explicitly focused on events in Germany (news media for adults: 86.1%; news media for children/adolescents: 73.0%).
4 If only items that focused on refugees who have fled to Germany are analyzed, the following results emerge: news media for adults: 10.2% (predominantly) children/adolescents, 84.1% males, 5.7% females; news media for children/adolescents: 21.2% (predominantly) children/adolescents, 75.8% males, 3.0% females. Compared to the asylum applications that have been filed for them in 2018 in Germany (children/adolescents: 48.4%; male adults: 30.8%; female adults: 20.8%; Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, Citation2019, p. 25), children appear less frequently in the reporting.