Who is the News-Consuming Child? How Producers of Children’s Journalism Construct their Audience

Abstract

Journalists who produce news for children must balance the professional ideals and demands of journalism and the particularities of producing news for this audience. In order to gain new knowledge on how journalists envision their child audiences and the roles and meanings of children’s journalism in a landscape marked by pervasive media and declining literacy skills, we interviewed journalists working on five Finnish news media products for children launched between 2016 and 2021. Finland offers an interesting case study, as the country is marked by a high trust in news, a recent uptick in news products for children aged 8–13, and ambitious goals for media literacy. Our findings show that journalists envision children’s journalism as an ideal rather than a service, product, or format. As part of this ideal, journalists view the child as a subject who will learn to navigate everyday life, society, and the contemporary “threat landscape” with the help of journalism. This ideal is marked by an ambivalence towards the capabilities and vulnerabilities of the child and a universalist gaze on childhood, and it drives an image of the journalist as a soothing mentor who helps the child cope with the challenging times.