Children and the Radio: Who Should Listen to Whom?

Abstract

Understanding the expectations, needs, and wants of young audiences, as well as inviting them to incorporate their experiences and perspectives into media production, are crucial tasks for today’s media producers. Drawing upon qualitative research in which more than seventy children eight to thirteen years old participated, this paper illuminates children’s experiences with radio broadcasts and the suggestions they make for improving them. To explore children’s media preferences and experiences, in the spring of 2019 we conducted thirteen focus groups that incorporated creative techniques and stimuli at four elementary schools located in geographically and demographically different areas of the Czech Republic. The research discovered that the radio was a part of children’s complex media experience. In some cases the children linked listening to it with the time they spent with their parents and grandparents. Even though they did not consider the radio their favourite medium, when they were invited to create their own radio programmes and content the children made a number of valuable suggestions for making radio more accessible and relevant to them. We argue that children should be considered as partners and invited to participate in a creative dialogue with media content creators.