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This article uses a case study of three propaganda videos featuring children promoting the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to analyse how children are used in post-1978 Chinese propaganda. Our close semiotic analysis of these videos takes a two-pronged approach. First, we trace how the images of children in the BRI videos emerge out of a historical trajectory of deploying children as political messengers in Chinese propaganda. Second, we consider how this deployment of children differs due to the expansion of the target audience to include international viewers. Children continue to be used as propaganda mouthpieces to strengthen China's prowess. However, although propaganda materials in the past used images of children as nation-builders, the BRI videos utilize children not to build up the individual nation, but rather to break down national barriers and project a happy future where all nations work together towards economic prosperity. Images of children's playfulness, purity, and joy are harnessed to downplay the perception of China as a threat, transforming it into a friend. However, we identify elements in the videos that undermine their overarching message. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 2 September 2015, Alan Kurdi's image went viral on the social media and immediately shook the world. This paper concerns not so much with the referent as with the capacity of image to represent. What in an image endows it the capacity to shame entire humanity, heterogeneous as it is? To further complicate, how does a digital image – a conglomeration of pixilated dots, devoid of any materiality whatsoever – in its singularity generate 'affect', universalizable and synchronic across cultures? When we recycle contents from the 'traditional' media to the 'new' media, we tend to convey something buffer to what the text in its singularity conveys. Using Kurdi's image as a case study, this paper illustrates how the politics of 'remediation' – the buffer – immanent in digitally viral images informs our practices of spectatorship. It engages in sustained, critical questioning of what differences Kurdi's image makes in terms of the perception and performativity of refugeehood (as a site of knowledge). In other words, how does this image, among others, emerge as the face of refugeehood, or better still, the Syrian crisis? What 'new' is being brought in and afforded by the image? How do we interpret the emergence of an image as the face of an 'event', and what ontological implications does it entail? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framing is described as being like a picture that includes some elements but leaves out others, with scholars declaring that what is left out is just as important as what is emphasized; however, few studies specifically examine left-out frames. This study uses a content analysis of Chinese media coverage of China's left-behind children to investigate omitted or repressed frames. It finds that the frames most associated with the root cause of the problem were the least used, and proposes the theoretical concept of "digressive framing," which distracts from the main issue and diverts attention from the real source of problems. This type of framing is about more than simply not providing a frame of reference for understanding or providing a conflicting frame; it is about not providing the frame at the root of the problem. If media do not frame issues in ways that get at causality, long-term solutions will be unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children are often portrayed as defenseless victims of war. However, during war periods, issues concerning children's agency are also brought to the fore. Based on media materials describing one country in war (Finland) and relief efforts from a neighbor country (Sweden), this article identifies both Finnish and Swedish children as committed to Finland's cause in different ways. The article shows that children emerge both as agentic subjects and as objects of political propaganda. It argues that children's commitment as represented in the Swedish media could function as propaganda pressuring adults to take action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from relevant theory in humour research and media studies, this paper analyses the representation of children and minors in comedy, in particular within darker forms of humour and satire. By focusing on two recent cases - an excerpt of a stand-up routine by comedian Louis CK and a controversial sketch featured at the Oscar ceremony in 2016 hosted by Chris Rock - it explores to what extent the use of children and minors as part of disparaging humour discourses present moral and ethical challenges and possibly violations. It argues for a more nuanced discussion by proposing a categorisation of the humour and comedy targeting children and minors and by arguing for individual meta-ethical analyses of the mediation of these cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a roundtable discussion on mass media for children and relationships between adults and children. Participants include scholars such as Natalie Coulter, Daniel Thomas Cook, and Henry Jenkins. Emphasis is given to topics such as the representations of children in mass media, age socialization, and young people's engagement with consumer culture.

Children's mental health and development issues are considered a significant concern today. A century and more ago children's mental health and developmental disorders were likely understood differently. This paper examines the portrayal of children's mental health and developmental disorders in all 41 accessible articles on the topic indexed in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature from 1890 to 1920. It focuses on these three decades as a time of fundamental economic, political and social transition before the first text in Child Psychiatry was published and the first professorship in the field established. It was also before the beginning of the influential child guidance movement. In particular, the research asks (i) what were the ‘disorders’ discussed and of what were they said to consist?, (ii) what was said to cause them? and (iii) what was thought best to be done about them? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of IBEROAMERICANA. América Latina - España - Portugal is the property of Vervuert Verlag and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including a cartoon based on children stuck in violence, modernization of mass media and participation of children in press.

Children's rights become a current issue at many points and İt's continued critics about the media approaches to this subject. In Turkey some similar examples come into question for the mainstream media. Rights and as representation of women, children, different sex and cultural identities are still suffered. Media presentations of children as "others" in difference social categories is notable question in regard to sustainable of society. For this reason developing a communal awareness about the children's rights enhanced those into a privileged position. The media is gradually whit drawn from this mission. While the children are being represented on media, value of the news and for the news's sensational properties it has been monitored that there has been a desensitization and not fulfiling the social responisibilities. This study analyses the four different newspapers included in Turkish natiaonal media and compares the news as the susceptibilities of those for the children's rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Langage & Societe is the property of Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The 2001 conflict in Afghanistan has attracted a great deal of international controversy. The impact of the conflict on Afghanistan's children has been no exception. The research conducted by the United Nations and child protection organisations on the experiences of Afghan children throughout the conflict paints a bleak picture. Accounts of children being directly targeted, accidently killed, abducted, actively fighting in armed groups, denied humanitarian assistance or simply struggling to be healthy, happy, educated and secure amid this conflict are a reminder that conflict devastates children's lives. However, while this research demonstrates that children are often war's innocent victims, the ways in which this research is narrated, particularly by belligerent parties to the conflict, are far from innocent. This article examines the political manipulation of research on Afghan children affected by armed conflict. It argues that Afghan children and their experiences have become a powerful moral symbol that is used by belligerents to advance political, military and strategic agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Niñez y Juventud is the property of Centro de Estudiso Avanzados en Ninez y Juventud alaianza Cinde, Universidad de Manizales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Throughout the course of the early years of the Second Intifada, discourses of innocent child victimhood were in frequent use in statements to the western media from both Israeli and Palestinian groups, and in American and British media commentary on the conflict. This discourse has had important political consequences within and beyond the region. This paper will explore the social and political context of these discourses and the diverse actors that mobilised them. It will also analyse their role in legitimating acts of state and non-state violence, including during the 2009 Gaza conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores race- and gender-related selection bias in national television news coverage of missing children cases. When the proportions of race and gender from the news coverage of five national television stations between 2005 and 2007 were compared to official missing children statistics, it was found that African American missing children and female missing children were significantly underrepresented in television news coverage. It is argued that such things as newsroom diversity, news operation routines, media ownership, and commercial motives of media contribute to the race- and gender-related media bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the presentation of social and professional roles in two Israeli children's magazines such as "Ha'aretz Shelanu" and "Mishmar Li'Yladim." The study performed content analysis for the two magazines and highlighted classification of attributes and characteristics such as the protagonist, the role of protagonist, and familiarity of the protagonist. Result showed that the two magazines depicted 14 general role-classes of the major protagonists. It mentions that while "Ha'aretz Shelanu" centralizes on children, "Mishmar Li'Yladim" focuses on the social environment, wherein children interact frequently with the adult society. Moreover, adult roles are found to be portrayed as military figures, politicians, and educators.