Search

It has become increasingly common for parents and children to engage in individual digital activities which disconnect them from each other while remaining in each other’s presence. Accordingly, th...

In the wake of an intensifying hostile environment towards migrants and refugees in the U.S. and Europe, children’s picture books play an important role in shaping children’s understanding of migration and attitudes towards migrants. How do contemporary children’s books depict migration? This article discusses the findings of a thematic analysis of 40 picture books about migration, published between 2015 and 2019 in the U.K. and the U.S. We found that these books typically present successful migration stories where children move from unfortunate circumstances in their home countries to happier lives in the host countries. Host countries are mostly located in the global North and migrants are generally welcomed with generosity and hospitality. We also found that the books give important attention to historical contexts. However, while children’s picture books concerning migration contribute to enhancing children’s understanding of migration in some ways, they concurrently erase difference and injustice, and thus miss an opportunity to broaden children’s knowledge and appreciation of the plurality of cultures, experiences, and places and the urgent need to respect and protect them. IMPACT SUMMARY a. Prior State of Knowledge: Existing research, predominantly in the field of education, highlights how children’s books can promote understanding of and empathy towards migrants and refugees, dispel stereotypes, and teach children how to show kindness, respect, and hospitality towards migrants and refugees. b. Novel Contributions: The study highlights not just how children’s picture books contribute to enhancing children’s understanding of migration, but also how these books concurrently erase difference and injustice, and thus miss an opportunity to broaden children’s knowledge and appreciation of difference. c. Practical Implications: The study draws parents’ and educators’ attention to the lessons children can learn from picture books on immigration, their benefits and limitations. It advances storytellers’ understanding of how to broaden children’s knowledge and appreciation of difference in books about migration.

The socialization process of media use begins in the first year ofa child’s life. Infants and toddlers are exposed to media in thebackground, they learn from screens, and acquire media-related skills from watching their family members’ behavior. Hence, it is of great importance to examine the family context in which young children develop their initial media habits, as well as how they learn from screens during a critical period of their lives. This article explores how young children are socialized into becoming media users in a longitudinal study that closely followed the development of the media habits and preferences of children from the age of three months to two years old. A combination of two qualitative methods was applied: observations at the families’ homes were conducted every three months; and in- depth interviews with parents were conducted at the beginning, the middle, and at the end of the study. Families expecting their second or third child were recruited for the study, to create comparable familial circumstances of having older siblings. The study’s findings expose parents’ limited awareness of the importance of instructive and technological mediation, as well asthe need to facilitate proper conditions that would maximize thebenefits of these forms of mediation. Therefore, there is a need for enhancing parental media literacy, which would enable parents to support children’s media uses and lead to the development ofricher and healthier children’s media experiences.

The COVID-19 crisis put much of my then on-going research on-hold: Studying parent-child interactions in public places while engaged with mobile phones was halted; plans for a second phase of study...

This study aimed at revealing the factors determining grandparental mediation of their grandchildren’s screen viewing and interactive media use, based on online surveys conducted among 291 American and 356 Israeli grandparents who reported taking care of 2-to-7 years old grandchildren at least once a week. Past mediation, familiarity with children’s media, parental instructions and joint leisure activities were positively associated with mediation of both interactive and non-interactive media use, whereas country of residence was not significantly associated with mediation. These findings provide initial knowledge about the universal aspects of grandparental mediation in early childhood.

Recent studies point to the heavy rate of smartphone use by parents while they are accompanied by their children in public places This, in turn, leads to parental technoference, which raises concer...

Although many grandparents are involved in caring for their grandchildren, they were completely ignored in previous research on mediation of children's media use. Informed by the Grandfather Involv...

Research suggests that parent–child communication is rapidly changing as a result of the massive adoption of mobile devices and their penetration into interpersonal interaction within the family. Accordingly, this study aims to develop a more nuanced understanding of the impact of mobile device use on the quality of parent–child interaction in early childhood, based on ethnographic observations of 60 families at two playgrounds in the United States. The research findings suggest that parental behavior can be classified along a continuum of high engagement, divided engagement, and disengagement, often dependent upon whether and how parents use their mobile phone. Though mobile phones were not the only distracting factor during playground visits, their use was more highly correlated with parents’ disengagement from their children as compared to other distractors. Parents’ mobile phone use also corresponded to two main consequences for their children: safety concerns and emotional concerns, both resulting in missed opportunities for social learning. The results of this study call for closer attention to parental uses of mobile phones in public spaces.

A substantial effort was made over the years to reveal predictors of children’s screen time in an attempt to suggest effective ways to minimize its negative effects. Studies were mostly based on pa...

Introduction The prevalence of cyberbullying among adolescents is globally on the rise. This study examined how general and cyber-specific parenting styles impact the prevalence of young adolescents' involvement in cyberbullying as victims and/or perpetrators. Methods One hundred and eighty 7th and 8th-grade Israeli students participated (Mean age = 13.25, SD = 0.81; 86 males, 89 females, 5 did not indicate gender). Adolescents reported the frequency of their involvement in cyberbullying, and whether their parents were using “autonomy-supportive” or “psychologically controlling” strategies generally and specifically when mediating internet use. Results A controlling parenting-style as well as an inconsistent internet-mediation style were associated with a higher prevalence of adolescent involvement in cyberbullying as victims and as perpetrators. Prevalence was higher when parents who generally use a controlling style were less controlling or consistent when mediating internet use. Conclusion Despite the caveats related to parental control, parents who generally use a controlling style should consistently use this style while mediating cyber. Inconsistent parenting style conveys messages concerning internet activities that contradict what teens are accustomed to receiving in other contexts. This inconsistency may encourage them to exploit their relative freedom in the cyber context and act irresponsibly.

This special chapter offers a conversation between the first ten Teresa Award Scholars of the Feminist Scholarship Division (FSD) of the International Communication Association (ICA) on the meaning of these extraordinary pandemic times on media and communication processes from a feminist scholarship perspective. It evolved out of a panel discussion during the annual conference of the International Communication Association in May 2020, which was held virtually due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, all contributors revisited the question, adding further thoughts from the vantage point of having experienced and observed the pandemic ebbing and flowing across the globe.

The Journal of Children and Media (JOCAM) was conceived in 2004 while walking along Liberty Bay, WA in the United States. Peter, my spouse, and I were spending our sabbatical nearby in the quaint v...

How do children and youth come to understand what it means to be a member of a particular race, gender, and other social groups? How do they come to hold beliefs about the groups that they do and do not belong to? Both news stories and fictional narratives that we are tuned into as a culture tell stories about what it means to be a member of a particular social group. In this review article, we relate the latest scientific knowledge on news and entertainment media representations of race, gender and other social categories and what they tell us about how these messages are taken in and processed by developing minds. We include research on identity development, social learning about members of other groups, and both positive and negative behavioral outcomes to cultural messages about race, gender, and other social categories. We offer recommendations for stakeholders to understand the role of the media in educating youth about race, gender and other social categories.

Though prior research has examined how parents use mobile devices in public, we know less about children’s use of mobile devices outside the home. The present study therefore explores how children use mobile devices in public places they visit with their parents in order to conceptualize how device use affects children’s interactions with their parents and environments. We used naturalistic non-participant observational methods in three locations in the US: eateries, laundromats, and airports. We observed 77 families with at least one parent and one child estimated to be between 2-6 years old. The observers wrote detailed field notes that we analyzed qualitatively using thematic analysis. We found that children used mobile devices in 31% of the observed families. We categorized children’s behaviors under three themes: immersion, distraction, and co-use. Children were highly engaged with their parents and environment during co-use. However, when children asked for a device or were provided with a device that they used on their own, they were less engaged with parents and environments. Engagement levels between children and parents therefore corresponded with the circumstances of children’s device use and whether they used devices with their parents or in isolation from them. The themes we develop here may be applied to future qualitative and quantitative studies of children’s mobile device use in public and at home.

A content analysis of seventy episodes of infants’ and toddlers’ programs broadcast during 2017 on BabyTV and Luli channels in Israel revealed a mixed bag of conservative and more progressive gender-related messages, with persistent domination of white male characters and gender-appropriate characteristics and appearances. The analysis uncovered a significant category of genderless characters who were constructed, to a large degree, as devoid of meaning: They do not have personality characteristics, they are not part of a family and do not have friends, they do not lead activities, and most importantly, they have no voice. The implications of these representations and the messages they convey about gender for the very young are discussed.

This chapter analyzes processes and issues that have emerged in developing a national curriculum in media literacy in the Israeli educational system. Out of the public and academic debate over the role of the media in a democratic society emerged what appears to be a national consensus calling for institutionalization of media literacy programs in schools. The commercial television being introduced in Israel reproduces in many respects the American style of programming. Opposition to this commercial format was one of the primary reasons for the delay in the introduction of television. Media industry officials, too, seemed pleased with the demand for media literacy programs in the schools. The complexity of processes involved in curricular development efforts and the problems and gaps described between intention and practice suggest that there is a need for some fresh rethinking and a renewal of efforts to guide development of media education in Israel.

The important role of television in political campaigns has been demonstrated and analyzed in the political communication literature. Juxtaposed to other forms of television coverage such as newscasts, debates, or interviews on talk shows, political broadcasts are a unique phenomenon: political parties and the candidates determine the form and content of the campaign through paid advertising. A review of the literature on the images of women used in Israeli advertising reveals basic exploitation of female stereotypes as sex objects. They are portrayed as helpless, dependent, ineffectual, emotional, vulnerable, subordinate, childish and plain stupid. All broadcasts of the 1988 election campaign were recorded on videocassettes. The qualitative analyses focused on those broadcasts that featured women as main characters, and/or issues of primary concern to women. In these political broadcasts women served the following roles: women as persuaders, women as party leaders, women as politicians, the nurturing women, the equal-rights women and the exceptional women.

This study investigated the role of the news media in the lives of Jewish and Arab children in Israel. A survey of 1657 children (ages 8–18), including analysis of open-ended questions, reveals that Jewish and Arab children in Israel live in two different worlds of news. They are exposed to different sources, stories, and interpretations; they take different messages from the news; and they hold to some degree different attitudes toward their roles in their lives. The news also seem to be more heavily integrated in the lives of the Jewish majority young people than it is in the lives of the Arab ones who treat it as more important to adults. If anything, it seems that the consumption of news serves mostly to contribute to separatism and further alienation of the minority Arab young people group from Israeli society.

This study explores the socio-cultural arena following legalization of surrogate motherhood in Israel by analyzing Israel's most popular television series: A Touch of Happiness. The qualitative analysis presented here reveals a constant tension between women's reproductive and sexual bodies. This analysis demonstrates how social institutions of marriage, divorce, and motherhood are serving as instruments that reward fertile and punish infertile women. Advances in medical technology and modern surrogacy enable the infertile female to achieve motherhood even though her body remains infertile. Thus, paradoxically, if a woman selects to avail herself of these medical advances, she becomes an “infertile mother.” Viewed more broadly, the implications of such hybrid conceptions pose a threat to the patriarchal order, and therefore it was negated in this television series by a rich array of narrative and rhetorical devices. Derived by deeply rooted cultural–religious beliefs, the ideological stance applied in the...