Children and Media

The Center for Communications and Community is a journalism, research, and training institution working at the intersection of communications, race, and community transformation. The Center seeks to fill the void that exists between grassroots practitioners, the non-profit sector, media research scholars, working journalists, and policymakers interested in community development.

Strategic Frame Analysis: Reframing America's Youth

(2001)

Strategic frame analysis, the method advanced in this paper, allows a nuanced understanding of the role played by media and public opinion in impeding or advancing the goals of those who seek more public attention and resources allocated to youth. Strategic frame analysis relies on a series of methods adapted from traditional opinion research, media studies and cultural and cognitive fieldwork including survey research, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, media content analysis, metaphor analysis, and media effects tests. This paper applies the basic principles of strategic frame analysis to discern what Americans think about youth (especially teenagers), why they think what they do, what consequences this has for youth policy and policy advocates, and how policy advocates might best engage Americans in a discussion about positive youth development.

The Superpredator Script

(1998)

Recently we set out to examine in a novel way the connections between what people see in local newscasts and what they think about juvenile crime. We designed an experiment to assess the impact of the "superpredator news frame" in which the only difference between what groups of viewers saw in a news story involved the race of the alleged youth perpetrator.