Orig. title: Children, COVID-19 and the media. A STUDY ON THE CHALLENGES CHILDREN ARE FACING IN THE 2020 CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
Engl. transl.: Children, COVID-19 and the media. A STUDY ON THE CHALLENGES CHILDREN ARE FACING IN THE 2020 CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
Keywords
children
media
Covid-19
corona
Publication details
| Year: | 2020 |
| Issued: | 2020 |
| Language: | English |
| Volume: | 33 |
| Start Page: | 4 |
| End Page: | 9 |
| Editors: | |
| Authors: | Götz M.; Mendel C.; Lemish D.; Jennings N.A.; Hains R.; Abdul F.; Alper M.; Asgari H.; Babayaro H.; Blaya C.; Borzekowski D.L.G; Cadavid S.; Camerini A.-L.; Carmona B.; Carter C.; Chale M.; Düssel M.; Duhalde A.; Gayed A.; Núñez-Gómez P.; García González M.; Gozansky Y.; Sanabria Herrera E.; Huang K.; Hudders L.; Al-Haj Hussein Y.; Ishikawa H.; Jaggi R.K.; Russo Johnson C.; Klempin A.; Kotler J.; Kotwal C.; Lealand G.; Lim S.S.; Lundtofte T.E.; Maruri M.; Mascheroni G.; Mendel M.; Messenger-Davis M.; Mulongo J.; Nastasia D.; Nastasia S.; Ortner C.; Torres Panganiban G.; Pembecioglu N.; Pestaj M.; Ruggiero A. ; Soto Ruiz U.; Stanczak I.; Steemers J.; Taher F.; Tellez S.; Tholley M.; Yakusheva A.; Yee A.Z.H. |
| Type: | Journal article |
| Journal: | TelevIZIon |
| Topics: | Learning; Content-related issues; Wellbeing; Digital and socio-cultural environment; Other |
| Sample: | In total, 9,563 children started and 4,267 children finished the online questionnaire plus 55 children in Cuba who wrote their answers into a PDF document. The data collection time was March 31th to April 26th 2020, i.e. the high peak of the shutdown in most countries. Only countries with at least n=50 children were included in the analysis. The final sample includes 42 countries on all continents and 4,322 children, with a relatively balanced age distribution (between 18% and 21% per age cohort). The number of children per country varied between n=50 and n=698. |
| Implications For Policy Makers About: | High-quality content online for children and young people |
| Implications For Stakeholders About: | Industry |
Abstract
"An international study in 42 countries inquired children’s perception of the coronacrisis, their knowledge on COVID-19 and the role the media play in this." (Götz et al., 2020, 4)
Outcome
"In this period of lockdown, children face an extraordinary situation. Many everyday routines and activities, such as attending school or participating in leisure activities, are no longer possible. Now, children must stay at home. This sometimes means living in narrow and loud circumstances, causing much more tension within families. One-third of the children in our study perceived their parents as “very worried,” and half of the children expressed feeling worried themselves, with the biggest fear being the possibility of COVID-19 infection among family or friends. Most children demonstrated a basic knowledge about coronavirus and how they can protect themselves and others. Further, most children could identify rumors and fake news, although a proportion of the children we surveyed could not. Faced with extraordinary times, children reported using media more than before, especially to beat boredom, do their homework, stay in contact with friends, get information, and regulate their emotions. These findings demonstrate that children’s media are bearing a great responsibility, serving important functions for children during the COVID-19 crisis. We wish to emphasize the results dealing with children’s knowledge and worries, because we observed a correlation between more accurate knowledge about the coronavirus and fewer reports of feeling “very worried.” These findings underline that children’s media have the potential to play an important role in this pandemic by helping children to 1) cope with this special situation in age-appropriate, readily-understandable ways; 2) develop understandings of responsible behavior for themselves and towards others; and 3) to react appropriately in the given situation." (Summary of the authors; Götz et al., 2020, 9)