ABSTRACT
The growth of research interest in children and media has run in parallel with the development of a “new” interdisciplinary social study of childhood. This emerging field of interdisciplinary childhood studies has been highly influential in how we theorise and research children's relationships with media. This has included providing conceptual tools for understanding how moral panics of children and media emerge around notions of childhood innocence, and how children can be seen as agentic in their engagement with media as part of their everyday lives. This chapter looks back at the relationship between childhood studies and the study of children and media over multiple decades – charting key theoretical and conceptual contributions, but also points of tension and conceptual difference.
