ABSTRACT
Disabled children and adolescents grow up in an ableist world that discriminates against people with disabilities and denies them full representation in all aspects of society, including in the media. This chapter focuses on disabled children as an important but overlooked media audience. Content analyses have found that only 1–8% of leading characters in popular children's TV shows and movies in recent years had a disability and that such characters were more likely than non-disabled characters to be depicted as violent, helpless, in need of rescue, or ultimately die. Disabled children have not just been excluded from positive on-screen depictions, but they are simultaneously erased as an audience in mass media research. We discuss approaches to including children with disabilities in audience reception studies, and well as new research directions for understanding children with disabilities as active readers, viewers, and consumers of media with desires, beliefs, and aspirations of their own.
