ABSTRACT
The news media are central to the advancement of children's civic inclusion in democratic societies. They have an informal responsibility to each new generation to help establish, from young age, a sense of public belonging as well as individual and collective political responsibility. Children's researchers have typically sought to understand how children might be incrementally socialised into society, in line with their cognitive development, so that as adults they will have reproduced its norms and values. This research forms a broad framework upon which scholars have examined the role of news in this process. Others have been more concerned with negative emotional effects of news violence on children. The chapter outlines these approaches in relation to children's citizenship and communication rights. It examines the role of news media in supporting or undermining children's civic belonging, first turning to research on children's representation in news, and those looking at children's relationship to news production.
