Children’s News Media as a Space for Learning About Difference

Abstract

In this article, we show how everyday difference is conceptualised in Finland through our analysis of media products for children (HBL Junior, HS Lasten Uutiset, and Yle Mix). We consider media as a part of the “lived curriculum” through which media professionals intentionally or unintentionally reproduce particular discourses of difference and sameness that become part of children’s everyday learning and understanding of multicultural society. Our aim in doing so is to consider what marks these discourses produced specifically for children, and what versions of difference they replicate and advance. We find that children’s media advances discourses of “comfortable conviviality” through the paradigms of colour-blind friendship, the universal experience of childhood, and through a firm belief in social cohesion as the master signifier of Finnish society. Through the lens of inclusiveness, we discuss the implications of these discourses on journalism and media literacy.

Keywords

• children’s journalism
• conviviality
• ethnic differences
• finland
• media literacy education
• media for children
• racial differences