Problematizing the variable of conflict to address children, media, and conflict

Abstract

ABSTRACTIt is children who are most affected by political conflict. Efforts to establish global peace, equality, justice, and security should, therefore, consider best approaches for aiding and empowering children. To increase relevance of media to these approaches, I review a nascent literature concerning children, media, and conflict that emphasizes analyses of effects on or reception by children of non-fiction violence, or news. This literature was created in response to children and media literature that emphasized analyses of effects on or reception by children of only fictive violence. Regardless of whether the focus has been placed on real or imagined violence, both literatures only analyze peace-zone, not conflict-zone children. I instead propose problematizing the variable of conflict to address lives of children who indeed live in conflict zones, and have been displaced by and/or born of sexual violence within them. Such a critical turn, to study children and media in conflict zones, enables a holistic understanding of how human beings on whom political conflict has the most impact interpret, respond to, play with, or use media to shelter themselves from or mediate conflict. The implications may better improve lives of those directly swayed by and daily experiencing structural and physical violence of conflict zones life.