1 Children and the News Julian Matthews Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester, UK Authors’ final version of: Matthews, J. (2016). Children and the News in W. Donsbach (ed). The International Encyclopedia of Communication. (DOI: 10.1111/b.9781405131995.2008.x ) Academic studies have discussed young people and their relationship to news programs in different ways. Early studies examined the information that young people could learn from watching the news for example. These viewed young people as underdeveloped and needy would-be citizens. By contrast, other studies have considered the ways in which news programs designed specifically for young people shape their cultural citizenship. Journalists and their views about age-appropriate news content define, these studies suggest, young people’s access to, and understanding of, serious issues. Elsewhere, those young people whom the news media is often assumed to have informed or influenced in research are introduced to voice their experiences of news. Studies describe children and young people as discerning news audiences and as actively performing forms of citizenship through their online activities. Media and young citizens The growth of the mass media in young people’s lives has encouraged a wider discussion about their changing situation in (adult) public worlds. Joshua Meyrowitz’s (1985) observed process where television takes children around the world before they are able to cross the street, represents a concern for many that adult TV – including news – is complicit in the eroding of modern childhood (Postman 1983). In other quarters, the potential transformation the media enact within children’s lives is considered to follow a structured and positive process. The media is seen here to be integral to the course of political socialization in mature democracies for instance, and working specifically to help children to become citizens. Young people are considered then to inhabit a “would-be” citizenship role and to require learning in this transitional stage to enable their full citizenship. Consequently, a perspective of political literacy (i.e., rational learning of political awareness that enables individuals to be “effective” in public life) has been used to study the