Page 174 . Volume 11, Issue 1 May 2014 The gendered nature of news consumption by children and youth Dafna Lemish, Southern Illinois University, USA Rotem Pick Alony, Open University, Israel Abstract: This study examined the gendered nature of news consumption by children and youth in Israel, given the marginal role of women in the news world and the centrality of news in the construction of social life. A random sample of 931 8 and 11 year-old children completed a comprehensive survey about their news consumption in 2007. We found that girls are as interested in news as are boys and both genders use all media platforms to access news and have an interest in a wide variety of hard news topics such as war, terror, accidents, disasters, environmental issues, etc. Significant differences were found in the selection of a variety of news areas along traditional perceptions of “gender-appropriate” interests. As expected, girls were more family oriented in their news consumption, and reported higher levels of negative emotional reactions to news (fear, sadness). Girls were uniquely preoccupied with sexual crime, while boys seemed to be very marginally aware and/or concerned about that aspect of social life. The role that news stories may be playing in perpetuating such a strong sense of vulnerability and anxiety among girls as young as eight years old was particularly striking and requires further investigation. Keywords: boys, conflict, emotion, fear, gender, girls, Israel, news, recall, sexual violence, sports, war News production and consumption has been traditionally viewed as primarily a male sphere associated with the masculine dominance of the public sphere in general and the news professions more specifically. Given the central role that news may be playing in informing children and socializing them into public engagement and citizenship, it can be viewed as a