ÇOCUKLARIN DİJİTAL MEDYADA HABERLEŞTİRİLME BİÇİMİ: İNTERNET GAZETECİLİĞİ ÜZERİNE BİR ANALİZ

In line with the opportunities provided by new communication technologies, the understanding of journalism has undergone a significant transformation; today, all kinds of information can rapidly reach different segments of society through the media, and this has made online journalism one of the most common and effective forms of news production. With the increasing importance and evolving structure of online journalism, the media, driven by the need to capture the reader’s attention, frequently includes children in news content under various headings and represents them through different frames. However, children are not only central to today’s society but also constitute one of the fundamental elements of our collective future; therefore, the discourse, content, and representations concerning children must be addressed with a strong sense of ethical responsibility. In this context, the main problem of this study centers on the media’s perspective on children and how children are represented in news content. The research focuses on how news about children is reflected in the media, under which categories these stories are presented, what kinds of labels are attributed to children, and how their personal information is disclosed. To this end, a content analysis method was employed. The findings indicate that children most frequently appear in news articles under the crime and judiciary category, are predominantly represented with the label of “victimized child,” and are often the subject of news related to incidents resulting from neglect.