Framing the environment in children's news

Recent decades have seen a growth in children's environmental media. Amidst this expanding web of ecomedia for young people, children's news plays an important role in building awareness of environmental issues and shaping their meaning(s) for child audiences. However, there has been relatively little scholarly examination of children's news and its framing of the environment. This study responds to such a research gap with a framing analysis of 97 environmental stories produced by the Australian children's news program Behind the News . Three dominant frames are identified, constituting a mix of ‘child-specific’ and ‘environment-specific’ patterns of meaning: environmental stewardship; curiosity and wonder; and crisis and emergency. Unpacking these dominant frames, the article argues that framing patterns in children's environmental news help us understand adult imaginings of the ‘climate-changed child’ (UNICEF, 2023) while providing insight into the representational practices that make environmental problems visible to and available for interpretation by young audiences. The analysis also reveals that, while the framing of the environment in children's news is a mediating practice that controls and shapes the way young people are permitted to ‘look at’ the environmental crisis, it is also, at times, a transformational and creative act on the part of adult media-makers.