Children are increasingly becoming iconic faces associated with wars and the suffering they inflict. This paper examines coverage of the Syrian war, namely the battle of Aleppo, by RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Al-Jazeera English (AJE). The focus is on child representations in RT and AJE news reports in Syria between 1 August and 31 December 2016. Based on a visual content analysis of 216 and 161 news clips from RT and AJE respectively, this paper identifies and discusses the four main roles that children were shown to play, namely those of “victims”, “sources”, “décor” and “fighters”. The analysis presented here raises urgent ethical questions relating to the ways in which journalists (should) report about children without exposing them to possible harm.

, , , , ,
doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2018.1500870, hdl.handle.net/1765/115110
Journalism Studies
Department of Media and Communication

Nyirubugara, O. (2018). Shooting Kids: Children in Syrian War reporting by RT and Al Jazeera. Journalism Studies, 18(13), 1969–1979. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2018.1500870