Tracking Research on Children and the Media

This chapter reviews scholarly literature on the beginnings and trajectories of media and children’s research from the 1950s to the present. This review illustrates how young people and media scholarship has shifted from the hypodermic media effect paradigm to the era of active audiences and audience negotiation today. Unsurprisingly, it appears that following the moral and media panics of the old paradigm, new forms of anxiety have emerged in the digital age regarding children’s and young people’s safety, resilience, and vulnerability while using digital technologies. In addition, this chapter dives into the current landscape of the digital environment in relation to children and young people in Majority World Countries and concludes by identifying gaps that the entire book fills within scholarly literature.