The alignment of the Javaneh news section with the characteristics of children and young people journalism

• Title: The degree of alignment of the Javaneh news section of Channel Two of IRIB with the desired characteristics of children and young people journalism
• Student: Arman Etemadi
• Supervisor: Dr. Abbas Naseri Taheri
• University: IRIB – Faculty of Communications
• Degree: Master’s
• Major: Social Communication majoring in Journalism
• Defense Date: 2015

Abstract:

The necessity of producing content for children and young people in the media, especially in the news sector, has led to the formation of children and young people journalism. Children and young people journalism is considered an instance of specialized journalism; meaning it requires special expertise, and its desired characteristics are determined with regard to its audience. One of the products of specialized children and young people journalism in the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is the Javaneh news section. The extent to which this news section possesses the desired characteristics of children and young people journalism is a question that the present research has tried to answer. To this end, the researcher first aimed to identify the desired characteristics of children and young people news programs on television and then to understand the structure and content of the Javaneh news section of Channel Two of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, in order to answer this question by comparing the two. To identify the desired characteristics of children and young people journalism, the Delphi method was used, and to identify the characteristics of the Javaneh news section, a content analysis method was employed. Thus, the opinions of experts in the field of children and young people journalism were collected, evaluated, and organized in three rounds, and then based on the results obtained from the Delphi method, the desired categories and sub-categories for the content analysis method were defined. Using the coding instructions, 267 collected items were examined. The findings of this research indicate that among the extracted desired characteristics for children and young people journalism, the Javaneh news section of Channel Two of IRIB possessed only a few features, such as using appropriate language for children and young people, the presence of basic and additional information, addressing causality and how an event occurred, paying attention to the news value of exception and surprise, and attention to environmental themes. However, on the other hand, it does not observe many features such as using narrative in the content, colorfulness of the content, the presence of emotional load in the content, organizing content with appropriate styles, using innovative and creative formats, narrating news from a first-person perspective, attention to instilling and increasing hope, attention to creating a sense of security, attention to joyfulness, immediacy and positivity of rewards, and using engaging and diverse images.