Media and Minority Children

Media allow minority children to bridge their experience as members of a minoritized culture and of a mainstream with which they must interact. Children live in a mediated transnational world, navigating belonging, interpretation, and identity. Minority child audiences actively engage with global media through their local cultural experiences. Yet the majority of research on children has been conducted on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) children. We begin this chapter with an examination of the category “minority” as this varies across national spaces, foregrounding the concept of minoritization as a verb rather than the noun “minority.” We proceed to examine research on representations of minority children, with a special effort to include data across a global terrain. Next, we explore research on policy implications, ending with suggestions for further research.