A feminist perspective on children who kill

Entertainment-education for the media-saturated: Audience perspectives on social issues in entertainment programming

“…For example, research into media representations of crimes against children has identified the application of narrow frameworks, concentrating on the innate or incurable nature of perpetrators. In the case of children committing crimes against other children, researchers have identified extreme coverage that emphasises ‘bad seed’ narratives, portraying the perpetrators as born evil (thus removing, at birth, the social environment of the crimes) (Franklin and Petley, 1999; James and Jenks, 1996; McDiarmid, 1996). Similarly, adults committing crimes against children are portrayed as ‘naturally’ evil; scholarly research into these representations, focusing mostly on news coverage, reveals the portrayal of the paedophile in particular as an ever-manipulative, incurable monster (Kitzinger, 1999, 2004; Meyer, 2007).…”

Entertaining ideas: social issues in entertainment television

“…The former is overwhelmingly concerned with paedophilia and the majority of scholarly work on this subject focuses on news coverage, where the paedophile is represented as incurable monster, cunning and skilled in manipulation and deceit (Kitzinger, 1999(Kitzinger, , 2004Meyer, 2007). Literature on crimes committed against children by children has been focused on particularly high-profile crimes, in particular the media coverage of the James Bulger case (Franklin and Petley, 1999;James and Jenks, 1996;McDiarmid, 1996). Research underlines the extreme nature of the coverage and the reliance on 'bad seed' narratives.…”