Methodological challenges in the study of children’s relationship with the news: the use of participatory methodologies in leading focus groups

Abstract

This paper intends to present the methodological procedure of an ongoing PhD
research, whose study object is the children and their representations about current events and the world. From a theoretical framework that builds on the sociology of childhood, we support the idea of child as competent and creative in the construction of their own meanings about reality and as subjects of the research process. At the same time, we look at news media as an important reference to the ways children know the world, considering that it is essential that they develop news literacy skills. Based on these assumptions, we use the account to participatory methods in leading focus groups with children, in order to put them in an autonomous and creative relationship with current events and to enable them to adopt a critical stance about the ways of understanding the world proposed by the media.