CRIN – the Children’s Rights Information Network –  (www.crin.org) – has kindly published a report of the open conference on Representations of Children in the News Media, held at the Institute of Education with the Open University on 22nd April as part of the Institute’s MA course on the Sociology of Childhood and Children’s Rights, module – Children’s Rights in Practice.  The conference report is on the CRINMAIL website.

Conference speakers and topics were:
 The Oslo Challenge and beyond – a view from the inside (Mike Jempson, MediaWise)

Victims or vermin, but never the voice of reason: Children’s portrayal in the British news media (Amanda Barnes, media expert, and Ciara Davey, Children’s Rights Alliance for England)

A roughly mapped terra incognita: Images of children in Serbian media (Nada Korac, University of Novi Sad, Serbia)

Monitoring of South-Eastern European media: how to address child trafficking without re-victimisation? (Zsofia Farkas, Terre des Hommes)

Balanced Representations? Cooperation between local photographers and international aid organisations in Bangladesh (Sanna Nissinen, The Open University)

“Cute kid, but over-exposed”: Media representation of children: The NGO experience and perspective (Tracy Ulltveit-Moe)

Images of children in conflict and disaster: the ethics and politics of representation (Karen Wells, Birkbeck College)

Summary of the day. (Berry Mayall, IOE)
There is also a useful list of related resources and websites on the crin site

Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=20123

If you are interested in applying to study for the MA in the Sociology of Childhood and Children’s Rights starting in the autumn of 2009 see www.ioe.ac.uk amd type ‘child rights’ into the search box.