Super-Spreaders or Victims of Circumstance? Childhood in Canadian Media Reporting of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Critical Content Analysis

This qualitative research study, a critical content analysis, explores Canadian media reporting of childhood in Canada during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Popular media plays an important role in representing and perpetuating the dominant social discourse in highly literate societies. In Canadian media, the effects of the pandemic on children and adolescents’ health and wellbeing are overshadowed by discussions of the potential risk they pose to adults. The results of this empirical research highlight how young people in Canada have been uniquely impacted by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Two dominant narratives emerged from the data: children were presented “as a risk” to vulnerable persons and older adults and “at risk” of adverse health outcomes from contracting COVID-19 and from pandemic lockdown restrictions. This reflects how childhood was constructed in Canadian society during the pandemic, particularly how children’s experiences are described in relation to adults. Throughout the pandemic, media reports emphasized the role of young people’s compliance with public health measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and save the lives of older persons.

Young, Gifted, Black . . . and Country:

This article shares findings from a critical content analysis of five contemporary nonfiction children’s books. Each book centers on a gifted Black historical figure who spent at least part of their childhood in a rural setting. The analysis, using a funds-of-knowledge and community-cultural-wealth approach, revealed the situated nature of the child’s giftedness, including intersectional oppression they faced, various ways they enacted giftedness within their rural setting, and a reciprocal relationship with their community. In each book, the youth’s giftedness was supported by the community but also positively impacted the community.

(De)constructing Imagination

This critical content analysis examines representations of race and ethnicity in three young adult speculative novels: Children of Blood and Bone, The Black Witch, and Carve the Mark. This study utilizes Critical Race Theory to closely analyze texts to find and critique elements of bias and highlight counter-stories. Three major themes emerged from the analysis: BIPOC characters as dark aggressors, the construction of systems of oppression in worldbuilding, and the transformation of characters encountering racism. In the discussion and implication, the author argues for supporting counter-storytelling and provides questions for analyzing representation in speculative fiction.

Dismantling Ideology and Power of Corporate Financial Statements

This article aims to explain that critical content analysis can be employed to dismantle ideology and power behind rhetoric and visual portraits conveyed in financial statement. Literature study was used as methodology. The results indicate that reality can be deconstructed by means of lslamic teaching.

Theorizing a Critical Race Content Analysis for Children’s Literature about People of Color

Concerns from scholars about the exclusion of People of Color in children’s literature began in the early 20th century and continues today. The lack of children’s literature about People of Color is even more alarming in the contemporary moment, when Children of Color comprise a significant proportion of urban schools throughout the U.S. Only since the 1990’s have scholars begun to critically examine the portrayals of People of Color in children’s books. More recent research offers frameworks and methodologies for critical analyses of children’s books, namely a Critical Content Analysis that offers strategies for the examination of discursive power in literature for youth. This conceptual article theorizes how Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Education can be utilized with a Critical Content Analysis to provide a new framework for the examination of race, class, gender, (and other intersectionalities) in children’s books about People of Color— A Critical Race Content Analysis. We provide guiding principles of a Critical Race Content Analysis and analytical questions as tools for researchers and educators interested in conducting their own critical analyses of books about People of Color. Finally, we illustrate how this analysis is conducted with an example of a children’s book about immigration. This article makes important contributions to the literature on urban education that call for providing educators with tools to develop “racial literacies”.