Children's reactions to a television news story - The impact of video footage and proximity of the crime

This experiment assesses children's reactions to particular features of tel evision news. Children from two age groups (6- to 7-year-olds vs. 10- to 11 -year-olds) viewed one of four versions of a news story about gang violence . The versions were created by varying the inclusion of video footage of th e crime (footage vs. no footage) and proximity of the crime (local vs. nonl ocal). Results revealed that proximity of the story had a significant impac t on older children's responses but not those of younger children. In parti cular, older children were more likely to be frightened by and perceive the mselves personally vulnerable to a story about local as opposed to a nonloc al crime. In contrast, the video footage unexpectedly decreased fear respon ses among children in both age groups. The findings are discussed in terms of developmental differences in children's processing of television news.