ROLE OF MEDIA IN CHILDREN’S CONCEPTUALIZATION OF DEATH

Abstract

A qualitative study was conducted to examine the role of media in children's conceptualizations of death. Utilizing a convenience sampling strategy, 20 children aged 6 to 10 years, along with their mothers from the districts of Sahiwal, Faisalabad, and Lahore in Pakistan, were recruited for this research. Following the collection of demographic information, semi-structured interviews were conducted with both the children and their mothers. The data were analyzed through thematic analysis, which incorporated both semantic and latent approaches. Several themes emerged, including sources of exposure to death, children's curiosity about death, the role of media as an educational tool regarding death, emotional and behavioral responses to death as portrayed in media, and maternal perceptions of death representations in media in relation to their children's understanding of death. Key themes derived from children's interviews included their comprehension of life and death, religious interpretations of death, the reality of death as depicted in media, and their apprehensions regarding the portrayal of death in media. The findings indicated that media can have both detrimental and beneficial effects on children's conceptualizations of death. Among the children aged 5 to 6, the understanding of the irreversibility of death was the first concept to be grasped, followed by initial insights into applicability, cessation, and inevitability. By age 6 to 10, the majority of children demonstrated varying degrees of understanding of the five fundamental components of death, with the concept of causality being the last to be comprehended.