The Construction of Young Children During COVID-19 in the Online Media in Indonesia

Media is believed to possess its power in constructing discursive meaning in the society. This article aims to see how media creates discourse pertaining children and childhood during the pandemic of COVID-19. This article adopts critical discourse analysis (CDA) in order to unpack power relation in the children discourse by analyzing 78 articles from websites found in the internet. The analysis suggests that there is one hegemonic and dominant discourse on children, namely discourse of vulnerable children. The discourse sees young children as fragile being that do not have capacity to understand the pandemic and also to navigate their situation during the pandemic. While the discourse seems to be empathetic with the children, yet it actually does not recognize children’s ability to have voices. Hence, this kind of discourse potentially excludes the children further from the discussion on how to mitigate the pandemic situation.