Study On The Representation Of Children In Witness Al-Jazeera

A series of man-made and natural disasters had people an increasingly highdependence on media in today`s society which is at a fraught with risks and unknown.Meanwhile, with these media which mostly western who has the advantage ofdominant discourse, our world views can be easily disciplined into a Westernperspective and identify with western culture.With "cultural globalization" coming of age,"edge of the world" began with"Ideographs" launched a competition for cultural leadership. Al-Jazeera seized thehistoric opportunities and made a meteoric rise, becoming one of the world’s threemajor television stations with saying “Provide the Voiceless voices”.Although Al-Jazeera claims to be "fair and objective", the fact is that any mediais a cultural construction with an ideology behind it.Academics focus on Al-Jazeeratelevision is not just because it’s "fair and objective", but also in exploring theparticular "perspective of watching the world". Thus try to make some contribution tothe form of cultural diversity. which will help to form a civil society and "the organicintellectuals".In view of this century as a "Child-friendly century ", while Al-Jazeera televisionhappen to have a very high ratings of a documentary program called Witness, whichserved as a platform to broadcast independent documentary films around the worldthat covers the struggles and conflicts and other factors. Worthy of mentioning is thateither child-protagonist and child-extra or childhood presented in134films among its180in total in its3years broadcast. Could be possible to find out Al-Jazeera`s"perspective of watching the world" by discovering how children were represented inWitness？Content analysis and Image analysis are being used in the study of Witness withthe help of theories from rhetoric, News frame etc. This TV program was constructedby Restrictive view on its standpoint, dual conflict between individuals and society onits theme, dramatized and modeled on its narrative structure, negative tone on itsattitude, identity space on its region, elite point of view on its content source. Forming a documentary frame on children`s issue which was characterized poor andhelpless as a rhetorical resources and created sympathy among the audiences, whichresulted in an infinite loop of the spiral mechanism. That is creating suffering byrepresenting children poor and helpless, then arousing sympathy among the audiences,and then the ratings improved, and back to create suffering by representing childrenpoor and helpless and go on like that, Al-Jazeera television would increasingly growand Qatar which was fully vacuum reported would also increase its political powerWitness claims to be objective and fair providing the world with an "alternativepublic spheres", meanwhile achieved its political goal by utilizing children`s imageslick as a kind of rhetoric resources. And the children as “the other” were stillvoiceless, or still living in "a world fit for adults".