Poster #148 - From Child to Offender: Media Labeling, Adultification, and the Construction of Juvenile Crime in Turkey

• In Event: Poster Session II (posters 80 – 155)

Abstract

This study examines how severe violence involving children has been represented in Turkish online news media between 2020 and 2025. Recent incidents such as peer killings and the circulation of violent videos have generated intense public concern and appear to have reshaped how children are discussed in relation to crime. The study asks whether news reporting merely reflects existing social anxieties or actively contributes to their production. Drawing on Labeling Theory, the research analyzes articles published in the online major Turkish newspapers. Using keyword-based sampling, news reports involving children and serious offences are identified and systematically coded. The analysis focuses on dominant frames such as offender, threat, and victim; the use of stigmatizing or moralizing language; and references that portray children as fully responsible, adult-like offenders.
The study pays particular attention to the “adultification” of children in media narratives. Preliminary observations suggest that children are increasingly represented less as subjects requiring protection, rehabilitation, or reintegration, and more as dangerous individuals deserving punishment. This discursive shift is often accompanied by demands for harsher sanctions.
By conceptualizing media as an active site where meanings of crime and childhood are produced, the study contributes to criminological debates on juvenile justice and punitive penal cultures.

Author

• Sevkiye Berfin Isik Yilmaz, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir/Turkey