"As Though There is Peace": Opinions of Jewish-Israeli Children About Watching Rechov Sumsum/Shara'a Simsim Amidst Armed Political Conflict

In this 24-page article, Yael Warshel discusses the reception of a peace communication intervention designed to promote pro-social intergroup relations among young children during a period of political conflict. Warshel's audience reception analysis was conducted in 2001 with the Jewish-Israeli child audience for the peace-building edutainment television programme "Rechov Sumsum/Shara'a Simsim" (hereafter: RS/SS), the Israeli/Palestinian version(s) of "Sesame Street". Conducted during a period of heightened hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians known as the Al-Aksa Intifada, this research was based on the observation that, despite adult concern about the impact of armed political conflict on children, "adults often neglect to discuss armed political conflict with children. They may...think children are impervious to the constructs of conflict or in need of sheltering from it and so fear raising the subject."

To explore what contribution communication can make to build peace amongst children as a strategy for managing conflict, Warshel begins by describing the RS/SS television series. In the early 1990s, the United States-based Sesame Workshop (formerly known as Children's Television Workshop), Israeli-Educational TV (IETV), and the Palestinian Al Quds Modern Media Institute embarked on co-production of RS/SS. First broadcast in April 1998, the series presents messages of mutual respect and understanding in an effort to help children better understand their own culture and that of others. Designed to break down cultural stereotypes by familiarising Israeli and Palestinian children with each other, the show integrates educational messages within an entertaining, magazine-type format that includes animation, live-action documentaries, and studio segments. Outreach materials for schools based on RS/SS have also been developed. Warshel explains, this project was one of many so-called people-to-people projects at the time that sought to create peace from the ground up between the local populations.

To explore the meaning Jewish-Israeli children were making out of the programme, Warshel selected a sample of 25 children and interviewed each individually in their homes. To facilitate this process, she used a board game she had created which included RS/SS character game pieces. She then observed while the child viewed an episode of the programme alongside relatives and friends with whom he or she normally watched TV, and then talked with each child again afterward. Broadly, she found that the intended Jewish-Israeli audience for the intervention interpreted its messages as optimistic and, therefore, comforting. In turn, the gratification the intervention provided the audience may have served to indirectly help them cope with the context of armed political conflict in which they live. It may have done so by reducing their levels of stress, she surmises. The hypothetical ability of the peace communication intervention to have reduced stress levels, Warshel concludes, suggests an important function for communication in conflict-management.

Based on her research, Warshel makes two recommendations to practitioners in the field. First, communication should be used to demonstrate pro-social relations between Palestinians and Israelis, and as applicable to other zones of conflict, between what she calls "partners in conflict" (in this case, Palestinians, Palestinian-Israelis, and other Arabs). In addition, she suggests that, apart from the intended audience, (i.e. children), peace communication interventions should address those people that this audience points to as being directly involved in the conflict dissemination and discussion process (e.g., parents and teachers). Such directed "targeting" will, Warshel claims, best ensure the potential for communication to elicit behavioural change. She notes, however, that the utility of such interventions may vary according to the audiences' membership in one state-centric category as opposed to another. That is, the author explains that the Jewish-Israeli children's responses represent the responses of children currently members of a statebearing nation. Given that they currently benefit from such a structural position, their context for interpretation of the intervention will differ from that which would be provided to them were they members of a state minority or a stateless nation.

Finally, the author cautions researchers of peace communication interventions against using fixed quantitative measures to determine audiences' attitudes towards their partners in conflict. Warshel argues that such measures harm internal validity and, therefore, the applicability of research findings for future policy efforts to manage conflict. Specifically, children in her study employed varying labels for their partners in conflict. For example, they saw Arabs and Palestinians as occupying two separate categories, and constructed what Warshel calls "surprising" terms like “Arab-Jews” for Palestinian-Israelis. As a result, studies that ask people what their attitudes are towards a fixed category like "Arab" will not necessarily elicit an understanding of their attitudes towards their partners in conflict. In turn, researchers will not know whether an intervention successfully influenced intergroup attitudes between partners in the given conflict scenario.

The author concludes that "Policymakers and media practitioners hoping to ameliorate conflict by attempting to alter children's attitudes and behaviors through the use of peace communication should treat children as actual members of the public and so, too, include their input in their decision-making processes. Because there is evidence that children can provide coherent and meaningful answers and can be, in any case, aware of and even involved in armed political conflict, I recommend adults find out how children feel and think when exposed to children's peace communication programming - especially when the point is to change their attitudes and behaviors, not those of adults."

For more information about the article, please contact the author directly. The article was published in Lemish, D., and Gotz, M. (Eds.) Children and Media at Times of Conflict and War (pp. 309-332). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Click here for access to purchasing this entire book from Hampton Press.