ABSTRACT Nonhuman animals play significant roles in children’s lives. While research into children’s relationships with animals is thriving, an overlooked area is children’s vicarious experience of animals through realistic representations in nonfiction books, magazines, and other media. We used content analysis to examine how animals were represented on 103 National Geographic Kids magazine covers from 2004 to 2013, a magazine with an enormous readership and classroom application. Specifically, we measured the represented animals’ demographics, conservation status, levels of charisma, and degrees of anthropomorphism. We found that the covers represented charismatic mammals (mostly wildlife) more frequently than less charismatic domestic animals (mostly companion animals) who were also significantly more likely to be anthropomorphized in the images. Importantly, there were no representations of farm animals, captive animals, invertebrates, or detritivores on the covers, and their absence was a critical finding of the research. By not representing these animals, the covers may lead children to undervalue them, thus perpetuating the exploitation of vulnerable species.

中文翻译：

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黄色矩形内：国家地理儿童杂志封面上的非人类动物表征分析

摘要 非人类动物在儿童的生活中扮演着重要的角色。虽然对儿童与动物关系的研究正在蓬勃发展，但一个被忽视的领域是儿童通过非小说类书籍、杂志和其他媒体中的现实表现形式对动物的替代体验。我们使用内容分析来研究动物在 2004 年至 2013 年间 103 份国家地理儿童杂志封面上的表现，该杂志拥有庞大的读者群和课堂应用。具体来说，我们测量了代表动物的人口统计、保护状况、魅力水平和拟人化程度。我们发现封面更频繁地代表魅力非凡的哺乳动物（主要是野生动物），而不是魅力不强的家养动物（主要是伴侣动物），后者在图像中也更有可能被拟人化。重要的是，封面上没有农场动物、圈养动物、无脊椎动物或碎屑动物的图案，它们的缺失是这项研究的一个重要发现。通过不代表这些动物，封面可能会导致儿童低估它们的价值，从而使对脆弱物种的剥削永久化。