The Hidden Adult in Ataa: Adult Authority, Serial Pedagogy, and the Implied Child Reader in a Syrian Children’s Magazine
(2026) SIMZ41 20261Master of Science in Middle Eastern Studies
- Abstract
- This thesis examines Ataa, a contemporary Syrian children’s magazine produced by ATAA Humanitarian Relief Association, through six consecutive issues published between June 2024 and September 2025. It asks how the magazine stages adult authority, constructs an implied child reader, normalises an ideal child, justifies norms, and offers frames of belonging around the politically significant period of 8 December 2024. Rather than treating Ataa as a set of isolated stories or as a direct before/after case, the thesis reads it as a serial cultural form. The analysis focuses on recurring rubrics: the Editor’s Letter, Nu‘san Adventures, Ataa Diary, Du‘aa Adventures, and the Activities pages.
Using a qualitative, text-first, rubric-based... (More) - This thesis examines Ataa, a contemporary Syrian children’s magazine produced by ATAA Humanitarian Relief Association, through six consecutive issues published between June 2024 and September 2025. It asks how the magazine stages adult authority, constructs an implied child reader, normalises an ideal child, justifies norms, and offers frames of belonging around the politically significant period of 8 December 2024. Rather than treating Ataa as a set of isolated stories or as a direct before/after case, the thesis reads it as a serial cultural form. The analysis focuses on recurring rubrics: the Editor’s Letter, Nu‘san Adventures, Ataa Diary, Du‘aa Adventures, and the Activities pages.
Using a qualitative, text-first, rubric-based design with bounded visual support, the thesis draws mainly on Nodelman and Rose to analyse adult mediation and constructed readership. Anderson, Hall, and van Leeuwen are used more narrowly to support the analysis of belonging, naturalisation, and legitimation. The thesis argues that Ataa works through a distributed serial pedagogy. Adult guidance is divided across recurring rubrics: editorial framing, comic correction, peer-world modelling, relational care, and participatory self-governance. The implied child is therefore layered rather than uniform: educable, relational, morally improvable, and gradually attached to wider civic and national responsibility. The later issues widen the magazine’s horizon toward freedom, responsibility, homeland, and rebuilding, while retaining the durable rubric structure. The thesis therefore proposes a rubric-based serial approach for analysing how children’s magazines organise guidance, value formation, and belonging over time. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9235505
- author
- Hrh, Mohamad LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SIMZ41 20261
- year
- 2026
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Children’s magazines, adult authority, implied child reader, serial pedagogy, Ataa, Syrian children’s publishing
- language
- English
- id
- 9235505
- date added to LUP
- 2026-06-25 10:53:41
- date last changed
- 2026-06-25 10:53:41
@misc{9235505,
abstract = {{This thesis examines Ataa, a contemporary Syrian children’s magazine produced by ATAA Humanitarian Relief Association, through six consecutive issues published between June 2024 and September 2025. It asks how the magazine stages adult authority, constructs an implied child reader, normalises an ideal child, justifies norms, and offers frames of belonging around the politically significant period of 8 December 2024. Rather than treating Ataa as a set of isolated stories or as a direct before/after case, the thesis reads it as a serial cultural form. The analysis focuses on recurring rubrics: the Editor’s Letter, Nu‘san Adventures, Ataa Diary, Du‘aa Adventures, and the Activities pages.
Using a qualitative, text-first, rubric-based design with bounded visual support, the thesis draws mainly on Nodelman and Rose to analyse adult mediation and constructed readership. Anderson, Hall, and van Leeuwen are used more narrowly to support the analysis of belonging, naturalisation, and legitimation. The thesis argues that Ataa works through a distributed serial pedagogy. Adult guidance is divided across recurring rubrics: editorial framing, comic correction, peer-world modelling, relational care, and participatory self-governance. The implied child is therefore layered rather than uniform: educable, relational, morally improvable, and gradually attached to wider civic and national responsibility. The later issues widen the magazine’s horizon toward freedom, responsibility, homeland, and rebuilding, while retaining the durable rubric structure. The thesis therefore proposes a rubric-based serial approach for analysing how children’s magazines organise guidance, value formation, and belonging over time.}},
author = {{Hrh, Mohamad}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Hidden Adult in Ataa: Adult Authority, Serial Pedagogy, and the Implied Child Reader in a Syrian Children’s Magazine}},
year = {{2026}},
}