What Makes Child Harm Newsworthy? Event Characteristics, Victim Characteristics, and Media Attention

Media coverage shapes public understanding of social problems, yet harmful events receive uneven attention even when they involve children. This study examines factors shaping media visibility of child harm in Kazakhstan. Using a corpus of more than 230,000 Telegram news posts (2020–2025), we identify 1,571 incidents involving harm to children and estimate negative binomial regression models to test explanations derived from news values and ideal victim theory. Results show that event characteristics predict media attention more strongly than victim characteristics. Fatal interpersonal violence receives more coverage, while systemic failures receive less. Victim age and gender are not significant predictors.