MediaSmarts Tags - Persons with Disabilities

Level: Grades 9-12

Author: Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts

Overview

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters report found that disabled “individuals are viewed as the objects of pity and depicted as having the same attributes and characteristics no matter what the disability may be.” Similarly, the website Media and Disability, an organization advocating for broader representation of people with disabilities, points out that “disabled people, when they feature at all, continue to be all too often portrayed as either remarkable and heroic, or dependent victims.”

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters report found an “overall lack of coverage of disability issues by television news outlets,” and what coverage there is typically tends to fall into the “victim” or “supercrip” categories: either stories that ask for the viewer’s sympathy or “uplifting” stories of people who have “overcome” their disabilities.

Level: Grade 9-12

Author: Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts

Duration: 2 to 2 ½ hours

Overview

For instance, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation provides a guide for producers to use in portraying persons with disabilities on-screen. It consists of three questions:

Scott Bremner, in the article “Changing Channels: Improving Media Portrayals of Disability” (Abilities, Spring 2008) writes that “Although 4.4 million Canadians – one in seven people – has a disability, we’re conspicuously absent from popular media. When we do appear, it’s often in roles that are stereotypical or degrading.”

Level: Grades 9-12

Duration: 1-2 hours

Author: Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts

Overview

In this section, we explore common media representations of people with disabilities. We also discuss issues relating to people with disabilities finding work in media and challenge common assumptions about people with physical and mental disabilities.

Teachers who include media literacy in their classrooms often face issues that don’t arise in other subjects. Nothing illustrates this better than the issue of diversity in media. It’s not unreasonable for teachers to see the topic as a can of worms and be concerned about offending students and their parents – not to mention worrying about what the students themselves might say. At the same time, it’s a topic that is simply too important to be ignored: what we see in media hugely influences how we see others, ourselves and the world.