Teaching Media: Critically Evaluating Media
In this lesson, students learn how media influence how we see the world and send intentional and unintentional messages.
In this lesson, students learn how media influence how we see the world and send intentional and unintentional messages.
One of the most important things you can do to raise media-savvy kids is what’s called shared media engagement. That includes listening to their music, watching TV, movies and videos together, getting to know their favourite apps and playing the games they enjoy. It also includes talking to them about their media lives: what they like, what they’re excited about or looking forward to, and what worries or annoys them. While just being with them is an important step, this is also a great opportunity to help your kids think critically about the media they consume, by asking them questions about it and, sometimes, answering back.
Research has found that these things are most likely to be scary to children:
Various media analysts and researchers argue that media portrayals of male characters fall within a range of stereotypes.
In 2017, a research group discovered that what boys are seeing in the media and what they actually believe are vastly different.
Women professionals and athletes continue to be under-represented in news coverage, and are often stereotypically portrayed when they are included.
Sports media also contributes to the construction of masculinity in contemporary society.
Advertising is a major source of stereotyped representations of masculinity.
We all know the stereotypes—the femme fatale, the supermom, the sex kitten, the nasty corporate climber. Whatever the role, television, film and popular magazines are full of images of women and girls who are typically white, desperately thin, and made up to the hilt—even after leaping tall buildings or thwarting a gang of terrorists.