Benefits of Privilege in Relation to Media
I can look at the media and see people from my group widely represented as heroes, role models, leaders, news anchors, television hosts, and experts.
I can look at the media and see people from my group widely represented as heroes, role models, leaders, news anchors, television hosts, and experts.
Canada’s Broadcasting Act, last amended in 1991, outlines industry guidelines for portrayal of diversity.
Since the 1990s, media educators Anita Day and Guy Golan have identified increased tension between people of faith and media outlets [1]. Media and religion are two concepts that can be challenging to partner: religion is frequently misrepresented in media for a wide variety of reasons, whether as a result of mistakenly held beliefs or by dramatizing religion to sell newspapers or attract viewers.
Canada is a culturally diverse country that is home to many different religions. These religions, however, are not always equally represented in Canadian media, where portrayals of religion are often stereotyped and disempowering.
No longer relegated to the realms of innuendo and secrecy, today we see a wide range of gender identities and sexual orientations represented on television and in mainstream film alongside cisgender people. 2SLGBTQ+ (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, trans, queer and gender and sexually diverse communities) people see their reflections on screen in a wide variety of roles. And yet, there remain many challenges.
Privilege is the relative benefit that a group enjoys as a result of the discrimination or oppression of other groups. When we think about racism and discrimination, we often envision acts of deliberate meanness or quantifiable oppression of a disadvantaged group – hurtful words, tasteless jokes, deliberate exclusion from work or school, acts of violence, and so on – but it can just as easily take the form of privileges given to members of a more advantaged group.
Being exposed to sexual content is one of Canadian parents’ top worries about their kids’ online experience and also one of kids’ own top concerns. It’s not hard to see why: while there are no longer any explicitly pornographic sites among kids’ favourite platforms and websites – and the services that are their favourites such as TikTok and Instagram ban sexually explicit content – almost a third of Canadian kids have been exposed to porn online without looking for it.
We know that young people are accessing explicit content online. We know less about how this exposure is impacting their attitudes and behaviours. If kids are finding accurate and good quality information about sexual health or healthy relationships, that’s a positive thing. However, if the bulk of their exposure is to pornography, then they may be receiving distorted messages about relationships and sexual behaviour.
Given the high likelihood that youth are going to come across or seek out online pornography at one point or another, not to mention the many messages they receive about sex through other media, it’s important that parents take an active role in their kids’ internet use and start talking to them about healthy relationships and sexuality at early ages to help them contextualize and make decisions about what they’re seeing online.
What we see – and don’t see – in media affects how we view reality. Media works can be imagined either as mirrors that reflect an audience’s own experience, windows that give them access to experiences they otherwise wouldn’t have known, or in some cases both.