Media and Girls
They have ads of how you should dress and what you should look like and this and that, and then they say, 'but respect people for what they choose to be like.' Okay, so which do we do first?"
Kelsey, 16, quoted in Girl Talk
They have ads of how you should dress and what you should look like and this and that, and then they say, 'but respect people for what they choose to be like.' Okay, so which do we do first?"
Kelsey, 16, quoted in Girl Talk
Since the 1960s, feminists have argued that "it matters who makes it." When it comes to the mass media, "who makes it" continues to be men.
Almost all of kids’ favourite apps and websites make money from targeted advertising, which uses their personal information to choose which ads to show them. Many of them also sell the data they collect to data brokers, which use information from many sources to make detailed profiles of users. Some also share it with other apps that are owned by the same company, such as Google and YouTube or Instagram and Facebook.
This lesson begins by helping students to identify and understand the different aspects of news outlets. Using these skills, students will then collect and identify news stories and categorize them according to subject matter.
As part of digital media literacy, I think it is important to learn about financial literacy too. As our kids get older and we open bank accounts for them, they get jobs, buy their own items etc., having a sense of financial literacy is a must.
Although many concerns remain about how gender represented in media, there are signs that things are changing. Roles for women on television, in particular, have become much more varied and complex in the last decade, ranging from the conflicted Star Wars hero Ahsoka to Marvel characters such as Echo and Ms. Marvel to more realistic characters like Never Have I Ever’s Devi, while a growing number of movies and TV shows are questioning narrow definitions of masculinity.
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.
Indigenous people remain highly stereotyped in most mass media, in ways that are sometimes less remarked upon than stereotypes of other groups. This section examines how Indigenous people are represented, and participate, in various media and how media education can help both Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth understand the impact of stereotyped representations.
Think you know how to read and understand privacy policies and terms of use? Learn how to make sense of legal documents for websites and apps with this interactive game.
Developed in partnership with CIRA, this interactive quiz is designed to increase students’ knowledge of the cyber security risks they face every day.