Patron
We are honoured that Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada, granted viceregal patronage to MediaSmarts.
Surveillance and algorithmic decision-making
Sociologist and surveillance scholar David Lyon defines surveillance as “any collection and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purposes of influencing or managing those whose data have been garnered.”
Surveillance techniques
Thanks to the networked nature of the internet, in which information is always flowing both ways, there's no shortage of ways for apps, devices and websites to collect information about us.
Privacy impacts of advertising and marketing
It’s as important for advertisers to reach the right people as it is to make an appealing ad, so they have developed many different ways of targeting ads effectively. Online advertising lets marketers match different ads with individual users. This section looks at how that’s done and how it affects kids’ privacy.
Techniques for literacy
"Given the opportunity, young people do care about issues relating to the harnessing and use of their information online. They want to know what information is being taken from them, and why. They want companies to be more open about how data is being used."
Intellectual Property: Key Concepts
Intellectual property - Anything that comes into being through invention or artistic creation. When an intellectual property is also real property, it is possible to own one but not the other – so that owning a painting (real property right) does not automatically give you the right to make copies of it (intellectual property right).
Intellectual Property: Overview
What is intellectual property?: A novel? A film script? A joke? A cook book? A character in a TV show? A painting? The lyrics to a song? All of these are intellectual property.
Fair Dealing for Media Education
In Canada, consumers have certain rights to use copyrighted material without permission or license from the owner of the copyright. These rights are defined in the Copyright Act as Fair Dealing exemptions and were redefined in the 2012 changes to the Act. A good knowledge of Fair Dealing can be extremely helpful in understanding what you and your students can do with media in class. It's important to note that the Copyright Act provides very little definition for many of these terms; instead, most of the specifics of Fair Dealing have come from court rulings, and the new exemptions and other changes done in 2012 will likely also be further defined in the same way.
Young people’s attitudes towards privacy
Contrary to stereotypes, youth do care about their privacy.