Doing Good with Social Media
My teens are still young and new to social media, so until now, we’ve mostly been focusing on the risks. Our main message to them has been to be careful, and that less time online is always better.
My teens are still young and new to social media, so until now, we’ve mostly been focusing on the risks. Our main message to them has been to be careful, and that less time online is always better.
In this three-day unit, students assess media coverage of natural disasters and their aftermath. Students explore how sensationalism plays a role in determining what is newsworthy, and how that can distort our perception of issues in developing nations.
“Do you know this meme?”
One of my kids once asked me that, many years ago, as they were discovering memes on the internet. They asked it as a simple question, but I couldn’t help but pause at their inquiry. It was a hugely popular meme – I have been online for many years, and I know many of us in my (ahem) age group use memes a lot (I’m sometimes referred to as an Xennenial, born in 1980, also called an elder millennial apparently. I think sometimes I’m considered Gen X too). We love memes!
In this lesson, students develop a deeper understanding of scapegoating and othering and how these factors may contribute to the promotion of hatred and intolerance.
More than anything else in media, news coverage influences what people and which issues are part of the national conversation and how those issues are talked about.[1] When it comes to Indigenous people and communities, constitutional issues, forest fires, poverty, sexual abuse and drug addiction sometimes appear to be the only topics are reported in the news.
That Indigenous women are likely to be victims of violence is not news: Indigenous women aged 25 to 44 are five times more likely to suffer a violent death than other women in Canada.
In this lesson students develop an awareness of the ways in which public perceptions regarding young people have been affected by media portrayals of youth violence and youth crime.
In the same way that Canadian news reporting does not reflect Canada’s multiculturalism, racial diversity ‘behind the scenes’ of news media is similarly disproportionate. Almost a quarter of the Canadian population identifies as a member of what Statistics Canada refers to as a “visible minority,” and while a 2021 study found a similar rate of representation in newsrooms, eight in ten Canadian newsrooms have no racialized journalists in leadership roles.