News you can use
Online news is one of the hardest things to verify. Sometimes early reports that turn out not to be true still circulate on the Internet, and people may spread false reports for commercial or malicious reasons, or even just for “fun.”
Sexting: Shifting the Focus from Victim-Blaming to Respect and Consent
Few issues capture our anxiety about young people and digital media so perfectly as sexting. As with technologies at least as far back as the telegraph, much of this anxiety has focused specifically on girls and women.
Help! Someone shared a photo of me without my consent! – Tip Sheet
- You can start by asking the person who shared it to take it down or stop sharing it. Kids report that this works more often than not!
- Ask the service or platform where it was shared to take it down. If you’re under 18, they may be required by law to take it down, and most also have a policy of taking down any photos that were shared without the subject’s permission.
Data Defenders: Understanding data collection online
In this lesson, students explore the concepts relating to data collection that are introduced in the educational game Data Defenders. The lesson will underscore for students the idea that their data is valuable and worthy of careful management by analyzing the platforms, applications and websites they use through the lens of the five privacy tools (which address the five principal ways data is collected online) introduced in Data Defenders. Finally, students consider how to apply these tools to their own online activities.
Verifying Political Information - Introduction
There are four reasons why it’s especially important to engage critically with election news – and political news in general.
Authentication and citizenship
Being well-informed – and being careful to only share good information – are essential parts of being an active citizen in a democracy. It’s important to think before you share political information with family and friends – especially during an election.
How Do Canadians Get Their News?
If a news consumer reads a headline from The Globe and Mail while searching Google News, is the story from Google or The Globe? What about if a friend posts the story on Facebook; is the story from the friend, Facebook or The Globe? How can the complexities of what is meant by “source” in a converged news environment be accounted for?
Sorting Fact from Fiction
The changes in how news is consumed (and produced) described above have also made it harder to verify if a particular news item is accurate – and made it easier for misinformation to be spread, either intentionally or unintentionally.