Facing Online Hate
The Facing Online Hate tutorial examines how the Internet is used to spread and incite hate – and how parents, community leaders and educators can respond. The first part of the tutorial provides an overview of hate and prejudice online and how it can radicalize young people and have a negative impact on both online and offline communities. The second part covers how teachers and parents can prepare young people to recognize online hate, to respond and to push back when they see it.
Encountering Racist and Sexist Content Online
Bigotry, in its various forms, has been with us for a long time – at least since the Greeks coined the word “barbarian” to mean “anyone who isn’t us,” and likely longer – so it’s not surprising that racism, sexism and other prejudices have found a home on the Internet. MediaSmarts’ new report Young Canadians in a Wired World: Encountering Racist and Sexist Content Online looks at how often Canadian youth are exposed to prejudice, how it makes them feel and how they respond to it.
Co-Viewing With Your Kids
One of the most important things you can do to raise media-savvy kids is what’s called shared media engagement. That includes listening to their music, watching TV, movies and videos together, getting to know their favourite apps and playing the games they enjoy. It also includes talking to them about their media lives: what they like, what they’re excited about or looking forward to, and what worries or annoys them. While just being with them is an important step, this is also a great opportunity to help your kids think critically about the media they consume, by asking them questions about it and, sometimes, answering back.
Pyramid Power: How Hate Spreads Online
The last few weeks have shed an unprecedented light on the use of digital media to spread and inspire hatred. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the perpetrator in the attacks on Canada’s National War Memorial and Parliament buildings, appears to have been motivated in part by exposure to online postings by a self-described member of the Islamic state[1], and the Federal government has already stated that it intends to create tools to remove online content that promotes the “proliferation of terrorism.”[2]
So Many Choices!
This lesson introduces the students to the first steps in finding information on the Internet. Specifically, this lesson helps students understand the basic good practices of searching for something online: be accompanied by a trusted adult, start with a safe site and understand the use and power of using good links and keywords to find what they are looking for and to avoid bad results.
Avatars and body image
In this lesson students are introduced to the concept of "avatars" and share their experiences creating and playing avatars in video games and virtual worlds. They then create avatars using a program that is intentionally limited in terms of available body types and gender markers, first creating an avatar of their own gender and then of the opposite gender, and then discuss the program and relate it to representations of gender and body image in games and virtual worlds and in other media. Students then create avatars using a much more flexible version of the program and compare that experience to the more limited version. Finally, students use the more versatile program to create avatars that represent how they see themselves and how they would like others to see them online and reflect on the choices that went into creating them.