Media portrayals of racial and cultural diversity - Overview
Media speaks volumes about what is important in a society. What we see in media can have an impact on how we see other groups and how we see ourselves.

Media speaks volumes about what is important in a society. What we see in media can have an impact on how we see other groups and how we see ourselves.

USE, UNDERSTAND & ENGAGE provides a road map for teaching digital media literacy skills in Canadian schools. The framework draws on nine framework topics of digital media literacy and provides teachers with supporting lessons and interactive resources that are linked to curriculum outcomes for every province and territory.

In much the same way that racialized groups are under- or misrepresented in news media, they are also not accurately portrayed in entertainment media, which tends to reinforce themes that are conveyed in the news. Although positive change is occurring, it is important that media content more accurately and fairly reflect the reality of Canadian multiculturalism.

Body image concerns have been documented in children as young as three,[2] but it’s adolescents who appear to be most at risk for developing unhealthy attitudes towards their bodies based on this perception.

Part of stereotyping is the attitude that all members of a particular group are the same, or else fall into a very small number of types. This is particularly true in the few cases where persons with a disability appear in media

One of the reasons why teens turn to shortcuts, such as judging a claim based on the reliability or apparent authenticity of the person making it, or turning to peers and influencers over trusted expert sources, is that they simply encounter too much information to deal with. To overcome this, we need to learn information sorting: how to quickly tell whether or not a source is even worth our attention before considering it.

Though we sometimes talk about the online world as being “virtual reality,” the things we do there can have real consequences. When we're using the same screen to talk to our friends that we use to kill aliens or when we can't see the people we're hurting, robbing or copying from, it's easy to forget that what we do online matters. This section looks at some of the reasons why youth might behave differently online than they do offline and strategies for getting them to see the online world through an ethical lens.