Pirates and privateers

With the recent spate of marine piracy off the coast of Somalia, culminating in the abduction and rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, it’s a bit disorienting to see the word “piracy” used to refer to, well, pirates. That’s because for the last few decades the word has been much more often applied to those who “pirate” intellectual property such as software, music, and videos. In fact, the use of the word in that context has a surprisingly long history: Daniel Defoe, in 1703, used the term to describe printers who made unauthorized copies of his work.

Internet & Mobile

Book review: Packaging Girlhood

An alien anthropologist, studying North American culture, might wonder why it is that despite the increasing economic and political power of women over the last forty years, appearance and behaviour seem to be more gender-typed than ever. A walk through any department store would give this anthropologist a clear notion of gender roles in children and teens: boys are warriors and superheroes, clad in camouflage (the new blue); girls are princesses, dressed always in pink. Packaging Girlhood, by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown, acts as a guide to parents and teachers who – perhaps remembering a time of boys and girls in t-shirts, jeans or unisex overalls – may be as perplexed by all this as our alien would be.

Resources

Whac-A-Mole: Keeping up with your kids’ apps and websites

I’ve already written about YouTube and Instagram, but today I wanted to share some information about four other popular sites and apps that are on my radar right now: Snapchat, Vine, Tumblr and ask.fm.

Internet & Mobile, Parents, Social Networking

Buried treasure

Why are movies so often unlike their trailers? The answer may surprise you.

Covering controversy

The hottest media story in the past week has been the instantly infamous New Yorker cover portraying Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as terrorists. Though the Obama campaign has been measured in its response, media outlets – and particularly bloggers – have been vocal in their disapproval. Some have suggested that the cover crosses the line from satire into hate speech, while others accuse TheNew Yorker of giving ‘aid and comfort to the enemy' by visually depicting the smears and misconceptions that have been aimed at the candidate.

Journalism & News, Marketing & Consumerism, Media Production, Stereotyping

People with a disability: left behind by the Media Age? (Part Two)

In the first part of this blog we looked at some of the challenges and barriers facing people with disabilities when it comes to the Internet and other new media. In this final part we turn to possible strategies for making the virtual world fully accessible to all.

Human Rights, Internet & Mobile, Resources, Stereotyping, Video Games

Holiday Viewing Traditions

‘Tis the season for festive viewing. At least in our home it is as we plan to celebrate Christmas and that means a lot of holiday movies and shows to watch! Yes, even as the kids have gotten older, this is one tradition that no one outgrows, at least in our home.

Social TV and Togetherness

Is technology drawing us closer together, or pulling us apart? When it comes to TV and digital media, the answer may well be "yes" to both.

Social Networking, Television

Teen Focus in a Many Media World

My middle daughter, age 13, read the novel The Outsiders last year. She loved it, and like any good mom who was raised in the 1980s, I bought her a DVD copy of the classic movie. She loved the film version, too.

Digital Health, Movies, Television

Sexuality and Romantic Relationships in the Digital Age

There’s a long-standing relationship between sex and the Internet. As far as back the 1980s, Usenet and local bulletin board systems were used to share pornographic text files and crude (in both senses) graphics, and people have been using digital media to form and carry out online relationships at least as long. However, just as estimates of how much online traffic and content is made up of sexual material tend to be exaggerated[1], our new report – Sexuality and Romantic Relationships in the Digital Age – from MediaSmarts’ Young Canadians in a Wired World survey of 5,436 students, shows that for Canadian youth, sexuality and romantic relationships play a fairly small part of their online lives.

Cell Phones and Texting, Internet & Mobile, Pornography, Sexual Exploitation, Social Networking