Outcome Chart - British Columbia - Digital Literacy 6-9

Outcome Chart - British Columbia - Digital Literacy 6-9

Quebec Competencies Chart - News Journalism Across the Media: Introduction

Quebec Competencies Chart - News Journalism Across the Media: Introduction

How Do Canadian Teens Make Decisions When Sharing Photos?

Building on MediaSmarts’ findings on youth and privacy from our Young Canadians in a Wired World research, our new qualitative study, To Share or Not to Share: How Teens Make Privacy Decisions about Photos on Social Media examines the reasoning that teens apply when sharing photos online.

The importance of media education

Media education can help young people put current images and messages about Indigenous people into perspective by helping them understand how the media work, why stereotyping exists, how decisions are made and why “it matters who makes it.” Media education is not about learning the right answers; it’s about consuming media images with an active, critical mind and asking the right questions.

Best Practices

There are several challenges in identifying evidence-based best practices in media education: first, because most evaluations compare media literacy interventions either to a control group or to another intervention not based on media literacy; second because, as noted above, there is often a mismatch between what a program is teaching and the results it is measuring. As a result, “empirical evidence of best pedagogical practice, as opposed to self-testimony or retrospective reporting, is scarce”^[1]; in other words, while we can say generally that media literacy works, it is difficult to say precisely which elements of media literacy programs work better than others. 

Managing media in middle childhood (6-9 years old)

Helping Kids Build Safe and Smart Digital Habits

Parents can focus on helping kids this age explore safely by choosing high-quality experiences, setting clear boundaries, and teaching them how to recognize when something feels off.

There are four main strategies to help kids become resilient to online risks. We can:

Curate our kids’ media experiences;

Control who can access our kids and their data;

Co-view media with our kids;

and be our kids’ media Coaches.

Media Coverage of Women and Women's Issues

Women professionals and athletes continue to be under-represented in news coverage, and are often stereotypically portrayed when they are included.

The Basics of Verifying Information - Introduction

Canadians consider online misinformation one of the most serious threats facing the country, on a par with climate change and ahead of issues such as infectious disease, concerns about the global economy and cybersecurity.