Racial and Cultural Diversity in News Media

Objectivity and accuracy are among the most important journalistic values. Consistently, however, Canadian news media has under-represented and stereotyped racialized groups.

History's Mirror Revisited: Media education and movie history

Since at least the days of Birth of a Nation (1915), Hollywood has turned to history for material. A quick survey of this year's Academy Award nominations shows that this is as true now as ever, with five out of the nine nominees for Best Picture – Argo, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Zero Dark Thirty and odds-on favourite Lincoln – based in history in some way. Their approaches vary, of course, with the history-as-backdrop approach of Les Miserables, the revenge fantasy of Django Unchained, the academic character study of Lincoln, the docudrama of Zero Dark Thirty and the history-as-thriller of Argo.

Indigenous people in the news

More than anything else in media, news coverage influences what people and which issues are part of the national conversation and how those issues are talked about.^[1] When it comes to Indigenous people and communities, constitutional issues, forest fires, poverty, sexual abuse and drug addiction sometimes appear to be the only topics are reported in the news.

New study indicates Canadian parents are not fully aware of how their children are using the Internet

June 21, 2001 (Ottawa) - Canadian youth are ahead of their parents - and on their own - in their explorations of the Internet, according to research findings released today by the Media Awareness Network.

Digital Media Literacy Framework - Grades 7-8

Given their increasing use of the Internet to find information, now is also a good time to introduce strategies for determining authorship and authority of online information so they can recognize good health information, biased or hateful content, and online scams and hoaxes.

At this age media influences on gender norms and body image are becoming more intense. Children need to learn to apply key media literacy concepts to online spaces such as social networks.

Think Before You Share: New resource from Facebook and MediaSmarts

Today, Facebook and MediaSmarts would like to announce a new guide for teens, Think Before You Share, that provides tips about sharing and making decisions online.

Break the Fake: Critical thinking vs. disinformation

People who share false or misleading information sometimes use the language of critical thinking and media literacy, telling followers to “do your research” and “think critically” in one breath and then to “trust the plan” in the next. So how can we tell if we’re really thinking critically?

Not Black and White: Understanding the Nuances of Cyberbullying

How big a problem is cyberbullying? To judge by media coverage, which frequently focuses on the most sensational and extreme cases, it’s an epidemic, and schools and legislators have often responded with heavy-handed measures. Students, on the other hand, are more likely to say that cyberbullying is less of an issue than adults perceive it to be – though even they, in many cases, overestimate how common it actually is. MediaSmarts’ report Cyberbullying: Dealing with Online Meanness, Cruelty and Threats, the third in a series of reports based on data from our Young Canadians in a Wired World survey, suggests that so far as Canadian youth are concerned the answer is somewhere in between, presenting a portrait of online conflict that demands more nuanced, contextualized and evidence-based responses.

AOL Canada Inc. Newest Media Awareness Network Sponsor

Ottawa and Toronto, Ontario - May 16, 2001 - The Media Awareness Network (MNet) announced today that AOL Canada Inc. is its newest Bronze Sponsor.

"We are very pleased to welcome AOL Canada as a sponsor," said MNet Co-Director, Jan D'Arcy. "Support to the Media Awareness Network from one of Canada's leading interactive online services gives added impetus and energy to the development of public education in the field of Internet literacy."