MediaSmarts, Canada’s centre for digital media literacy and a registered charity, is excited to be launching the Teen Fact-Checking Network (TFCN) in Canada! This international project was started in the U.S. by MediaWise and has since been adopted in countries across the globe including Brazil, Germany, India and Spain.
Healthy digital habits are ones that make our tech use manageable, meaningful and mindful. That means they:
Families, friends, teachers and community leaders all play a role in helping boys define what it means to be a man. Mainstream media representations also play a role in reinforcing ideas about what it means to be a “real” man in our society. In most media portrayals, male characters are rewarded for self-control and the control of others, aggression and violence, financial independence and physical desirability: “for boys, violence and dominance are aligned with norms of masculinity.”
Various media analysts and researchers argue that media portrayals of male characters fall within a range of stereotypes.
After the controversy surrounding last year's proposed copyright bill C-61, which eventually died on the order table when Parliament was prorogued, the Federal government has decided to hold consultations across Canada before introducing a new version of the bill. While only time will tell how responsive the government will be to the public's submissions, the series of town halls and round tables is definitely a good start in making the process transparent and taking the views of a wide variety of Canadians into account. Below is an expanded version of MNet's submission to the Round Table held in Gatineau, Quebec on July 29th 2009.
How advertising works… even when you don’t realize it. Just letting kids know they’re being advertised to is not enough to make them engage critically with an ad. Helping kids recognize how advertising works is essential, too. Even young kids can become more skeptical about marketing when they’re told why and how ads try to persuade them.
Given the high likelihood that youth are going to come across or seek out online pornography at one point or another, not to mention the many messages they receive about sex through other media, it’s important that parents take an active role in their kids’ internet use and start talking to them about healthy relationships and sexuality at early ages to help them contextualize and make decisions about what they’re seeing online.
This outcome chart contains media-related learning outcomes from the British Columbia, Grade 9 English Language Arts curriculum, with links to supporting resources on the MediaSmarts site.
This outcome chart contains media-related learning outcomes from the Manitoba, Grade 12 Global Issues: Citizenship and Sustainability curriculum, with links to supporting resources on the MediaSmarts site.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OTTAWA, September 3, 2002 - As media coverage intensifies around the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, it is extremely important to help young people navigate the flow of information and images, strong emotions, conflicting view points and speculation about possible new attacks, advises Canada's Media Awareness Network (MNet).