Male or female: Seems simple enough, but these categories which were assigned to us at birth carry with them a whole lot of social and cultural meanings and expectations. In this section, we look to unpack some of the media’s baggage around what it means to be a boy or girl, man or women.
Despite the fact that men are the most frequent protagonists in all forms of media, we sometimes have trouble defining what exactly makes a man. In this section, we explore how masculinity and maleness are constructed by the media.
The myriad religions practiced by Canadian believers are not always represented fairly or accurately by media. In this section we explore the challenges faced by the three major monotheisms in Canada’s media landscape.
Simone de Beauvoir said “One is not born a woman, but becomes one.” This section analyzes how various media contribute to creating an ideal femininity and how we buy into it.
Initiated in 2000 by MediaSmarts, Young Canadians in a Wired World is the most comprehensive and wide-ranging study of its kind in Canada. The research project tracks and investigates the behaviours, attitudes, and opinions of Canadian children and youth with respect to their use of the Internet.
In this lesson, students decode and explain the relevance of editorial cartoons. The class begins with a teacher-led deconstruction of a political cartoon, after which students decode editorial cartoons that they have selected.
This lesson introduces students to some of the myth-building techniques of television, by comparing real world (s)heroes with TV world (s)heroes and by looking at stereotypes in the world of TV (s)heroes.
In this lesson, students discuss television programming aimed at children and how girls and boys are portrayed in it. Students illustrate what they dislike about portrayals of girls or boys and then create their own TV character who will counter the illustrated negative portrayals.