Critical Thinking: News and Media Literacy

Education can play a central role in building the skills needed to “pre-bunk” and debunk conspiracy theories.

What is journalism? Learn more about the history of Canadian journalism and the ideals of the profession. This article also addresses the impact of technology, multimedia and Journalism 2.0.

What are news agencies and how do they contribute to the news we get on TV, in newspapers and online? This article explains how news agencies contribute to our news feeds.

The Crash Course YouTube channel has a playlist for their series about media literacy. There is a quick preview video plus twelve videos that address various topics related to media literacy.

Conspiracy theories and speculation about coronavirus have flooded social media. But who starts these rumours? And who spreads them? Learn from a disinformation reporter with the BBC.

This 7 minute video from PBS describes efforts by educators and media literacy advocates to help students tell fact from media fiction. (American-based content)

This is an extensive (Canadian) resource that offers explanations of digital and media literacy fundamentals, as well as how these two concepts intersect.

Making Your Voice Heard: A Media Toolkit for Youth is designed to help young people understand how the news industry works (different roles), why youth stereotyping happens and how they can access media to get positive youth voices and stories heard.

Media Smarts has developed these media minute videos for use by educators. Each video discusses a specific topic in media literacy and includes a lesson plan (linked just below the video).

It's weird to admit getting duped by something, but there's nothing that scares me more than people who think it never happens to them. Examing why and how it happens...like, what's going on in my own brain, and also in the systems I'm interacting with, is very important in my work.

This is an unabashedly practical guide for the student fact-checker. It supplements generic information literacy with the specific web-based techniques that can get you closer to the truth on the web more quickly.

This page from the Media Literacy Now website has an explanation of media literacy with a short animated video. There is a second video that has high school students describing why media literacy is important to them.

How has social media changed the way we experience death? What will happen to your social media profiles - on Facebook and elsewhere when you are gone? What will your digital legacy be?