Let's Get Media Aware

National Media Education Week

National Media Education Week is an initiative to promote media education and encourage all Canadians to participate in media literacy activities throughout the country. Throughout the week of November 3rd-7th, I participated in this initiative by discussing the important issues in media that this week brings to light: the truths about the internet occurrences we tend to ignore in our day-to-day online activities. With a group of friends, I discussed the importance of being able to think critically and act ethically in online activities. When asking around and hearing what we each had to say on our participation and victimization online, it was clear that we each had a different outlook on what constitutes as cyber-bullying. It is often that these differences in views lead to conflict online because people fail to understand the severity of what they do and say. Too many people can say that they have or have been a victim of cyber-bullying; forty-one per cent of victims of cyber bullying in grade seven don’t know the identity of their attacker. We need to develop meticulous critical thinking as members of this cyber-society; to make sense of everything we read, hear, and see in the media. And in essence, that’s Media Education Week is about – giving us the knowledge to think critically about how we act towards and respond to media issues.