Good afternoon, members of the committee. My name is Kathryn Hill. I am proud to serve as the executive director of MediaSmarts. Our office is located on unceded Algonquin Anishinabe territory. We are grateful for the invitation to appear today as part of this study.
I'm joined today by MediaSmarts' director of education, Matthew Johnson.
MediaSmarts—if you haven't heard of us—is Canada's centre for digital media literacy. We are a not-for-profit charitable organization, and our vision is that all people in Canada be empowered to engage with all forms of media confidently and critically.
To achieve this goal, we advance digital media literacy through world-class research, education, public engagement and outreach. Through our programs, people in Canada learn to become active, engaged and informed digital citizens.
Digital media literacy is essential to an informed and engaged populace and electorate. Canada is especially in need of a coordinated approach that moves beyond only access and skills-based understandings of digital media literacy.
The recent increase in visual disinformation, manipulated images, bots and artificial intelligence, or what we talk about as deepfakes, requires that we seriously engage in countering disinformation.
A recent report from StatsCan confirms that about 43% of people in Canada are feeling overwhelmed by these massive shifts in technology and information. For example, photographs and videos used to serve as proof that something occurred or happened in a particular way are no longer reliable. Research shows that people of all ages and beliefs are vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation. People in all sectors, including parliamentarians like you, need to know how to verify information and how to tell the difference between reliable and unreliable sources.
We need to promote information verification as a social norm and habit in Canada. Knowing and practising verification skills empowers citizens to mitigate the potential impact of disinformation and other online harms they encounter.
Digital media literacy education has been shown to be an effective approach to addressing misinformation. Around the world, there have been successful interventions with audiences ranging from elementary students to seniors. Our own Break the Fake program and materials have been found to be effective in both our own evaluations and those done by independent evaluators.
The last five years have also shown that not all approaches are equal. Most importantly, it is essential to focus on discernment over just debunking. Many interventions aimed solely at teaching people to recognize misinformation have a side effect of reducing trust in reliable sources, essentially teaching people to be cynical instead of skeptical.
As well, evaluations have identified three essential elements of a successful digital media literacy intervention. First is a focus on critical thinking and intellectual humility. Second is practical instruction in information triage. Finally, successful interventions recognize that in the networked world that we are all a part of, we are not just consumers of information but also broadcasters of information. Digital media literacy is essential to combat this misinformation and disinformation.
For parliamentarians, as elected public figures, the stakes of authenticating and verifying information online are even higher, given that you have a wide public reach and are considered trusted sources of information. When a trusted source or leader makes a misstep and spreads misinformation, the effects can reach a large and broad audience of Canadians and can erode people's trust in institutions, specifically the government.
Parliamentarians and their staff need support to build their digital media literacy skills when it comes to verifying information online.
Given all of this, I would like to conclude by providing two recommendations.
First, we recommend that Parliament, in both the House and the Senate, require mandatory training for all parliamentarians and their staff on how to verify information and combat misinformation and disinformation.
Second, as we have recommended consistently for 15 to 20 years, we recommend that the Government of Canada develop a digital media literacy strategy that would include supporting all people in Canada in developing the skills to navigate the online information ecosystem confidently and critically.
Thank you for your attention.