Procedure and House Affairs committee  I can't take a position on the specific legislation, but what I can say is this: There certainly is a role for appropriate legislation and regulation in addressing disinformation. It is also not possible, as the British scholar Sonia Livingstone has said, to be literate in some

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would say that the literacy program that we recommend and the programs that we currently deliver would address that. It wouldn't be targeted. It's not targeted specifically at that, but certainly any digital media literacy program is going to address how to evaluate whether or

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. I'll start with the second part of that question. Our model of digital media literacy is composed of four competencies. The first of these competencies is access, the ability to access digital media and other media as well. It is the one that underpins the other thre

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. For the past few years, barely a day has gone by without disinformation making the headlines. Whether it's doctored videos of politicians or conspiracy theories about vaccines, it affects our health, our democracy and even our ability to tell what's real

Status of Women committee  I would add as well that most of the well-documented negative effects of pornography are also found to be caused by other forms of sexualized media that aren't explicit. For most of the things that we see in youth that we are fairly confident are caused or influenced by pornograp

Status of Women committee  I think that's a question that's a little more technical, if I can speak for Jane, than either of us is qualified to answer. What I will say is that I'm not certain that there is any power in the world that will prevent teenagers from accessing pornography. I don't mean to be fl

Status of Women committee  I'm using upvoting and downvoting in a generic sense. I'm using “upvoting” to mean taking any action that boosts content, that spreads it, and particularly that makes it seem more relevant to the algorithm, and “downvoting” to mean anything that does the opposite, that limits the

Status of Women committee  There are a number of things that I think can be done at the federal level. One of those is supporting the development of digital literacy resources. Most of the provinces that are adopting digital literacy in the curriculum don't necessarily have resources for teachers to use, a

Status of Women committee  Technically, we have a number of easy steps that can be partially effective. If you're talking on an individual level, almost every search engine has a “SafeSearch” setting. There are also content filters that are available. Most ISPs make those available. There are commercial

Status of Women committee  As an educational organization, MediaSmarts doesn't take a position on legislation unless it's directly relevant to our educational mission, but as part of our mission, we do educate adults and youth about their legal rights and the remedies available to them should they choose t

Status of Women committee  We certainly would make them aware of it. We don't necessarily recommend, but as I said, we certainly would make sure that all of our resources featured it, because it would be another tool that could be used for dealing with hate material on the Internet or other media.

Status of Women committee  We don't really have stable operating funding. We certainly get tremendous support from a lot of sources, from our sponsors, but I'm not going to list them all, because it would use up the time we have. When it comes to things like online hate, it's very difficult for us to find

Status of Women committee  There is an increased presence of digital literacy in curricula across the country. One of the things we do is keep track of provincial and territorial curricula, partly to make sure our resources match those curricula so that teachers can use them without taking time away from w

Status of Women committee  Yes, absolutely. One of the things that we educate young people about is, again, digital citizenship: their ability to make a difference online. We teach them, for instance, that when they see inappropriate content, particularly when it's something like cyber-bullying or hate c

Status of Women committee  I'm not really sure what to add on the topic. We've seen a number of cases in which, either through what you might call savvy gaming of algorithms or, in some cases, just brute force, people have been able to manipulate things such as trending topics. One study that was done of