Media Literacy Week (October 25-30th) is held annually by MediaSmarts with the purpose of promoting digital and media literacy across the nation.
This year there are 5 themes: Use, Understand, Engage, Access, and Verify, which represent the various skillsets needed to be media literate.
Use: "represents the skills needed to safely and effectively use media, computers, and the internet."
Understand: "is the set of skills that help us comprehend, contextualize and critically evaluate digital media so that we can make informed decisions about what we do and encounter online."
Engage: "Engaging with digital media is more than knowing how to write an email: it includes being able to adapt what we produce for various audiences; create and communicate using media such as images, video and sound; reflect on the social and political implications of media and use media tools for community engagement; and engage with Web 2.0 user-generated content effectively and responsibly."
Access: "Access involves safely and ethically finding and navigating media."
Verify: "More than ever, Canadians need the skills to effectively search the internet for information, then evaluate and authenticate the sources and information they find."
This guide focuses on the Understand and Verify aspects of media literacy with information on Fake News, Confirmation Bias, Evaluating Web Resources, as well as additional library resources on the subject of media literacy.