What is Media Literacy & Digital Citizenship
Now, when we’re thinking about media literacy, media literacy is just kind of like the big hat that encompasses all of these other smaller little subjects.
And all of these subjects have to do with things that exist within an online space. So when talking about this, there are actually six subtopics that are encompassed underneath the umbrella of media literacy. These are media balance and wellbeing, privacy, and security, digital footprint, and identity, relationships, and communication, cyber bullying, and hate speech.
And finally news and media literacy. Now. Let’s take a stroll through each of these and define what’s encompassed in each topic. So, first off we have media balance and wellbeing. This topic mainly has to do with how you or your child is balancing their media. How much time are they on the internet? How much time are they on their devices?
How much time did they spend playing games? What’s the balance here. Are they taking breaks away from their devices? Are they doing other activities that keep them active? Rather than just sitting around and watching or playing something and also checking in on their state of wellbeing. So now this one and all of them are all interconnected with one another.
Because as I explain wellbeing as being checking on your mental health, the only way this can drop into your mental health can drop into the negative on the internet is if something else in the other topics are affecting it. So the number one thing that’s really important is the media balance. And also checking on yours or your child’s wellbeing, what’s going on in their digital world and why they should take breaks in order to help their mental health and also their physical health as well.
Next up is privacy and security. This one is blatantly obvious. And it’s the easiest one. This one’s about teaching you and your child about their online privacy and their security. We each have our own digital rights as people and especially younger audiences, specifically children have extra rights to their privacy and their security.
When it comes to big companies that want to collect data and sell their data, many of the things start off very simplistic, like, Hmm. How to set up an email, what should your password look like? And then eventually go on and intertwine with our later topic, your digital footprint. Now, speaking of digital footprint and your identity, wherever we go online leaves a digital footprint.
Anyone that knows how to see it can see the websites that we’re visiting and the tracks that we leave behind. So it’s really important to focus on both two and three in terms of knowing your privacy and knowing that. Not everything is private online and that things live forever online as well. So wherever you go, you’re leaving your footprint and how it can be dangerous for your identity to engage in practices that are considered unsafe.
Next, we have relationships and communicating now relationships communicating is kind of a. Broad topic because it encompasses our relationships and communicating online. So our online friends and what should that look like? See a big problem within this topic is that for some reason, in today’s time, people don’t really realize, or other children don’t really realize that stranger danger also applies.
To those online, not everyone you meet online as your friend, and there’s even more danger to the fact that you can’t see this person and you don’t know who they are and you can’t verify who they are. So this topic really encompasses how we meet people online, who we talk to. Who should we be talking to?
Which are mainly family, friends, the people that we know and how we’re communicating that with them, whether it be through our phones, whether it be through our computers on sites like social media and things like that. So next up is cyber bullying and hate speech. So you can see how each intertwines into.
One another, it’s important to check on a student’s wellbeing or your child’s wellbeing because of things like cyber bullying and hate speech. This topic really encompasses how we should be confronting these things that happen online. When we should notice the signs that it’s happening online and knowing how to check in on not only our children.
But also checking in our friends to make sure this isn’t happening to them. Now, lastly news and media literacy, this is one of the most, they’re all important, but this is one of the most important topics in here and is possibly the reason why our country could be said to be where it is. Now news for the most part is factual.
However, there are three types of news and there’s a way to read the news. Two of these are news, which is completely factual, which gives you the facts of a situation at analysis and analysis is a breakdown of something. And you know what? I’ll give you the third one. The third type of news is opinion, which is sometimes not factual and will contain the writer’s opinion or their side of the story in it.
And as we delve into more of these videos, I’ll explain the different types of news articles and how to read them, how to look out for them, because this is really important here. The whole point of being media literate is being able to kind of break down these processes of understanding what is factual, bringing that information together, doing your own research on that information.
And then forming your own opinion rather than adopting someone else’s opinion as your own. So these have been the six topics that are within the overall giant hat of media literacy. So be sure to stay tuned. I hope that was a great breakdown of everything having to do with media literacy. The next video, we’re going to mainly focus on media balance and wellbeing.
So stay tuned for that one. We’re going to make our way through all six topics as usual, don’t forget, throw like drop in the comments. Let me know. What’s on your mind in terms of media literacy, your concerns, and anything like that. Don’t forget to subscribe. So you can be up to date on all new content and most of all, thank you for watching.
