This winter the Olympics return to Canada for the first time since the Calgary games of 1988. For many people, the most vivid memories of that Olympiad are the colourful stories of some of the less accomplished athletes, such as British ski jumper Michael “Eddie the Eagle” Edwards and the members of the Jamaican bobsled team. It’s unlikely, though, that there will be any charming underdogs in this year’s Olympiad, as the games become more and more the province of professionals. As audiences and advertising revenues drop, however, will the professionalization of the Games spell their downfall?

The notion that the Olympics are a celebration specifically of amateur sport dates back not to the ancient Greek games, as many believe – the Greeks made no distinction between professional and amateur athletes, and in fact had no word equivalent to “amateur” – but to the founder of the modern Games, Pierre de Coubertin. Greatly influenced by the ethos of the “well-rounded boy” and the “gentleman athlete,” de Coubertin felt that it was important that each nation’s athletes represent the general citizenry, not its professional athletes.

These rules were taken quite seriously for a long time, in some cases more strictly than might seem reasonable: participation in any professional or semi-professional sport was considered grounds for disqualification, as in the case of American athlete Jim Thorpe, who lost his medals for the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon because he had played semi-professional basketball. The rule clearly originated, at least in part, from an aristocratic distaste for anyone who had to work for a living – which explains the general disqualification of Swiss and Austrian ski instructors from the 1936 games. As the 20th Century wore on, however, the rule began to look like an anachronism – in particular because many nations “gamed the system” by supporting full-time “amateur” athletes.

In the 1980s two events dealt a final blow to the amateur ethos. The first was the creation of the so-called “Eddie the Eagle rule”: while audiences had found his relatively poor performance charming and even inspiring, to the International Olympic Committee it was an embarrassment, and a rule was passed that Olympic hopefuls must place in the top 50 competitors and the top 30 per cent in qualifying competitions. Where before it had been possible to go to the Olympics if you competed in a sport that interested few of your countrymen, it was now necessary to be one of the world’s elite athletes. At the same time, the International Basketball Federation abandoned the distinction between amateur and professional athletes in 1989, making it possible for professional basketball players to compete in the Olympics; as a result the American basketball team dominated the event for the next three Olympiads. This may be seen as an opening of the floodgates, as the governing bodies for other sports gradually abandoned the notion of amateur status as well (most notably hockey in 1998.)

A funny thing happened, though, as the Olympics became less averse to people making money from their sport: the Games started making less money themselves. The American network NBC, which bid successfully for the Olympic broadcast rights back in 2003, is expected to lose as much as $200 million on this year’s event. The Olympics, once guaranteed to deliver record ratings and revenues, have been reduced to that status of a “loss leader” that will, at best, draw attention to NBC’s more profitable offerings.

There are a number of reasons for this. Advertising is in a slump worldwide as a result of the recession, and many advertisers are moving more of their money to new media rather than traditional outlets such as print and television. At the same time, it does seem that the Olympics have lost some of their lustre. The increasing professionalism of the Games may have something to do with that: after all, if the Olympic Games are simply professional sports, why watch them instead of the professional leagues? The average hockey fan probably has more loyalty to his city’s team than to a Canadian national team that may not feature any of his favourite players – particularly when the Olympics causes a break in the hockey season. A uniformly high level of skill, meanwhile, may be satisfying to watch, but it has little emotional appeal: the travails of the Jamaican bobsled team in the 1988 Olympics became a successful movie, as did the underdog victory of the American hockey team in 1980, but it’s hard to imagine much drama in a film about the 1992 US basketball “Dream Team.”

What’s ironic about the increased professionalization of the Olympics is that it has taken place at the same time as what we might call the rise of the amateur in other fields: thanks to the increased availability of media production tools (such as digital video cameras, home recording equipment and video editing programs) and the advent of distribution channels such as blogs and YouTube, it has never been easier for amateur artists to find an audience. Some of these amateurs, of course, have ambitions to become professionals or semi-professionals; there have been any number of musicians, comedians, film-makers and even journalists whose amateur efforts have either found professional outlets or led to professional work. But what’s more interesting than that is the amateur ethos found in many online communities. As the authors of the recent book Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out note, much of the creative work available online is not only done without expectation of material reward but in contexts where it is literally impossible for the creators to get paid for their work: fan fiction, unlicensed subtitling of foreign films (mostly Japanese animation), mashup videos and so on. This is work done truly out of love – which is, of course, the root of the term “amateur.”

Do the Olympics have a future? Perhaps not – it certainly seems likely that the broadcast rights will fetch a substantially smaller sum the next time they are auctioned off. It’s likely that they will continue, out of sheer momentum if nothing else, but there’s little question that their importance will be much diminished. Most likely we will someday look back at them as a symbol, like I Love Lucy or the last episode of M*A*S*H, of a bygone age when everyone watched the same thing – and when we still distinguished between professionals and amateurs, and between producers and consumers.

If anyone still doubts that youth need to learn how to evaluate online information, those doubts should have been dispelled by a recent hoax perpetrated by the group called the Yes Men. This group, which has a history of staging fake press conferences, decided to draw attention to Canada's position at the Copenhagen conference on climate change by creating a number of fake Web sites purporting to be, among others, the Copenhagen summit site, the Wall Street Journal, and Environment Canada's site. While it didn't take long for Environment Canada to make a statement exposing the hoax, by that time many journalists had reported the story as fact and the story had been widely distributed by wire services.



If professional journalists can't recognize a hoax of this kind, is it fair to expect students to be able to judge the material they find online? The fact is that there were a number of steps that reporters could have taken, and tools they could have used, to check the accuracy of this story -- steps and tools that are available to anyone.
 
The first thing that should have raised a red flag was the URLs or Web addresses of the sites. The fake Environment Canada site's URL was www.enviro-canada.ca, compared to the real Web address which is www.ec.gc.ca (all Government of Canada Web sites end in "gc.ca.") While a student might not know this (though one would expect a reporter to), one easily available clue that there was something wrong with the URL was the fact that the actual site's URL was listed at the top of the page, under the Environment Canada logo. As well, all of the links on the page (which the Yes Men copied from the actual site for verisimilitude) lead to pages on the real site. In other words, every URL associated with the site except the site's “main page” have the "gc.ca" suffix.

One of the cleverest aspects of the hoax was that it did not rely just on a single fake site to get its message out. To make the story more convincing, the hoaxers created fake sites for the Copenhagen summit, and the Wall Street Journal that reported their story as fact. This shows the dark side of the notion of "reliable sources": many other journalists who covered the story quite likely gave it credence because they thought it had appeared in the Journal, a newspaper with a nearly impeccable reputation. Indeed, when Environment Canada released a statement condemning the hoax and complaining that many news sources had fallen for it, the example they gave (and linked to) was the fake Wall Street Journal story. The Journal site was a very convincing spoof, but again the URL was a clue to its true nature. Here, though, the Yes Men had been particularly clever: they chose to spoof the Journal's Europe page rather than the main page, most likely thinking readers would be less likely to recognize that their URL (www.europe-wsj.com) was not the correct one (www.europe.wsj.com.)



What else might have given these fake sites away? One useful tool is to conduct a link search. While it's easy enough for a spoof site to copy outgoing links, as the Yes Men did on both the Environment Canada and Wall Street Journal sites, it's harder to reproduce the links that lead to a page from other sites. By using the link: operator in a search engine such as Google, we can see that there are no sites linking into www.europe-wsj.com, while more than 3,000 sites link to www.europe.wsj.com. Another valuable tool is the Alexa Web site, which provides statistics on Web site traffic and allows you to determine how long a Web site has been in existence; for instance, the www.enviro-canada.ca site had no traffic whatsoever before December 7th, while the English home page of the Environment Canada Web site has had consistent traffic going back as far as Alexa reports it (though visits naturally spiked in December.) Similarly, the Twitter account that purported to belong to Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice -- with which he apparently confirmed the press release -- only came into being on December 11th. (Twitter should never be considered a reliable source, of course, given how easy it is to create fake accounts.)

None of these steps or tools of course, is of any value if they're not used. What's most important is to develop a healthy skepticism towards every source you might use. In pre-Internet days it may have been enough to check the credentials of a supposed authority; now, as we've seen, the ease of publishing a convincing fake online means you can't even assume that source is who it claims to be. Instead we have to develop habits of mind that will let us spot indications that something is unreliable. One example on the false Environment Canada site would be the fact that the press release is not available in French (an odd oversight, given the Yes Men's otherwise very thorough approach.) A bigger clue is simply the unlikelihood that the Canadian government would reverse its position to that degree on this issue. Of course, this was what made it such a good story, but that's no excuse for not doing the due diligence of investigating your sources.

With the number of media outlets available to us today, and the ease with which people can create and distribute material on the Internet, it's important that all of us develop critical filters and habits of mind. Even for journalists, who are trained to be skeptical, it's easy to cut corners (for instance, assuming that the various fake sites created by the Yes Men corroborated one another.) The time is past when we could trust a news outlet to judge for us whether something is true or not: for good or ill, we all must now learn and exercise the investigative skills of good journalism ourselves.

If asked to think about community television (or public-access television, as a similar institution is called in the US) most people would probably conjure up the movie Wayne's World or its real-life analogue, The Tom Green Show: TV made by people who would, under normal circumstances, never appear on TV, shot in someone's basement or living room. Or perhaps they'd think of earnest, low-budget shows that showcase community events that wouldn't otherwise be televised, such as ethnic festivals or the Canadian Improv Games.

In fact, though, community television has not been like this for some time. While Canadian cable companies are required by the terms of their licenses to provide one or more community channels, there is little oversight as to who creates the programming, nor is there much restriction on the content so long as it can be considered "local": under CRTC regulations half of the airtime must be made available to independent community producers, but for the last decade there has been no funding available for community groups to produce programming. Cable companies have stepped into the breach with pre-packaged show formats which they can drop into each market for a minimal cost, such as Daytime, which appears in twelve different markets, and First Local, which appears in seventeen markets. Most recently, cable companies have begun questioning whether they will continue to provide community television access at all and a 2007 notice by the CRTC indicated that the Commission considered this a possibility.

While community television has become more like commercial TV, much of the content that was once carried by community channels has moved online: would-be Tom Greens or Wayne Campbells are much more likely to find an outlet, and an audience, on YouTube. The Internet has become home for some community programming as well, but at least in the short run its potential there is limited because by definition community channels are meant to serve audiences not well-served by commercial television, such as recent immigrants and small communities, and these audiences often do not have high speed Internet access or are simply not online.

Fuel has been thrown onto this fire by a recent report from the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage entitled Issues and Challenges Related to Local Television, which recommends that cable companies' contributions to the Local Programming Improvement Fund be increased from one to two-and-a-half percent of their distribution revenues and that community production groups be given access to a portion of that money (it currently goes to commercial stations in small markets.) This might have the effect of moving production funding from the cable companies to community groups, giving them the money to produce programming which the community channels would then broadcast. Of course, you need more than money to produce programming: volunteers need to be trained, and equipment needs to be available. A group called the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations has suggested that a portion of this funding be used to create community media centres that would provide training and facilities to a variety of groups, following the model of the W2 Community Media Arts centre in Vancouver.

The CRTC's community television policy is currently under review, with hearings scheduled for April of 2010, and whether the CRTC will either increase the cable companies' contributions or dedicate a portion of that fund to community media centres very much remains to be seen. Some recent CRTC decisions have been to the detriment of community TV: for example, until this year cable systems with fewer than 6,000 subscribers were exempted from having to provide community television channels, but in August that number was raised to 20,000, meaning that many small communities that previously had community television may lose it (one example is the channel "La Television des Iles" in the Iles de la Madeleine, which was an independent community channel receiving funding from Eastlink cable.) The Notice of Consultation which the CRTC used to announce the coming hearings raised a number of other possible changes as well, including allowing advertising on community TV.

Meanwhile, community television has been drawn into the fight between cable companies and broadcasters over what the networks call "fee for carriage" and the cable companies call a "TV tax." This is a fee that the cable companies would pay broadcasters in order to carry their programming; the cable companies estimate this would add between five and ten dollars to the average monthly cable bill. As the cable companies have tried to cast this in terms of an added cost to the consumer, broadcasters have claimed that they need the money to preserve local programming in small markets -- arguing, implicitly or explicitly, that the community channels funded by the cable companies are not fulfilling that role.

The CRTC has rejected fee-for-carriage twice before, and further hearings on the issue are currently underway. With all of the attention being paid to new media, it's easy to forget that for many people -- and particularly people in small or underserved communities -- "old" media such as television remain the most important way of keeping informed. When you consider things like the increasing concentration of media ownership and the disappearance of local news and programming on commercial channels, it's may be that community television needs to return to its roots -- and to the hands of the community.

 

On November 5, MNet Media Education Specialist Matthew Johnson participated in the Association of Canadian Studies' conference Knowing Ourselves: The Challenge of Teaching History of Canadian Official Minority Language Communities, speaking on the topic Media, Diversity and Our History. What follows is an expanded version of his remarks.

Is media education relevant to teaching history?

The connection between history and media education may not be an obvious one. Mass media are, after all, a modern phenomenon, and when media is discussed in most history courses it's almost always in the context of the meaning or significance of particular media products. But media studies aren't just about media products: it’s about how different media shape how we think and how we see the world.

To begin with, students see the world through media. If they have any prior knowledge of history, it likely comes from movies or TV – and we have to be aware of the ways that affects how they see history. Not just the factual errors and misconceptions found in movies on historical subjects, though there are certainly plenty of those, but the assumptions and implications that come with a medium and genre. For instance, you'll never see a historical film that tries to communicate how people in the past thought or saw the world differently than we do. You couldn't possibly understand the Middle Ages, or Ancient Greece, without having some knowledge of their mindset -- but when those periods are portrayed in the mass media the characters are fundamentally modern people with funny clothes. This isn't just a consequence of bad filmmaking, it's a consequence of commercial filmmaking as a genre and a medium: to be successful a movie has to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, and having characters with motivations and thought processes that are difficult to understand is going to make that more difficult. (So it is that we wind up with freedom-loving, non-pedophilic Spartans in movies like 300.) This is where media education can help students ask the critical questions needed to challenge and contextualize historical depictions such as these.

We frequently use media products to teach history, and not just movies and TV shows. Another medium that we deal with in history, especially at the secondary level, is the textbook. These, too, we tend to take for granted, but as with other media, they reflect their medium and genre. If students are going to not just memorize facts but actually do history, they need to learn to read textbooks as a media product and not just a text.

Most importantly, in a very real way history is media study. As historians we look at media products -- the primary sources on which history is built -- and ask questions like Who wrote this? What purpose did it serve? In what context was it written? Is there any reason to believe it's misleading or biased? What's missing from the story it tells? These are, in fact, all essential media studies questions. For most of history, the sources that have reached us are those that were written down, copied and preserved: each of these has a significance that may not be immediately obvious today. When literacy was rare, to make a written document had a significant cost; so, too, did copying a document before the invention of the printing press. These facts mean that a primary document isn't simply a neutral record: it embodies a power structure, an economic system and a point of view. It is not unusual for us to question the role of media -- such as radio, television and the Internet – in shaping our perceptions of modern history. The same scrutiny needs to be given to the primary documents from which we form our understanding of the past.

How can history teachers integrate media education into their classrooms?

Teachers do not have to be media experts to bring a media education approach to their practice. Media education is fundamentally about asking the right questions, not knowing the right answers, and we can draw those questions from five key media literacy concepts:
 
Media are constructions. Media products don't just come into existence: they are created by human beings. They have a purpose and are made with particular forms and techniques. Teachers can have their students consider the decisions that were made in creating a media product as well as the factors that influenced its production. Consider, for instance, the Lawrence Olivier version of Henry V: how did its purpose (to inspire the British public) affect its content? What were the effects of the circumstances of its production (it was made during the German attacks on England, at a time when there was fear of a full-scale invasion)? Compare the climactic Agincourt scene to the same scene in the Kenneth Branagh version. How does the same essential content communicate very different meanings in the two texts?

Audiences negotiate meaning. The meaning of a media product is not static: it is created in collaboration with the audience, and different audiences interpret media differently. This is why to fully understand the effects of stereotyping and absent voices we have to try to see things from the perspective of those affected. Take, for instance, the famous painting of the Death of Wolfe, which is often presented in textbooks as the moment when Canada was born -- in English-language textbooks, at least:

How would a francophone student interpret this image differently? Look at the Native character to Wolfe's left -- how would a Native student view this painting? How would an African-Canadian student feel about being portrayed as absent from the "birth of Canada"? Consider, too, that we are not the painting's original audience: we are different from those who first saw it in the 18th Century, those who canonized it in the 19th, or those who enshrined it in textbooks in the 20th Century.
 
Media have commercial implications. Few media products are created without some economic considerations. Most of the media products we use in classrooms are created to make money, and that affects how they are made. Even the most faithful historical movie has to follow the “Hollywood format”: consider how the very bleak, chaotic and realistic opening scene of Saving Private Ryan is followed by a much more standard action-adventure film that rewards audiences in a more comfortable and familiar way. As far back as Herodotus history has been written as entertainment, and this shapes our study of it.

Textbooks have commercial implications too: students should find out who at their school or school board makes the decision about which textbook to buy, and consider how that might have influenced what was left in and left out. James W. Loewen's excellent book Lies My Teacher Told Me examines just this question, and while the textbooks we use may not be as egregious as some of the examples he cites (such as a history of Mississippi that did not mention a single African-American), some of the reasons he identifies for why particular facts are included or left out of textbooks may be more familiar (for instance, U.S. history textbooks must devote space to Chester A. Arthur -- an entirely forgettable president -- if they hope to sell copies in Vermont, his home state.)

Even if they are not intended to make money media products cost money to create, copy and preserve, and that influences the content -- it's a big reason why the history of the rich and powerful comes to us from media products like documents, paintings and tapestries while we largely have to recreate the history of the lower classes from physical evidence.

Values and ideological messages underpin all media.  Even if media products are not created to promote a particular agenda -- as nearly all primary sources, and most textbooks, were -- the cultural values and assumptions of their creators are inevitably reflected in the text. This can be a difficult concept for students to grasp for the same reason that fish don't know they're in water; most often, the assumptions found in the media works we consume are the same assumptions we ourselves hold. It takes an intentional change of perspective in order to even recognize that we have these assumptions, never mind challenging them.

Consider, for instance, the cover of this Canadian history textbook for Grades 3-8. Not that it's precisely inaccurate (though I don't think any coastal Native peoples wore feather headdresses of this type), but by its selection of this image it glosses over the fact that most of the Native peoples that the early Canadian settlers dealt with, such as the Iroquois and the Huron, were settled, agricultural societies. Undoubtedly neither the author, illustrator nor publisher had any intention of demeaning or misrepresenting Natives; it is the fact that this familiar image went entirely unquestioned that shows how important it is to consider the assumptions and values that lie behind each media product. (This textbook was published in 2002, by the way.)

Each medium has a unique aesthetic form. The medium in which history is written or told influences its meaning. A history textbook will follow different codes and conventions than a movie, or a comic book. These conventions can have a significant effect on the meaning we take from a text. For example, consider this photo of the Charlottetown Conference:

 

The posed quality of 19th Century photos, as well as the lack of colour, contribute to a received meaning of the event as being sober and serious -- one that’s entirely at odds with the fact that everyone in this picture was hung over when it was taken.

Textbooks, too, have their own aesthetic form. Nearly all are locked into a strict chronological format; not an unnatural choice for history, but also not always the best way to discuss or explain complex processes and events. Textbooks have a number of genre conventions as well: James Loewen has pointed out that textbooks rely heavily on the passive voice -- "chaos seems always to be breaking out or about to break out" -- obscuring the genuine causes (and the debate that surrounds possible causes) of events.
 
MNet Resources

Teachers wanting to bring a media education approach to their history classrooms can get started with some of MNet's resources. To begin with, the presentation Media Education: Make It Happen,  available as both a booklet and a slideshow, covers the media education content of this blog in more detail. Several of the lessons in MNet's Lesson Library deal with these topics as well: for instance "Hurricane Katrina and the 'Two-Photo Controversy'" examines how in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, media coverage -- the first draft of history -- reflected the bias and assumptions of the mainstream media. The lesson "Suffragettes and Iron Ladies"  examines how both history and new media reflect bias in their coverage of female politicians. For a broader examination of these issues, teachers can consult our Media Issues section on Stereotyping. Finally, to help students understand the potentially touchy subjects of prejudice, bias and misinformation, teachers can use the educational game Allies and Aliens which addresses these issues through a science-fiction metaphor.

Halloween is perhaps the most contradictory of the major holidays. Though born in Ireland and other Celtic regions, today it is almost exclusively observed in the form that developed in North America; though closely associated with the imagination, it has been thoroughly commercialized, becoming an opportunity for children to buy costumes and then acquire candy (today it is the second largest commercial holiday in the US, after Christmas); and finally, though it is the holiday most closely associated with children, it is also one that has, traditionally, been all about fear.

From its beginnings as the Celtic festival of Samhain, Halloween has been associated with death and the supernatural: it marked the passage from the "light half" of the year to the "dark half" and was seen as a time when the border between this world and the next grew thin. Perhaps for this reason, it was associated with a variety of masking and divination practices, many of which still happen today. Interestingly, trick-or-treating, at least in its current form, is one of the most recent aspects of Halloween. Derived from a tradition practiced by adults, it was -- along with wassailing at Christmas -- one of a number of occasions each year when landowners were expected to give food and drink to peasants. It became more associated with children when Irish immigrants brought their traditions to North America in the late 19th century. Almost immediately, religious activists began objecting to the "diabolical" effects of the holiday on children, while doctors and community leaders urged parents to remove anything that might frighten children; since then Halloween has been both a playground and a battleground.

Why do kids like scary things?

 While Halloween today has been substantially defanged -- you're more likely to find a branded character from the most recent Hollywood blockbuster at your door than a ghost or a witch -- part of its appeal to children undoubtedly comes from its association with fear. One of the things that appeals to children about the kind of frights provided on Halloween is that it is limited to a single night. It's similar to a thrilling roller coaster ride, or to the experience of watching a horror movie for older children and teens: an opportunity to play with fear, experience the adrenaline thrill of it while keeping it safely contained. Masks or costumes provide another level of emotional safety, as do symbolic markers such as jack-o-lanterns: children can engage with the holiday as something other than themselves, and even their neighbourhood is transformed into a fantasyland.

Unfortunately, today's media landscape provides an all-you-can-eat buffet of frightening TV shows, movies and video games, and children are unlikely to be able to judge in advance how frightening they will find a particular media product. As well, channels that appeal to younger children such as YTV and Teletoon often show TV shows and movies at this time of year that are more appropriate for older kids and teens. As a result, children can find themselves getting frights that are beyond what they're able to handle.

How are kids affected by scary things?

What frightens children changes significantly as they age. One thing that remains consistent with time, as noted above, is the desire for frights to be contained to a particular context. What is perhaps most frightening for all children is images of grotesque transformations, which violate the boundary between fantasy and reality. Joanne Cantor, professor emerita and director of the Center for Communication Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found in a survey that the most frightening image children had seen on TV was that of Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk in the TV series of the same name.

The ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality, however, does not develop until children are about six or seven; before that, children are as likely to be frightened by fantastic images as by more realistic ones. Young children may also be as affected emotionally by animation as by live-action film, so don't assume that "Scooby Doo Meets Dracula" is a safer bet than Bela Lugosi.

In general, children younger than seven are most frightened by overtly grotesque images and stories where a child or a parent is in peril; older children, meanwhile, who might not be affected by ghoulish images such as witches or vampires which are clearly (and safely) fantastic, can be quite shaken by things that blur the fantastic quality of Halloween by invoking the real world. Psychological horror, frights that connect to their daily lives, and blood and gore can still frighten this age group. What is best are movies and TV shows that are safely contained in fantasy, or that contain clear cues that they are not set in the real world.

What parents can do

 As always, it's important to be aware of what your children are watching and playing. Don't assume that a program is safe for your children to watch based just on the channel broadcasting it or the time that it's airing. Whenever possible, watch potentially troubling content with your children, and be ready to talk to them about what they see.

If your household has children in a range of ages, be ready to provide alternative activities for younger children if your older kids want to watch something frightening, or use your DVD player or PVR for them to watch it after younger kids have gone to sleep.

Don't assume, though, that older children are immune to frights. Don't schedule potentially frightening media or activities right before bed time; spend some time doing reassuringly "normal" activities before kids sleep.

Remember that both younger and older children are most frightened by things that violate the difference between the real and the unreal: if anyone in your household is wearing a potentially frightening costume or makeup effect, let your children watch it being put on so they aren't scared by the transformation.

If you are taking young children trick-or-treating it's probably best to do it during daylight, and emphasize the "dress-up" aspects of it over the potentially frightening elements. For kids who are still learning the difference between fantasy and reality, make sure to reinforce the idea that Halloween is a put-on -- it's a special night where we all pretend to believe in ghosts and goblins. Letting kids participate in things like carving a pumpkin and hanging decorations can help, and keep them clear of frights that might shock and surprise them. When you're decorating, don't use props or tricks that might frighten kids unless you're able to control who encounters them.

Older children should be allowed to engage in "scary play," since this is an important part of learning to manage fear, but make sure that they only do it with kids their own age and older, rather than frightening younger siblings or neighbours. Always respect your kids' limits when it comes to frights and don't let older siblings pressure younger ones into doing things they're not yet ready to do, such as going out after dark or going to a stranger's door.

MNet resources

Our Parents' Section has more information on frightening TV content and how to deal with it.

The article "Questions to Ask Yourself Before Donning A Halloween Costume" provides parents and children with some tips to help find a costume that does not demean or stereotype people of any ethnicity or ability.

The study "Tales from the Screen: Enduring Fright Reactions to Scary Media"  is hosted on our Web site and contains a lot of information about what kinds of images frighten children at different ages, and what kinds of short- and long-term effects being frightened can have on children.

Our Tip Sheets "Helping Kids Cope with Media Coverage of War and Traumatic Events"  and "Talking to Kids about Media Violence" contain lots of great information about how to tell if your children have been frightened or disturbed by media images and how to help kids deal with what they have seen.

Other online resources

Common Sense Media has detailed reviews of many media products, including tips on which are likely to frighten children.

On Saturday, September 26, 2009, the US network Nickelodeon did something unusual: it switched itself off. This was in observance of the "Worldwide Day of Play," an event Nickelodeon inaugurated in 2004. The network -- along with its sister channels Noggin, the N, and Nicktoons, and their associated Web sites -- went dark for three hours to encourage its young viewers to "ride a bike, do a dance, kick a ball, skate a board, jump a rope, swing a swing, climb a wall, run a race, do ANYTHING that gets you up and playing!"

While this is certainly a laudable sentiment, it's interesting to take a look at the list of things that kids are told not to do during that time, which includes "read a book," "watch television or movies," "surf the web" and "play video games." This suggests that the Day of Play is somewhat akin to Turnoff Week in its attitude towards media (and, indeed, the Day of Play occurred on the last day of the 2009 Turnoff Week) -- that anything media-related is, by definition, not play, even playing video games. Other efforts to bring back "traditional" play, such as those described in these New York Times articles,  also focus heavily on physical, typically competitive games such as stickball, ringalevio and jump rope.

It’s easy and fairly natural to make this distinction: consuming media has always been seen as a passive activity, in contrast to physical play -- consider the traditional contrast between the "bookworm," or the violin-carrying child off to his music lesson, with the "all-round boy" engaged in physical play. But are play and media really incompatible? For that matter, what exactly is play?

What is play?

This turns out to be one of those questions that is much more complicated than it looks. As children, we are certainly aware of a distinction between those things we do that are "play" and those that are not, but it's difficult to broaden this into a true definition. There is no agreement, for that matter, on why we play: while some varieties of play make evolutionary sense, such as the "rehearsal" play we share with other animals (cats, for example), other kinds of play are harder to justify from an evolutionary standpoint. (A good summary of the leading theories of play can be found here.) Among the few qualities of play that are universally acknowledged are that participants in play share an acknowledgement that they are playing, that play involves activities removed from their normal context, and that play only happens in leisure; in situations of significant stress, such as hunger or other kinds of deprivation, play disappears.

The National Institute of Play  has identified seven types of play, these being:
attunement play (behaviours that build a connection between the player and another person or group)

• body play (motions and activities with no purpose other than to take pleasure in them)
• object play (taking pleasure in the manipulation and observation of objects)
• social play (playing with social roles and hierarchies)
• imaginative and pretend play, storytelling play (distinct from the former because it requires narrative)
• transformative-integrative play (play with ideas, exploring concepts and possibilities.)

The NIP makes the point that adults take part in these activities as much as children: a baseball fan doing "the wave" is engaged in attunement play as much as a baby playing "peekaboo." As well, it should be noted that there is not necessarily a hard and fast line between "play" and "work". Artists, for instance, engage in a sort of "professional play" (and we disdain art that is lacking that feeling of play, calling it "by the numbers" or "hackwork"), while Einstein, as the NIP's Web site points out, was engaged in transformative-integrative play when he performed the famous thought experiments, such as imagining himself riding a beam of light, that led to his theories of relativity.

It's clear, though, that the Day of Play is specifically about physical play. While the decline of outdoor play and the increase in childhood obesity are certainly matters of concern, some experts feel that we've suffered more from a loss of imaginative play. Laura Berk, an Executive Function Researcher at Illinois University, told National Public radio that children have less ability to regulate their behaviour than in the past because they engage in less make-believe play, which requires what's called "private speech": "If we compare preschoolers' activities and the amount of private speech that occurs across them, we find that this self-regulating language is highest during make-believe play. And this type of self-regulating language… has been shown in many studies to be predictive of executive functions." (Indeed, one study summarized here found that sustained imaginative play was one of the only reliable ways of improving children's self-control.) One widely-cited study compared the ability of children in 2001 to stand still with children in the late 1940s, and found that the earlier group was two years ahead (so that a seven-year-old in the 2001 experiment showed the same level of self-control as a five-year-old in the earlier study.)

Media play

Why are kids engaging in less imaginative play? The easy answer is to blame it on the media: children spend more time as passive consumers of movies, TV, video games, YouTube videos and so on, leaving them with no room for imagination. But children in the 1940s consumed plenty of media such as movies, radio and comic books. The screenwriter William Goldman has written of spending entire Saturdays at the movies, by no means an unusual experience, and in many houses the radio was turned on as soon as the children got home from school, broadcasting adventure serials and comedies just as TV does today. This media diet was not absent from children's play, nor did it detract from it: Brian Doyle, whose novel Angel Square is based in part on his own childhood experiences, depicts his heroes re-enacting and elaborating on the stories they saw and heard in the movies and radio. In my own childhood the media certainly played a large role in our imaginative play, but not a limiting one: our Star Wars figures journeyed to places Luke Skywalker never saw and George Lucas never imagined, and our Smurfs were as likely to have adventures drawn from Tolkien or Dungeons and Dragons as from their own comics.

Children have probably always based their play on the media they consumed; where else would classic schoolyard games like "Cops and Robbers" have come from? Certainly children weren't watching policemen chase criminals on their own streets -- but they were watching, hearing, and reading about those stories, directly or second-hand, through the various media of their times. Media play can be seen as a declaration of ownership, of independence, taking the branded entertainments we are sold and warping them into the stories we want to tell.

What's changed is not the role of the media alone but also the decline of unstructured play time, which provides an opportunity for this kind of media appropriation. Two main factors are responsible for this: first, a growing fear over the last thirty years or so that children cannot be safely left to play unsupervised, and a cultural pressure to have children engage in "worthwhile" or "educational" activities rather than unstructured play. (The media is responsible, at least in part, for both of these: the former due to unrealistic depictions of crime, and the latter due to bad science reporting and the relentless advertising of supposedly educational games, videos, and so on, nearly all of which have been shown to have no developmental value -- a toddler gets as much benefit out of wearing a Baby Einstein video as a hat as he does from watching it.) As well, changing patterns in employment -- both an increased number of women working outside the home and longer average work hours for both sexes -- have led to a perception that parents have less time to spend with their children (though in fact Statistics Canada reports the amount of time spent with children is actually on the increase), which may cause parents to enrol their children in organized activities that are seen as being "worth more" than unstructured play.

Play school

What's particularly unfortunate about the decline of unstructured, imaginative play is that it fosters skills that are more important than ever before, and not just the self-control Berk refers to -- though that is surely of importance at a time when our words can be instantly transmitted around the world and may haunt us forever online. In fact, Project New Media Literacies identifies Play as the first of their "Core Media Literacy Skills," defining it as "the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem solving." Simulation is another, and simulation forms the heart of imaginative play. As children "try on" roles and identities in games as basic as "House"; their understanding of these roles is drawn as much from media as from life -- as is ours.  Appropriation, defined as "the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content," is explicitly tied to media play: without knowing it, this is what children have been doing for years when they have Barbie marry G.I. Joe or Superman fight Popeye. Another of these new media literacies, Collective Intelligence -- defined as "the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal" -- has more in common with imaginative play than it does with more structured activities. In a sport, after all, or other organized or "educational" play, the rules and conventions are already set; there is none of the collaboration and negotiation that's involved in imaginative play, whether or not it's media-related ("We're playing Star Wars, but Jeff and Max both want to play Han Solo." "Well, maybe Han has a long-lost brother…'")

Play day

Of course, Nickelodeon should be praised for encouraging kids to engage in active play (though a cynical soul might note that they typically follow their three-hour "blackout" with marathons of their most popular shows, which adds up to a rather mixed message.) But it's important to get past the simple equation of play with exercise and recognize the value of play for what it is: unstructured time in which we can, if we choose, defy Nickelodeon's commandments and "take a nap," "read a book" or "twiddle your thumbs." So, too, must we abandon the notion that free play is wasted time, that it's only useful if children learn something. Children at play certainly are learning things, but they are doing so in ways that cannot be planned or designed.

Exercises for teachers

• How can we incorporate elements of imaginative play into our classes? What are the key elements (creativity, choice, open-endedness, etc.)?
• Discuss ways in which different media can stimulate types of play.
• Think of ways you can encourage students to appropriate and play creatively with the media products they consume. For example, you might ask students to act out a story where an unlikable media character becomes the hero, or where a character defies his/her stereotyped depiction.
• Take an exercise or assignment and convert it into a play-based activity. What has to be changed? How much of the instructional content has to be sacrificed?
• Try to think of a few opportunities for students to just "play" with your class content. Think about applying this to different subjects. Do some lend themselves more naturally to play? Why?
• Think of ways to incorporate extended imaginative play into your classroom. Encourage your students to stay in the roles they've chosen as long as possible and interact with each other according to those roles. Don't forget the "pre-play" period where you and the students negotiate roles and rules: if students are role-playing numbers or elements, for instance, talk about what those roles will mean, both to the individual student and in relation to one another (for instance, larger numbers might boss smaller numbers around, positive ions might be cheerful and optimistic and look to pair with gloomy negatives, and so on.)
• What are the limitations of play in a classroom setting? When should play activities not be used, and why?

After the controversy surrounding last year's proposed copyright bill C-61, which eventually died on the order table when Parliament was prorogued, the Federal government has decided to hold consultations across Canada before introducing a new version of the bill. While only time will tell how responsive the government will be to the public's submissions, the series of town halls and round tables is definitely a good start in making the process transparent and taking the views of a wide variety of Canadians into account. Below is an expanded version of MNet's submission to the Round Table held in Gatineau, Quebec on July 29th 2009.

Today is Safer Internet Day, an annual international event sponsored by Insafe to promote a safer Internet for children. Recent research on Internet life has shown that the greatest threat to kids online comes from kids themselves, both in the form of risky behaviour and online harassment, or cyber bullying. Cyber bullying can take forms such as harassing e-mails or text messages, social exclusion and spreading private photos and videos, among others, and presents a particular challenge for parents and teachers because it often happens outside the home or classroom. Because the Internet has become an essential part of kids' social lives, cyber bullying can also have more devastating effects as youth feel they have no escape.

To help educators address this issue in their classrooms, Media Awareness Network, with the support of the Canada Gazette, has developed the bilingual lesson series Cyber Bullying: Encouraging ethical online behaviour. The resource give students a better understanding of the ethical and legal implications of cyber bullying, while promoting positive and ethical Internet use. 

Intended to support and enhance school-based anti-bullying and empathy-building programs, Cyber Bullying: Encouraging ethical online behaviour comprises the following lessons:

Introduction to Cyber Bullying: Avatars and Identity
Grades 5-6

With the layering of identity through the use of nicknames and avatars, as well as a sense of anonymity, it is easy for young people to sometimes forget that real people—with real feelings—are at the heart of online conversations. In this lesson, students are provided with opportunities to explore this concept and discuss the importance of using empathy and common sense when talking to others online.

Understanding Cyber Bullying - Virtual vs. Physical Worlds
Grades 7-8

In this lesson, students explore the concept of cyber bullying and learn how the attributes associated with online communication may fuel inappropriate or bullying behaviour. Connections between other contributing factors to bullying—online and offline—are also reinforced as students develop an understanding of the role played by bystanders and the ways in which our own responses may fuel or stop this kind of behaviour. As a class, students establish a class “code of (N)ethics” for online conduct.

Cyber Bullying and the Law
Grades 7-8 and Grades 9-12 (two lessons)

In these lessons, secondary and middle school students learn about and discuss the legal aspects of cyber bullying. They review a variety of hypothetical scenarios and a case study, and consider the seriousness of the situations, who is legally responsible, what action (if any) should be taken and by whom. To determine this, students will seek answers to the following questions: How does cyber bullying differ from offline bullying? What aspects of a cyber bullying case make it a cause for legal action? What determines whether it is a civil or a criminal matter? How should rights to freedom of expression, guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, be balanced against rights to security of person? When and how are schools responsible for cyber bullying cases?

Cyber Bullying and Civic Participation
Grades 7-8

This lesson allows students to explore the concept of civic participation in the creation of Canadian laws through a study of the consultation process found in the Canada Gazette. Students will create their own School Gazette by proposing and discussing rules against cyber bullying at school.

Promoting Ethical Online Behaviour: Our Values and Ethics
Grades 7-9

In this 3-part lesson, students learn about online privacy and ethical behaviour by exploring their digital footprints to better understand how our online interactions may not be as anonymous as we think they are. In Part One, students create a digital map of their Web-based activities and the various characters and personas they assume online. In Part Two, students further assess the privacy and ethics of their online activities by applying their cyber-portraits to a questionnaire and, in Part Three, students look at areas in their virtual lives where they can make improvements.

February 10th is Safer Internet Day, an event sponsored by Insafe to promote safe and responsible online behaviour. As the Internet becomes a more and more central part of our lives, we are coming to a better understanding of just what risks and opportunities it provides. We are learning, for instance, that youth are less likely to be victimized by adult strangers than by other youth, whether it is in the form of sexual solicitation or online harassment: a recent study by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, prepared for the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking of State Attorneys General of the United States, supports other recent research in finding that it is the particular behaviours that some youth consciously engage in that place them at risk -- and that not all youth are equally at risk.

This shows that parents and educators must learn to identify the behaviours and characteristics that make youth most likely to engage in risky behaviours, and to treat kids not as passive victims to be sheltered but as active agents who need to learn how to behave safely and responsibly online. It's not enough (even if it were possible) to filter kids' online experiences in hopes of sheltering them from danger: they need to learn not just how to be safe online, but why responsible and ethical online behaviour is in their own best interests.


Resources

For more on safe and ethical Internet use, here are some MNet resources that can be used in the home or classroom:

•    Be Web Aware, MNet's guide for parents to keeping kids safe online

•    Parenting the Net Generation, a licensed resource designed for community leaders that addresses family interests and concerns on issues that arise when young people go online.

•    Devenir e-parent: un tutorial pour suivre vos enfants en-ligne, which gives an interactive look at kids' online world and provides strategies for parents on how to help their kids be safe and behave ethically online (only available in French)

•    Privacy Playground: The First Adventure of the Three Cyberpigs, a free educational game for kids aged 8-10 that shows how to protect your privacy as you surf the internet

•    Passport to the Internet, an interactive classroom resource for Grades 4-8 that offers a comprehensive Internet literacy tutorial in online privacy, safety and ethics. (Available through a license agreement.)

As media outlets continue to close and advertising budgets shrink, the once-mighty Super Bowl is receiving much less buzz than usual. A number of major advertisers, such as Federal Express and troubled automaker General Motors, have decided not to run Super Bowl ads at all this year. Another January event, though, is attracting a surprising amount of media attention: the U.S. presidential inauguration.

For many years the inauguration, while always a hot ticket for the political set, did not earn much in the way of TV ratings -- certainly not in comparison to the Super Bowl. This year, though, the event will be covered by many different outlets, including some surprising ones. CNN and Facebook will combine to Webcast the inauguration, allowing Internet surfers to watch the event at work; the two companies will link their sites so that comments made on CNN.com will instantly appear as Facebook status updates. Meanwhile, MTV will be according as much time to the inauguration as it usually does to its award shows, and BET -- not generally a source of political news -- has a full week of coverage planned. Even the national comic book of record, The Amazing Spider-Man, will feature coverage of the inauguration in its January issue, including the attempt of the villainous Chameleon to foil the event by impersonating the President-elect. (Though Presidents have made any number of comic-book cameos over the years, this is one of the few lead appearances, echoing a 1962 issue of Superman in which the Man of Steel reveals his secret identity to John F. Kennedy.)

As remarkable as all this may seem, the fact is that inaugurations were once one of the most important media events; indeed, if their history is traced far enough back they may well be the first media event. As late as 1960 the entire population of the United States was expected to watch or read about the inauguration; to this day, a myth persists that Kennedy ended the fashion for hats by going bare-headed at his inauguration. The truth is just the opposite: Kennedy actually wore a top hat, an item already long out of fashion but part of the traditional "show" (Nixon was the last to wear one.) The scholar of myth Joseph Campbell pointed out that the consciously out-of-date clothing once worn by Presidents served to highlight the special and even ritual quality of the event; Kennedy took this one step further by wearing not just the traditional top hat but the taller stovepipe hat, forever associated with Abraham Lincoln, in an attempt to link himself with that President who had been inaugurated a hundred year earlier.

The inauguration is itself heir to a much older tradition, the coronation. Contrary to popular belief, in most monarchical countries the coronation is not when the new monarch takes office but instead is strictly ceremonial, a recognition of the new ruler rather than the beginning of his reign. The coronation is a media event because its purpose is to send a message through symbolism; exactly what message that is varies over time and place. In ancient civilizations it typically involved showing divine sanction of the ruler, or in cases such as Ancient Egypt showing that the ruler was himself divine. Most often, what the coronation signifies is a legitimacy and continuity of rule: for instance, the outgoing President and President-Elect traditionally ride together to the inauguration.

A textbook example of the inauguration as media event is the coronations of the monarchs of the United Kingdom. These changed dramatically in the middle of the Nineteenth Century due to two factors: first, the rise of the mass media as cheap newspapers became commonplace, and second the class upheavals that seized England and Europe in the first half of the century, culminating in the revolts of 1848. Together these changed the ceremony from one to which only a small number of notables were invited to an event intended to be consumed, if not directly witnessed, by the entire nation.

Breathless accounts were published in the newspapers of the day, and a host of "ancient" traditions were revived or simply invented, swelling a fairly no-nonsense affair to an event of Oscar-like proportions. The quite conscious intent was to create a spectacle that would inspire affection for the monarchy, while at the same time underlying the continuity of rule it represented. The effort was a success, both for the monarch and the ritual, and the coronation became such a beloved tradition that when Elizabeth II's was televised it received the largest-ever audience to that date, and is credited with sparking British television sales.

The question, then, is not necessarily why this inauguration is a media event but why more recent ones have not been. A number of factors were likely at work: the increasing suspicion of the establishment through the 1960s (Nixon's inaugural of 1973 was accompanied by a "counter-inauguration" in protest); a lessening of interest in tradition in favour of the new during the same period; disillusionment and disenchantment with the political process, following the assassination of Kennedy and the troubled presidencies of Johnson and Nixon (particularly their involvement in the Vietnam War); a fashion for the casual over the formal, culminating in Carter's abandonment of the traditional morning-dress attire at his inaugural in 1978; and of course the loss of respect for the office of the President, due largely to Nixon's near-impeachment and resignation.

Why, then, has the inauguration once again become a major media event, after a lapse of nearly fifty years? The obvious answer is that Obama is not just another President; as the first African-American President his election and inauguration are genuinely historic. There are other reasons, though, why he is such an attractive figure to media. One is that he is the first new-media President: text messages and social networking were key to his fund-raising, and to the phenomenal loyalty he inspired in his organizers. (Many have written about the thrill of getting a text message from "Barack," though they knew it was hardly a personal message.)

Reagan personified the President as a construction of the traditional media – a single message, honed and polished to appeal to the most people, and broadcast as widely as possible – while Obama has some of the quality of interactive media. Like Facebook or Wikipedia, Obama's image is something of a collaborative effort. His most iconic poster, whose only text read Change, allowed viewers to fill in the details about just what kind of change he was promising, and in general people have been more than willing to project on him whatever qualities they most want to see. Many online voices, for instance, have been more excited about his being "the first geek President" than the first African-American President, seizing on his affection for his Blackberry to show that he is a member of that group. The reclaimed term "geek" is used affectionately to describe Obama, as opposed to Stephen Harper who is described with the still-pejorative "nerd" due to his fondness for "Star Trek" and tendency to appear in embarrassing cowboy costumes. It was an offhand comment by Obama saying that he had read Spider-Man as a child that led to him being declared "Fanboy-in-Chief" and making his comic-book appearance. In the end, it may be less Obama's specific identity than his universality that makes him the first Presidential celebrity of the Internet age.

UPDATE:Visit http://www.metafilter.com/78406/Presidential-Inauguration-Videos for links to videos of past inaugurations. (Note: some videos may not have been uploaded by the copyright holders.)

Questions for discussion

1. Read one of the following articles and analyze either the U.S. presidential inauguration or the coronation ceremony of monarchs of the United Kingdom as a media event. What elements are included, and what do they signify or communicate? What messages does the event send and how?

Inauguration Day Events
http://inaugural.senate.gov/history/daysevents/index.cfm

50 Facts about the Queen's Coronation
http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/page4455.asp

2. Canada's nearest equivalent to an inaugural ceremony is the Speech from the Throne, which has few of the characteristics of a media event. Why do you think so little ceremony and ritual is involved in our tradition, compared to the United States or the United Kingdom?

3. Why do you think people still believe the myth that Kennedy ended the fashion for men's hats by going bare-headed at his inauguration? How does it relate to the idea of the President as a media figure?

4. Consider the use of the terms geek and nerd. What distinction is made between them? Why is the first now used in a positive way and the second still negative?

With our own election coming soon, a new crop of Canadian political ads have been launched, and most of them are available online. Efforts to re-brand Stephen Harper have included spots where he, clad in a friendly sweater vest, talks about his love of family; the Liberals, meanwhile, created an uplifting, Reaganesque ad to sell their “Green Shift” policy.

 

 ARAPO Recognition Award

 

 

The Association to Reduce Alcohol Promotion in Ontario is accepting submissions for the ARAPO Recognition Award until Friday, February 29th. (Yes, it’s a leap year.) In the words of their Guiding Statement, the award is for “recognition of individuals (e.g. journalist, teacher, student etc.) or organizations (e.g. schools, businesses) that have made, and continue to make, outstanding efforts to reduce the effect of alcohol promotion in Ontario.” Nominations must be made jointly in writing by two or more members of the community, following a format you can find here.

The award guidelines give the following examples of activities that might lead to a nomination:

• Efforts to educate focusing on media literacy and alcohol-related issues

• Important contributions to the successful implementation of community activities surrounding alcohol advertising issues

• Significant contributions to creating and/or implementing policies aimed to reduce the exposure of inappropriate alcohol advertising

• Socially responsible alcohol promotion or counter-alcohol messages

If you know anyone who had been outstanding in any of these activities in the last year, go to the ARAPO Web site and find out how to nominate them.

Safer Internet Day

 

Safer Internet Day falls on February 12th this year. As in previous years the sponsor, Insafe, is running a contest to create public service material on Internet safety. This year’s theme is “Life Online Is What You Make Of It,” and they’re looking for entries that “show how the behaviour of users has an impact on the online environment.”

While only residents of Europe can enter, you can view the uploaded projects here. You can view MNet's contribution to the Safer Internet Day Blogathon, "Life Online Is What You Make It," at the SID site here.

 

For Classroom Discussion

 

Why not establish a Safer Internet Day at your board or school? If you like you can follow the guidelines used by InSafe: physical or printable products for younger students (pamphlets, comic strips, etc.) and audiovisual entries like videos and slideshows for younger students. Or, if you prefer, you can allow entries of either type from all students, or have two separate categories. The important thing is to draw on your students’ experience and knowledge and let them show the best ways to make the online world safer and more civilized.  

• In what ways are the depictions of schools in media similar and different than that of their own experience? How does the portrayal of teachers compare to the teachers they have at their school? Is the relationship between teachers and students the same or different?
   
• Are the portrayals of teachers and students different depending on the tone or genre of the media text? For example, is the portrayal of teachers and students in sitcoms different than that of a drama?
   
• Does the target audience of the media text influence the way teachers and students are portrayed? Is it different in media directed at young children than that of teenagers?
   
• Ask young people whether or not they think the portrayals of teachers and students can have an influence on people’s attitudes and perceptions of schools?
   
• What are some examples in which teachers or the profession of teaching is celebrated in the media they enjoy?

• John J. Pungente, SJ, President of the Canadian Association of Media Education Organizations and Director of the Jesuit Communication Project.
  
  
• Carolyn Wilson is the recipient of the Prime Minister's Award for Teaching Excellence and the President of the Association for Media Literacy in Ontario.
  
  
• Dan Blake has been an educator in British Columbia for 25 years and is currently the President of the BC Association for Media Educators.