Critical Digital Literacy Education Guide
Today’s digital media landscape can leave users frustrated about which sources to trust. Because an informed public is essential to a strong democracy, our civic health depends on analyzing the media we consume with critical thinking skills. This guide is intended as a resource to provide a framework that readers can use to weigh the sources, facts, and opinions that bombard them every day.
Long before the rise of digital and social media, disinformation and manipulation have been woven into the fabric of Canadian politics. Courting public opinion through half-truths, embellishment, omission, and disinformation is a key tool of political and social persuasion.
The difference today is that the internet allows anyone to appear to be an expert, and deciding who and what is reliable becomes increasingly challenging. Furthermore, local and international voices have learned to manipulate public opinion through trolls (people), bots (machines), and social media to distort the truth and circulate falsehoods.
Drawing on historical examples of disinformation, we provide a media literacy framework for addressing 21st-century media. Wartime propaganda posters, covert government campaigns against Black immigration, and public alarm during the 2003 SARS outbreak offer fundamental lessons in visual language, infrastructure of information, and biases that can speak to our digital present.
These historical examples can equip us to assess the content, quality, and consistency of what we read, see, and hear, even as technology continues to change how information is curated and circulated. We invite you to use this guide to empower students to examine the everyday media they consume with a critical eye and greater confidence.