Jan. 01 0001
According to Statistics Canada, over half of people in Canda aged 15+ have low levels of trust in the media. However, almost one in ten Canadians do not know how to fact check information. Some people believe it is too difficult to find trustworthy sources, while others say they don’t have time or motivation.
Media literacy helps us make sense of information, find trustworthy sources, and navigate the complex digital world. It isn’t always easy knowing what is real and what is fake. AI and social media present further challenges.
During Media Literacy Week (October 27-31, 2025), organizations promote media literacy in the 21st century. MediaSmarts, Canada’s bilingual centre for digital literacy, will host activities and events in classrooms, libraries, museums, and community groups across Canada. Find out more about their Media Literacy Week activities on their website.
Keep reading to learn more about media literacy. To find new ways to increase media literacy, visit the MediaSmarts website and the discussion with MediaSmarts teen fact-checker Autumn about media literacy and youth. And join us on October 23 for the National Forum on Literacy and Future-Ready Skills, where CBC Montreal’s Sean Henry hosts a lively discussion about adult literacy and skill building.
United for Literacy spoke with MediaSmarts about the importance of literacy in today’s digitally driven world. Marc-Alexandre Ladouceur, Media Education Specialist at MediaSmarts answered our questions.
Literacy is important because it's what lets us engage with the world and ourselves. Whether we’re talking about print literacy or digital media literacy, literacy has two dimensions: the ability to decode texts (any piece of communication that can be interpreted for meaning, whether it’s an article, a song, or a social media post) and to create them. Decoding texts by really understanding what they mean and what’s behind them gives us the chance to challenge our preconceptions and even who we are. Creating them lets us share our thoughts, our views, and our selves. In our “information age,” we experience and interact with the world through texts more than almost anything else.
The biggest threat caused by online misinformation is cynicism—the sense that all information and sources are equally unreliable. While many of our trustworthy sources of information can make mistakes, they will also correct these errors or update the information when necessary. But if all sources are seen as equally unreliable, we can feel like there is no way to find the truth (or no truth to find) and are then vulnerable to believing what we want to be true.
Recognizing misinformation requires skill in what we call companion reading: not focusing right away on the text itself but turning to other texts—things like search engines, Wikipedia, and sources that we already know are reliable—to judge whether the text is even worth our attention. With sources that aren’t acting in good faith, like hyper-partisan or “pink-slime” outlets, giving them our time and attention is counter-productive.
Companion reading also means making sure that we’ve found the original source of a text before we evaluate it and using tools like professional fact-checkers. We should be able to follow links or use a tool like a reverse image search to find out where an image or piece of information came from and judge whether they are coming from a reliable source. If the source isn't reliable, we need to be highly skeptical of it.
When it comes to staying safe online, whether it’s avoiding scams or spotting misinformation, the most useful skill is also one of the simplest: open a new browser tab and look things up.
If I get a message saying I’ve won a prize, owe money, earned money, or need to reset a password, I don’t click any links. It’s easy to make a fake site look real. Instead, I open a new tab and search for key words from the message, like the sender’s name plus the word “scam” or “fake.” If it’s a big company being impersonated, I’ll often find warnings from the company itself or others who have already reported the scam.
The same approach works for misinformation. Anyone can make a post claiming something is true or false, so it’s important to check against reliable sources. Fact-checking sites like Snopes are a great place to start. If I see a claim, like “drinking water first thing in the morning is dangerous,” and Snopes hasn’t covered it yet, I’ll look at trusted medical sites or local news to see if I can find accurate, verified information. If no credible sources are reporting on it, that’s a good sign there’s no truth to it.
Getting factual information is key for the electorate to make the best decisions they can. Perhaps even more important is to be able to have consensus about what is factual; without that consensus, we’re only ever making assertions based on our own ideology. That’s why it’s essential that media literacy focuses not just on debunking false information but on teaching people how to tell truth from falsehood. We also need to spend as much time and effort learning how to recognize reliable sources and accurate information as on spotting fakes.
Supporting our loved ones means sharing accurate information but also helping them develop the skills necessary to check information and their emotions at the same time.
Our research suggests many young people see themselves as sources of reliable information for their peers and family members, but they also recognize that the adults in their lives know more than them about some things. So, while children can often help parents be a bit more skeptical about the posts that come up in their feeds (and more conscious of the impact of sharing things they’re not sure are true) adults usually have a better understanding of which sources are likely to be reliable.
It’s helpful to remind the older adults in our lives that not everything we see or read online is true. Encourage them to check with other reliable sources before sharing or believing info they see on the internet.
MediaSmarts’ Break the Fake program (www.breakthefake.ca) teaches four quick and easy steps that anyone can use to verify a story or claim and to find out whether or not a source is worth your attention. We also have resources that go into more depth on topics like how to be sure you’re really thinking critically.
In our era of easily-created deepfakes, it’s more important than ever to check before you share or believe info you see online—every time!
A deepfake is an image or video that has been completely made to look real. Sometimes people use deepfakes for comedy or artistic purposes, but out of context, or when created with the purpose of deceiving, deepfakes can be used to make us believe in events or statements that never happened. For example, someone could create a deepfake of the CN Tower blasting off into space. It may look real, but it would hardly be believable. On the other hand, someone could create a deepfake of a trusted official telling us that the CN Tower is secretly a spaceship and that it has successfully launched to the moon. Even if we don’t believe the trusted official, we may believe that they said such a thing when, in fact, they never did.
Finally, a deepfake could be made of that same trusted official saying something particularly nasty about their opponent or another figure that we care about. In this case, we may get angry at the trusted official, share the story without thinking, and even write to them, asking for an apology. This is why it is important to check things before we react too quickly. It is very tempting to act when we feel strongly about what we’ve seen, and deepfakes give us no reason to believe that they aren’t real.
As a Media Education Specialist at MediaSmarts, Canada’s centre for digital media literacy, Marc-Alexandre is responsible for creating resources for educators, parents, and community groups and for conducting outreach activities with schools, school boards, education ministries, faculties of education, and community organizations across Canada. He holds a master’s degree in theology as well as bachelor’s in education and theology.
