Understanding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms from a student’s perspective: the role of social media on Charter awareness

Awareness of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or constitutional literacy in Canada, has gained very little attention since its establishment in 1982, particularly with university-aged Canadians. Because of the important role that the Charter plays in individuals’ lives, it is crucial every Canadian understands their rights and freedoms enshrined in law, as well as the limitations of those rights and freedoms. This study attempted to gauge constitutional literacy and social media use among Mount Royal University students, specifically on ss. 1, 2, and 7 of the Charter because of the overarching relevance and applicability of these sections to all Canadians. Social media was queried to ask students if it negatively influences students’ knowledge of their Charter rights, freedoms, and limitations. The study was exploratory and incorporated a mixed methods approach to understanding the data. The conclusions from a literature review were combined with the survey data. Literature demonstrates that the public is disproportionally unaware of their rights and freedoms, while the survey results revealed that university students have either an above-average knowledge of the Charter or a below-average knowledge of the Charter. Lastly, there was no correlation between social media use and respondents’ Charter knowledge.