The John Meisel Lecture Series in Contemporary Political Controversies Fifth Annual Lecture
Social Media Influencers Are Getting Political and We Aren't Ready
Featuring:
Elizabeth Dubois
Associate Professor, Department of Communication, Ottawa University
Thursday, November 2, 2023
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Grant Hall
43 University Avenue
About the Lecture:
From opinion leadership to social media influencer marketing, popular social media accounts are being integrated into election campaigns around the world. Online influencers’ ability to reach targeted and often hard to reach audiences could be a helpful advancement in campaign strategy but, if left unchecked, could also exacerbate the spread of disinformation, foreign interference, and lead to electoral interference. In this talk Dubois tackles the contentious impacts of social media on politics by focusing on online political influencers, questioning their political roles, their power, and which voices we pay attention to.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Elizabeth Dubois (PhD, University of Oxford) is an Associate Professor and University Research Chair in Politics, Communication and Technology at the University of Ottawa where she runs the Pol Comm Tech Lab and is a member of the Center for Law, Technology and Society. She is also a Faculty Associate and former Fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard University and an Affiliate at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at University of North Carolina. Her work examines political uses of digital media, including artificial intelligence, political social media influencers, and online harassment of public figures. She hosts the Wonks and War Rooms podcast where political communication theory meets on the ground strategy. Find her on Twitter @lizdubois and at www.polcommtech.ca or check out her latest edited book, Citizenship in a Connected Canada.