Research Projects
Mean Tweets: The impact of online harassment on political journalists in Canada
While social media has fostered an environment for journalists and the public to connect and interact in creative ways, it also makes journalists, particularly women journalists, vulnerable to online bullying and harassment. Dealing with mean tweets has become part of journalists' job description.
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Key questions:
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Are there differences based on gender in the quantity and types of negative messages journalists receive on Twitter?
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How do journalists respond to online harassment and what is the impact on how they do their job?
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Methods:
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Manual content analysis of tweets inform a bespoke machine learning approach for automated analysis
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In-depth interviews with journalists​
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Funding: SSHRC Insight Development Grant
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Project leads:
Dr. Elizabeth Dubois, Dr. Chirs Tenove, Trevor Deley
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Global Journalism Innovation:
Policy Impacts
This project investigates how explanatory journalism informs public dialogue and policy action, against a backdrop of declining commercial news media and concerns about disinformation. This is part of a larger project led by Dr. Alfred Hermida and Dr. Mary Lynn Young at the University of British Columbia, in collaboration with The Conversation Canada, and the network of affiliates in Australia, France, the UK, and the US.
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Key questions:
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Are there policy impacts of explanatory journalism by academics?
Methods:
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Manual and automated content analysis of policy documents
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In-depth interviews with policy makers
Funding: SSHRC Partnership Grant
Project leads:
Dr. Elizabeth Dubois, Dr. Florian Martin-Bariteau
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Digital Ecosystem Research Challenge
This large-scale collaboration included 18 research teams from across Canada and internationally who each worked with digital data collected during the 2019 federal elections in Canada. Running from April 2019 to March 2020, the goal of the project was to map the digital ecosystem in order to support increased civic and digital literacy. The project highlights the importance of collaboration and communication between researchers to address the challenges of navigating trace data and the difficulties of keeping up-to-date with rapid innovations in digital media.
Key questions:
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What were the political uses and impacts of digital media during the 2019 federal elections in Canada?
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How can we collaborate to make data more accessible to a wide range of researchers?
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Methods:
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Manual content analysis of tweets inform a bespoke machine learning approach for automated analysis
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In-depth interviews with journalists​
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Outputs:
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Conference held at uOttawa Feb. 20-21, 2020
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Initial findings reports:
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Funding: Canada History Fund Grant and the Digital Citizen Initiative, Government of Canada
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Project leads:
Dr. Elizabeth Dubois, Dr. Taylor Owen, Guillermo Renna
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Connected Canada
Initiative
This project unpacks what it means to be a digital citizen in Canada today and presents a research agenda for developing a deeper understanding of the ways Canadians use the Internet and engage in a digital media environment. In a variety of formats, we bring together academics, policy makers, lawyers, journalists, and civil society members to foster interdisciplinary discussions. Through this Initiative we investigate digital civic participation and inclusion, the interaction of citizens and their political and democratic institutions, as well as the need to redesign legal frameworks to strengthen and build democratic institutions and to promote an inclusive society. So far the Initiative includes a conference, report, edited book, and book chapter.
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Key questions:
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What does it mean to be a citizen in Canada in a digital context?
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What are the implications of this digital setting for citizens and policy making?
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Outputs:
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Connected Canada Conference held at the University of Ottawa, Oct. 13-14, 2017
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Bilingual conference report:
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Dubois, E. & Martin-Bariteau, F. (2020). Connected Canada: A Research and Policy Agenda for Digital Citizenship. University of Ottawa Press.
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Dubois, Elizabeth and Martin-Bariteau, Florian, Citizens and their Political Institutions in a Digital Context (August 9, 2019). in Dutton, W.H. (ed.), A Research Agenda for Digital Politics. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2020, Ottawa Faculty of Law Working Paper No. 2020-05.
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Funding: SSHRC Connections Grant
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Project leads:
Dr. Elizabeth Dubois, Dr. Florian Martin-Bariteau
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Political Bots
Work on “political bots” (automated social media accounts which mimic human actors) has often focused on computational propaganda and the potential negative impacts of automation in politics. This project examines the types of political bots that exist and their complex relationships with other political actors. A series of papers highlights that political bots are neither necessarily good nor bad. This work contributes to important policy conversations. For example, the use of bots in Canada’s political landscape gives rise to concerns about political advertising and voter suppression and this work has been used to help develop policy responses.
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Methods:
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Case studies of the 2015 federal election in Canada and of the WikiEdits bot @gccaedits
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Manual content analysis of tweets and newspaper articles
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Review of government documents collected via ATIP requests
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In-depth interviews with policy makers, bot creators, journalisms and other political actors
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Outputs:​
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Dubois, E. and McKelvey, F. (2018). Building bot typologies. In Woolley, S. and Howard, P. Computational Propaganda. (pp. 64-85). Oxford University Press.
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Dubois, E. & McKelvey, F. (2019). Political Bots: Disrupting Canada’s Democracy. Canadian Journal of Communication, 44(2), 27-33.
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Dubois, E. and McKelvey, F. (2017). The Risks and Rewards of Political Bots for Canadian
Democracy. The Toronto Star. -
Dubois, E. and Reepschlager, A. (2019). Elections Advertising in a Changing Media Ecosystem. Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law, 13, 183-191.
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Ford, H., Dubois, E. Puschmann, C. (2016). Keeping Ottawa honest one tweet at a time: Politicians,journalists, Wikipedians and their bots. International Journal of Communication, 10, 4891-4914.
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McKelvey, F. & DuBois, E. (2017). Computational Propaganda in Canada: The Use of Political Bots (PDF) as part of Computational Propaganda Worldwide working papers, The Computational Propaganda Project.
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McKelvey, F. and Dubois, E. (2017). Toward the responsible use of bots in politics. Policy Options.
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Reepschlager, A. & Dubois, E. (2019). New election laws are no match for the Internet. Policy Options.
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Project leads and collaborators:
Dr. Elizabeth Dubois, Dr. Fenwick McKelvey, Dr. Heather Ford, Dr. Cornelius Puschmann, Dr. Amanda Clarke
Search, Social Media, and Political Opinion Formation
The Quello Search Project project investigates the roles of social media, search, and personal influence in people’s political opinion formation process. Housed at the Quello Center at Michigan State University, this was a collaboration between researchers at MSU, the University of Oxford and the University of Ottawa.
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Methods:
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Nationally representative web-based surveys in seven nations (N= 14000, 2000 per nation)
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Google Trends data analysis
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Outputs:
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Dubois, E. and Blank, G. (2018). The echo chamber is overstated: The moderating effect of political interest and diverse media. Information, Communication & Society, 21(5), 729-745.
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Dubois, E., Paquet-Labelle, A., Minaeian, S. and Beaudry, S. (in press, 2019). Who to trust on social media: How opinion leaders and seekers avoid disinformation and echo chambers. Social Media and Society.
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Dutton, William H. and Reisdorf, Bianca and Dubois, Elizabeth and Blank, Grant, Search and Politics: The Uses and Impacts of Search in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the United States (May 1, 2017). Quello Center Working Paper No. 5-1-17.
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Funding: Google
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Project leads:
Dr. Elizabeth Dubois, Dr. Grant Blank, Dr. W.H. Dutton, Dr. Bianca Reisdorf
Other recent work
Deley, T., & Dubois, E. (2020). Assessing Trust Versus Reliance for Technology Platforms by Systematic Literature Review. Social Media + Society.
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Assembly 2019: Positionality-Aware Machine Learning
The Kaleidoscope team presented a tutorial at ACM FAcct (2020) and Dubois summarized their work in a 2019 presentation in Boston.
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