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 Canadian federal elections. Running between April 2019 and March 2020, the Digital Ecosystem Research Challenge (DERC) mapped the digital ecosystem in order to support increased civic and digital literacy. Findings from the DERC are presented in the Understanding the Digital Ecosystem report, which 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:

• What were the political uses and impacts of digital media during the 2019 federal elections in Canada?

• How can we collaborate to make data more accessible to a wide range of researchers?

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Methods:

• Manual content analysis of tweets inform a bespoke machine learning approach for automated analysis

• In-depth interviews with journalists​

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Outputs:

• Conference held at uOttawa Feb. 20-21, 2020

• Initial findings reports:

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Project leads:

Dr. Elizabeth Dubois, Dr. Taylor Owen, Guillermo Renna

Report - Suggested citation (APA):

Dubois, E., & Owen, T. (Eds.). (2019). Understanding the digital ecosystem: Findings from the 2019 federal election. https://bit.ly/3Eps2NT

Dubois, E., & Owen, T. (Eds.). (2019). Comprendre l'écosystème numérique : Constats découlants des élections 2019. https://bit.ly/3nC5Ji0