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?
Methods:
Manual content analysis of tweets inform a bespoke machine learning approach for automated analysis
In-depth interviews with journalists
Outputs:
Conference held at uOttawa Feb. 20-21, 2020
Initial findings reports:
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
Funding for DERC was provided by the Government of Canada's Canada History Fund Grant and Digital Citizen Initiative.
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