Video Resources

Lisa LaFlamme is one of Canada’s most respected journalists and an inspiring alumna of the University of Ottawa. In a wide-ranging conversation with professor Elizabeth Dubois, she will talk about her professional career, which started in her hometown of Kitchener and took her to the very top as one of Canada’s most trusted news anchors. They will discuss issues facing women in the media, journalism, our democracy, and a cause close to Lisa’s heart, women in Afghanistan.

The keynote discussion from the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions' 2023 Querying AI Symposium. The speakers explore the question "Can Democracy Survive Artificial Intelligence?" and discuss the imperative for citizens and governments to find ways to use, regulate, and integrate AI tools to support inclusive democracy.

For many political journalists and health communicators, exposing themselves to hate, harassment, and credibility attacks online is an unavoidable part of the job. Drawing from interviews, surveys, and content analyses of tweets, this lecture shows how facing negativity everyday can make it harder for these public figures to do their jobs and that women and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities receive different kinds of negativity and develop differing responses. Both the type and intensity of negativity online needs to be considered when developing strategies and policies to reduce online harm.

In order to engage in the policy making process, academics have a range of tools in their belt. Explanatory journalism is one of those tools. Explanatory journalism articles typically provide more context than traditional news reporting. They are also likely to be read by more people--including policy-makers--than traditional academic work. Explanatory journalism can help address society’s most pressing challenges, by offering accessible expert knowledge and evidence-based recommendations. However, the transition to online platforms presents important challenges as well as opportunities for this form of journalism.

Citizenship has become digital. In Citizenship in a Connected Canada, Dr. Dubois and Dr. Martin-Bariteau brought together scholars, activists, and policy makers to build consensus around what a connected society means for Canada. This interdisciplinary edited collection offers insights on the state of citizenship in a digital context in Canada and proposes a research and policy agenda for a way forward.

Leaders in Canadian internet policy explain the growing internet issues Canadians should know about before heading to the polls for the 2019 federal elections. Panellists discuss recent major digital policy announcements affecting Canada's internet and the key digital policy issues that lie ahead in the election.
They provide an overview of the issues, where the parties stands, and what they believe ought to be done.

A CIRA panel discussion.

As Canada prepares for the 2019 federal election, government institutions, political parties, individual politicians and media are all on the radar of adversaries, ranging in sophistication, from hacktivists to foreign governments. Understanding the potential for attack and what organizations and individuals can do to thwart these threats is key to ensuring the legitimacy of Canadian elections.

This is a Public Policy Forum panel discussion.

Activists, politicians and partisans compete for attention and influence online, but malevolent actors seem to have the upper hand. They push disinformation and hate using fake accounts, bots and algorithms designed to keep us scrolling through the latest outrage. News organizations and social media platforms struggle to deal with these media manipulators, particularly after major tragedies or during heated political campaigns.

5th annual John Meisel Lecture Series in Contemporary Political Controversies at Queen's University. 

From opinion leadership to influencer marketing, social media accounts are being integrated into election campaigns. Online influencers’ ability to reach targeted 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. Dubois tackles the impacts of  social media on politics via online political influencers, questioning their political roles, their power, and which voices we pay attention to.

Join the Wonks and War Rooms Podcast for a conversation on the use of artificial intelligence in politics, particularly in the Canadian context.  From deep fakes to detecting disinformation or harassment to voting predictions and sentiment analysis, AI-enabled technologies are playing an increasing role in democratic election processes.

This lecture was part of the Human Rights and Media Lecture Series co-hosted by the Atlantic Human Rights Centre, St. Thomas University's Department of Human Rights, St. Thomas University's Department of Journalism and Communications, the NB Media Co-op and RAVEN. This series features scholars of the media and law, media makers and grassroots activists on how our media landscape is changing. 

Elizabeth Dubois talks about how people’s usage of platforms are affected by switching costs and network effects, as well as behavioural biases, such as confirmation biases. She discusses how these are intensified by some social costs created by the fact that platforms are integrated into people’s social, political and economic lives. Platforms may exploit such behavioural biases to lock users into their ecosystems.

This video was part of the 2021 OECD Competition Open Day.

What role do our technology companies, like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, play in our ability to deal with COVID? What role do these companies play in our democracy today?  Dr. Elizabeth Dubois, 2010-2011 Killam Fellow to American University, explores these questions at the 2020 Killam Virtual Spring Seminar.

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, there has been increased concern about the threat of malicious actors influencing the 2019 Canadian federal election. In an April report, the Communication Security Establishment (CSE) warned that it is “very likely that Canadian voters will encounter some form of foreign cyber interference related to the 2019 federal election.” What does this mean for voters, politicians, and political organizations during this fall’s campaign? What should voters be wary about when reading political news?

Elizabeth Dubois explains bots (machine code) and trolls (humans), and how these technologies impact activism campagins, grassroots activism, and astro-turfing in a democratic context. 

This is an excerpt of the larger Public Policy Forum panel discussion called "Breaking the news: How bots, trolls and other media manipulators threaten our politics".