Projects

Canada, like the rest of the world, faces a crisis of sustainable technology and economic transition. As governments develop policy responses, they are in urgent need of empirically informed support from the academic community to integrate leading global scholarship and policy expertise within domestic decision making.

We monitor information incidents that have the potential to mislead the public and disrupt democracy by analyzing their impact on the Canadian information ecosystem. Our reporting assesses the nature and impacts of incidents, while providing valuable insights and lessons learned.

Access to reliable information is integral to democracy. The field of journalism is in the midst of a radical transformation, spurred by changes in both the networked production of news in the digital economy, the evolving norms of media consumption of media content, and the rapidly changing digital economy of news production. The Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy works to better understand this journalism ecosystem, to develop smart public policies that support the practice and production of civic journalism, and to train journalists to engage successfully in this new media ecosystem.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the contours of our shared democratic and social life. But ensuring that AI serves everyone—not just a powerful few—will be a major challenge for policymakers and governments around the world. The Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy works to bring leading research and new experiments in democratic practice to policy, and above all, to embed the public interest into key policy decisions.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the way we work, live, think, and interact. But, while young Canadians are some of the most digitally connected people, they remain largely absent from decision making about this technology. As the Canadian federal government ramps up its AI strategy, we believe that it's essential to have youth voices at the forefront of this conversation – not as an afterthought, but as a guide for the future of AI in Canada. Over the course of eight months, we convened 100 young Canadians across four regional forums in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Halifax to hear from them directly. They learned from experts, deliberated with other young people, and built policy consensus that impacted Canada's legislative and regulatory approaches to AI.

The internet has created enormous social, political, and economic benefits over the past 30 years. However, these benefits have also come at considerable costs. There is growing attention to these issues and increasing regulatory actions around the world. Governments have started to test strategies to govern the digital public sphere, converging on what scholars call a platform governance agenda. While encouraging, the emerging discourse in academia and public policy on platform governance too often remains siloed by topic. Research and policy also remain largely disconnected. In this series, we offer a set of 16 short pieces to address these two issues. This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada Digital Citizen Initiative (DCI) Grant.

The Canadian Commission on Democratic Expression is a three-year initiative that aims to respond to the democratic risks of digital technologies. Each year, the Commission undertakes a six-month program of study and deliberation informed by expert testimony and custom research organized by the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy. Created by the Public Policy Forum and funded by the Government of Canada and the McConnell Foundation, the Commission is composed of a small group of eminent Canadians appointed annually to serve as Commissioners. It is also supported by national Citizens' Assemblies led by MASS LBP, a Canadian organization that designs deliberative processes.

A joint initiative of the Public Policy Forum and the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University, the Digital Democracy Project monitored Canada’s digital information ecosystem during the 2019 federal election. Through social media monitoring and national surveys it produced a series of research memos during the campaign, a final report on the resilience of Canada’s information ecosystem, and the Digital Ecosystem Research Challenge. It was the direct precursor to the Media Ecosystem Observatory.