Daniel Kreiss
Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada in Democratic Communication
Dr. Daniel Kreiss is a leading scholar whose research serves the public interest by examining how digital technologies shape political communication, further and undermine public discourse, and threaten the resilience of Western democracies.
His work spans the influence of social media policies on US national politics to research conducted with exceptional access to the companies shaping today’s technology platforms. By bringing his findings to policymakers, industry leaders and the public, Dr. Kreiss’s work has had a transformative impact on the field of political communication.
What is the main challenge your Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada program is addressing, and how are you approaching it?
Democracies around the world face increasing threats to their institutions, norms and practices. These dynamics are facilitated by significant changes in media and communication technologies. However, our understanding of the role of media and communication in democratic backsliding — the transition from democracy toward authoritarianism — is currently limited.
In political science, non-state commercial media and broad guarantees of freedom of expression are seen as cornerstones of democracy, but a growing body of literature from communication and media studies shows that these very same media and technologies are weaponized by actors using liberal freedoms to sew disinformation, mobilize backlash and cause polarization.
Utilizing social scientific methods, and through a comparative lens, my research program will involve global case study approaches. It will wed the political science focus on institutions with the communication field’s understanding of media to show how the two interact in ways that can advance both backsliding and resilience.
What is the main thing you would like to achieve as an Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada, and what are the potential impacts of your work?
To have accountability, democracies need broadly shared consensus on legitimate knowledge, as well as knowledge-producing institutions and practices that also account for their historical exclusions. Robust democracies need broad shared identities, and the narratives that create them. Only then can we go beyond nationalist appeals and further the ends of multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy premised on justice.
Through this program we will continue to make UBC into a global hub of research on media and democracy. Most importantly, we will convene and disseminate knowledge about backsliding and successful cases of resilience, reaching beyond western democracies to the Global South.
What is your primary motivation behind the research you do? What drew you to this work?
I do research on the relationship between political communication and democracy, with a particular focus on elections. This especially includes studying the relationship between media, platforms, and platform companies, in shaping politics in countries around the world. I do this work because democracies around the world are at a moment of existential crisis. I believe we are at an urgent moment for thinking through the media we need to knit our democratic societies back together. Our democracies depend on solidarity, trust, mutual respect, reasoned debate and decision-making, accountability and checks on power.
What drew you to UBC to do this work, and what are you most looking forward to about coming here?
I believe deeply in the power of universities and young people to address the democratic crisis. And, I believe deeply in the power of public education and research universities, which embody the commitment of a democratic nation to its people. I am most looking forward to joining and working with the well-established centres, institutes and schools at UBC that are working in complementary areas. The broad array of UBC expertise around democracy and media is unparalleled, and will enable me to build my research program through complementary forms of expertise.
I am excited about joining the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, with its world-leading journalism research and education and academic programs focused on creating more inclusive democratic social life. I am excited about partnering with the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, which has globally recognized expertise in the relationship between platforms, media and democracy. I am also looking forward to drawing on the substantive expertise of faculty affiliated with centres such as the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies around democratic inclusion, equality and cultural memory — all central to how we build solidaristic democratic identities and narratives.
What does it mean to you to have been appointed as an Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada, and how is it going to help you advance your already internationally recognized research?
The Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada will provide transformative support for my research around the central role that political communication and media play in creating stronger democratic publics, institutions and forms of accountability. The chair offers a tremendous investment in social scientific research on democracy and will enable me to build a team of researchers focused on the pressing questions of our time that face democracies around the world. This will include work conducted at UBC and across Canada, as well as comparative research with research teams around the world.
