#StratComPodcast / S3E5: Society and digital world: what shapes what? (with Dr Jean-Christophe Boucher)

Nowadays decision-making process on every level is heavily affected by the digital world and social media in particular. While social media can serve to amplify democratic processes and provide a platform that allows for voices to be heard, the lack of control over hectic processes on various platforms gives malicious actors a space and audience to manipulate with. Luckily, any activity in the digital space leaves a trace in the form of a digital footprint, and applied machine learning comes in handy to sort out this massive amount of data. What researchers have learned about the development of society so far? Are we as a society shaping the digital world or digital world shape us?
 
During the Riga StratCom Dialogue 2022 conference this May, #StratComPodcast host Tomas Pildegovičs sat down with Dr. Jean-Christophe Boucher, who is an Assistant Professor at the School of Public Policy and the department of political science at the University of Calgary. At present, his research is focused on applied machine learning to understand how the digital world shapes our society, civil-military relations in Canada, as well as vaccine hesitancy on social media with an aim to develop better communications strategies and tools to increase vaccine uptake.