Digital Traces News Today

In this empirical study, we collected about 6.8 million tweets that mentioned “fake news”, and we extracted references to climate change and/or global warming to understand the public discourses around these two issues. Using a mixed method, the study’s findings show that there is a clear politically polarized discussion on climate change. We found that the majority of tweets focus on the U.S. context though references to other Western coutnries are often made. The anti-Liberal or anti-Dem...

Dr. Brian McQuinn is an Assistant Professor at the University of Regina and co-founder of the Digital Traces of Conflict Project (tracesofconflict.ca). McQuinn co-edited The Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath (Oxford University Press). He has two decades of experience as a researcher and humanitarian worker in a dozen conflicts. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford after completing ethnographic fieldwork with insurgents in the 2011 uprising in Libya. His research was publish...

Published 12 April 2021 The Islamic State is often credited with pioneering the use of social media in conflict, having created a global brand that drew between 20,000 and 40,000 volunteers from at least 85 countries. Social media served as a key recruiting tool, source of fundraising, and platform for disseminating graphic propaganda to a global audience. Laura Courchesne and Brian McQuinn write that the Islamic State perfected tactics and strategies already widely used by hundreds of other ar...