Funded Research Projects

Megan Boler is the Principal Investigator of a 2005-2008 Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research (SSHRC) Grant titled, “Rethinking Media, Democracy and Citizenship: New Media Practices and Online Digital Dissent after September 11″. She has a new edited collection forthcoming with MIT Press (2008) titled Tactic in Hard Times: Spaces and Practices of New Media, and is one of the PIs on a recently awarded $40,000 grant from the Canadian Council on Learning to fund a Media Literacy Project with Dr. Mark Lipton (Guelph University) and Dr. Kari Dehli (OISE).

Dr. Boler’s SSHRC project examines how new forms of political citizenship are engaged through digital media to create public spaces of dissent. The project examines sites of “digital dissent”, resistance, and civic participation which arise in a epoch marked by the convergence of increased uses of Social Web alongside erosion of civil rights and freedom of press in the wake of the “war on terror.”

Engaging a large team of research assistants, the project focuses on four web-based networks of circulated dissent: (1) MoveOn’s Bushin30Seconds campaign, 150 independently-produced 30 second Quicktime movies that address a range of post 9/11 political concerns; (2) Web-logs that engage political discussion of media representation of U.S. foreign policy, particularly with respect to the invasion of Iraq; (3) Online discussions (threads, blogs, comments posted to blogs) that address Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, with particular focus on Stewart’s 2004 appearance on the CNN talk show Crossfire; and (4) Independently-produced multimedia “viral videos” that address diverse political issues related to U.S. policy. Key research questions include: How are new media being used creatively to create communicative networks for political debate and social activism? What are users’ and producers’ motivations for engaging in online political engagement? Do online participants feel they have a public voice and/or political efficacy? To what extent is/was frustration with mainstream media a motivation to blogging or other forms of digital production?

During Year One, Dr. Boler supervised a team of nine researchers and consultants to analyze the discourses and digital media productions produced across these four sites. The team developed an extensive on-line survey which was administered to 159 users/producers. Analyzed through SPSS, the survey findings complement a recently released 2006 PEW Foundation survey of “bloggers”. In Year Two, the team conducted semi-structured interviews with 40 of the online producers of dissent. During Year Three, Dr. Boler and research assistants are analyzing interview data using HyperResearch software, and presenting findings at national and international conferences as well as publishing research in peer-reviewed journals.