Incoming post-doctoral fellow receives university-wide public engagement award at McGill

Mathieu Lavigne, an incoming Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellow in the Program in Quantitative Social Science (QSS), is the winner of the 2023 Principal's Prize for Public Engagement through Media, awarded at McGill University to recognize the outstanding contributions of researchers who share their knowledge with the media and the public. In selecting Mathieu as the prizewinner among graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, the jury emphasized his "use of social and traditional media to share information on the role of misinformation in the Freedom Convoy and both the Ontario and Quebec elections, and his involvement in consultations with Elections Quebec to help develop their strategy to combat misinformation."

Mathieu Lavigne has been the Director of the 2022 Quebec Election Misinformation Project, and his work is at the intersection of political communication and political behavior, with a focus on misinformation, polarization, trust in elections, and the health of our information ecosystem. In the upcoming academic year, he will be working with Professor Brendan Nyhan on misinformation research.