Ethan Zuckerman, a prominent media scholar, has been named the Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada in the Digital Public Sphere at McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy. Coming from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and recognized by Foreign Policy magazine as a top global thinker, his research focuses on digital cosmopolitanism, including how large technology platforms shape public discourse, democratic participation, and online civic spaces. His work contributes to evidence-based digital policy, transparent AI governance, and platform accountability.
Zuckerman is one of six Eddie Goldenberg Research Chairs appointed to McGill, part of the Government of Canada’s $1 billion national initiative to attract top-tier researchers in areas of strategic priority to Canada.
“The Max Bell School is delighted and honoured to welcome Ethan Zuckerman as a world-class researcher and educator on the challenges posed by AI and our evolving information ecosystem,” says Max Bell School director Jennifer Welsh. “His innovative research and direct connection to the policies that are shaping how people around the world engage in the digital sphere will help Max Bell – and McGill – to build a truly global center of excellence in this critical policy domain."
As Research Chair in the Digital Public Sphere, Zuckerman will be working closely within Max Bell at the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy alongside director Taylor Owen. “For the past 30 years, Ethan has been one of our most creative researchers and important chroniclers of how digital technologies were reshaping society,” Owen said. “As we head into a new period of rapid transformation, this time driven by AI, we are incredibly fortunate to have him join our research and initiatives at the Centre, at Max Bell, and at McGill.”
“I’m thrilled to be joining a brilliant team at McGill’s Max Bell School, which has been doing groundbreaking work on democracy and the digital public sphere for years,” Zuckerman said. “My work interrogates the power of US and Chinese tech platforms—social media, search and AI companies—to shape social and political dialogues in democracies around the world. Canada’s willingness to support research that challenges commercial and political threats to democracy is deeply necessary at a moment where authoritarianism is on the rise around the globe.”
Zuckerman’s research focuses on the use of media as a tool for social change, alternative business and governance models for the internet, and linguistic and cultural representation in digital spaces. He is the author of Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them (2021) and Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (2013) and The Field Guide to Social Media (2026) with Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci. With Rebecca MacKinnon, Zuckerman co-founded the international blogging community Global Voices, which showcases news and opinions from citizen media in more than 150 nations and 30 languages, publishing editions in 20 languages. Previously, Zuckerman directed the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass Amherst (2020-2027) and the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab (2011-2020). In 2000, Zuckerman founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer organization that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. Previously, he helped found Tripod.com, one of the web’s first «personal publishing» sites.
Zuckerman’s appointment at the Max Bell School begins in 2027.
McGill will be recruiting six early career researchers under the Canada Impact+ Emerging Leaders program.
A second phase of Eddie Goldenberg Research Chairs will be announced in the coming months.
