Taylor Owen is the Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications, the founding director of The Center for Media, Technology and Democracy, and an Associate Professor in the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. He is the host of the Big Tech podcast, a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation, a Fellow at the Public Policy Forum, and sits on the Governing Council of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). He was previously an Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia and the Research Director of Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia School of Journalism. His Doctorate is from the University of Oxford and he has been a Trudeau and Banting scholar, an Action Canada Fellow and received the 2016 Public Policy Forum Emerging Leader award. He is the author of Disruptive Power: The Crisis of the State in the Digital Age (Oxford University Press, 2015) and the co-editor of The World Won’t Wait: Why Canada Needs to Rethink its Foreign Policies (University of Toronto Press, 2015) and Journalism After Snowden: The Future of the Free Press in the Surveillance State (Columbia University Press, 2016). His forthcoming book with Emily Bell will be published by Yale University Press in 2021. His work focuses on the intersection of media, technology and public policy and can be found at www.taylorowen.com and @taylor_owen.
Course offered:
Core Policy Course: Information and Media Literacy
Degrees:
DPhil, Oxford University (International Relations, Geography)
MA, The University of British Columbia (Geography)
BA, Bishop's University
Taylor Owen on media, technology, and democracy
Curbing Online Harms | CBC Radio
Published: 23 Jun 2022Stronger government regulation of social media companies could improve free speech, says expert | CBC Radio
Published: 2 May 2022Whose speech will Elon Musk’s Twitter be protecting, exactly? | Globe and Mail
Published: 28 Apr 2022New podcast brings leading research on kids and tech to the mainstream
Published: 10 Mar 2022How to protect children from Big Tech's harms | The National Post
Published: 16 Nov 2021Taylor Owen on What the Latest Facebook Revelations Mean for Canada’s Online Harms Legislative Plans | The Law Bytes Podcast
Published: 21 Oct 2021We have the regulatory tools we need to fix Facebook | Globe and Mail
Published: 15 Oct 2021How to fix Facebook | Globe and Mail
Published: 6 Oct 2021In the digital age, who has a right to be anonymous and whose information has a right to be secure? | The Globe and Mail
Published: 16 Aug 2021Canada shouldn’t turn away from the difficult task of regulating online speech | The Globe and Mail
Published: 28 Jun 2021

In conversation with Taylor Owen
Taylor Owen sat down with the McGill Reporter to discuss media, technology, public policy and his appointment to the Max Bell School of Public Policy in January 2019.

Digital Democracy Project
The Digital Democracy Project, co-led by Max Bell School Professor Taylor Owen, studied the media ecosystem in the run-up to and during Canada’s October 2019 federal election.