The Media Ecosystem Observatory (MEO) is a research initiative co-led by Professor Taylor Owen. The objective of MEO is to develop an evidence-based model for information ecosystem health, in order to both better understand the online harms and digital threats to democracy, and to safeguard against it.
The work is grounded in the premise that the integrity of the public sphere is under strain. On the surface, the most troubling manifestations are of isolated harms or “bad actors”: online forms of hate speech, harassment, “fake news”, and organized disinformation campaigns by foreign operators. But beneath these symptoms are structural issues which compromise the integrity of our information infrastructure: automation of control over information curation for purposes of attention maximization; erosion of public norms of source credibility in news media; fragmentation of media audiences that separates the polity from a common, fact-based public debate; and an accelerated tribalism that undermines democratic institutions.
The project is actively developing, trialling, and refining methods for capturing these dynamics, and most importantly, for assessing the impact that they have on the behaviour of citizens and ultimately the health of our democracy. This addresses a gap in the research community to expand its monitoring and analysis of targeted disinformation campaigns towards a broader framework that captures the health of the wider information ecosystem.
Visit the Observatory's website
Media Ecosystem Observatory News
Understanding vaccine hesitancy in Canada: attitudes, beliefs, and the information ecosystem
Published: 5 Jan 2021A Rare Moment of Cross-Partisan Consensus: Elite and Public Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada | Canadian Journal of Political Science
Published: 21 May 2020The Causes and Consequences of COVID-19 Misperceptions: Understanding the Role of News and Social Media | OSF Preprints
Published: 21 May 2020Anti-intellectualism and Information Preferences during the COVID-19 Pandemic | OSF Preprints
Published: 21 May 2020Prospective Economic Costs Undermine Expectations of Social Distancing | OSF Preprints
Published: 21 May 2020
Media Ecosystem Observatory

To learn more about the project, contact the researchers, and send inquiries, visit the project's website.