Prepare for an intriguing journey in Season 6 of Wonks & War Rooms! Join Elizabeth Dubois as she unravels the dynamics of personal influence in politics, especially as it evolves with new technologies. In this episode Elizabeth talks about her experience working in politics and how it has pushed her to question what counts as personal influence and what roles technology plays in political communication.

She also gives a peak at what to expect this season. 

New episodes drop Wednesday mornings.

Additional Resources:

• Elizabeth highlights how new technologies are integrated into campaign strategies.
• Elizabeth summarizes the two step flow hypothesis, published by Katz and Lazarsfeld in the 1950s. They hypothesized that most people rely on their social circle to help interpret and filter information. 
  • For more info, see our previous episode from Season 1: The Two-Step Flow and Opinion Leaders with Nick Switalski 
• Elizabeth highlights key topics within personal influence, such as targeted communications using personal data and news influencers.  
• Elizabeth links the one-step flow of communication to the influence of personalized messages based on data collection.
• Elizabeth highlights our new relationships with our media environment.
• Elizabeth gives an overview of persuasion and how it works, through methods such as reciprocation. 
• Next, Elizabeth recalls a period of micro-targeting using massive amounts of personal data, before highlighting the use of social networks for peer-to-peer communications, like relational campaigning
• Finally, Elizabeth forecasts an uptake in synthetic content in future campaigning.

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French.