Andrew J.A. Mattan is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University, under the supervision of Dr. William Cross. His dissertation, titled “Tweets From the Locals: An Analysis of the Local Digital Campaign in the 2021 Canadian Federal Election,” will broadly examine how political actors at the local level are using social media. The project seeks to determine how important social media—and, within that, Twitter—was to the campaign of local actors. It will explore why local actors choose Twitter and what they intended to accomplish through its use. Beyond the role and overall importance of social media to the campaign, the project is also interested in how social media impacts the local level’s relationship with the center. Indeed, the study will make theoretical contributions in the areas of digital politics, personalism, and party organisation.
Andrew’s research interests include parties, elections, and digital politics. His major research paper, “Tweeting Pass the Media: An Analysis of Visual Image Management on Twitter During the 2018 Ontario Provincial Election,” explored how provincial leaders used photo-based tweets to frame and portray themselves during the digital campaign. His work has been published in the American Review of Canadian Studies and the Canadian Journal of Political Science. He also has a co-authored chapter examining Facebook advertising by parties in The Canadian Federal Election of 2021, edited by Pammett & Dornan.
Andrew has received a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice and Public Policy and a Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Guelph. He has been awarded the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship for both his masters and doctoral research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). He was the runner up in the Three Minute Thesis competition at the 2019 annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association. He also was recently awarded the J. James Mackie Endowment for Graduate Scholarship in Human-Technology Interaction.