Trust, Polarization, and Disinformation: What the Pandemic is Revealing

• In-person event

The talk will examine how the pandemic has deepened polarization along partisan and social class lines . It will map out the increasingly tight relationship between trust, disinformation and polarization . We will show that trust and social cohesion actually rose in the early stages of the campaign but have now eclipsed the extremely high levels of polarization in place before the pandemic. We will connect this to authoritarian or what we prefer to call ‘ordered” populism. Finally, we will make some observations about what all of this might mean for our post-pandemic society.

Frank L. Graves is one of Canada’s leading public opinion, social policy and public policy experts as well as being one of its leading applied social researchers. Under the leadership of Mr. Graves, EKOS has earned a reputation for creative and rigorous research in the areas of public policy, social policy and program evaluation and as a leader in innovative survey techniques and methodology. During his career he has directed hundreds of large scale studies of Canadian attitudes to a vast array of issues. Mr. Graves is a Fellow of the Canadian Research Insights Council (CRIC) and an Honorary Fellow with the Calgary School of Public Policy. Mr. Graves sits on the Advisory Board of the Sprott School of Business and is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University. Mr. Graves also sits on the Vaccine Confidence Task Force Group.

This talk is geared towards our alumni, current students, staff, faculty and contract instructors. As part of our current efforts to draw more relationships between our current Department and the many students who have graduated from one of our programs, we are pleased to present this talk by the head of EKOS that speaks directly to current political and economic dynamics in Canada more broadly and in our own city. This is the first of what we hope will be an annual event generally aimed towards those who have ties with our Sociology and Anthropology department.