Dr. Shelley Boulianne

Dr. Shelley Boulianne is the R. Klein Chair (Full Professor) in Communication Studies at Mount Royal University (Canada). She earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has held professor positions in sociology at MacEwan University (Canada), in politics at the Université Catholique de Lille (France), and in politics and international relations at the University of Southampton (UK). She has completed research fellowships at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society (Germany) and the Digital Democracy Center at the University of Southern Denmark. She is the North American editor at Information, Communication & Society (ICS) and an Associate Editor at Social Science Computer Review (SSCR). She is the program chair/section chair-elect for the Information Technology & Politics section of the American Political Science Association. 

She studies the global dynamics of digital media use for citizen engagement in civic and political life. Specifically, she studies digital media use (news consumption, social networking) to motivate civic and political participation, such as volunteering, marching, boycotting, and petitioning. She recently wrote a book about the role of social media in political consumerism and is writing another book about marches and demonstrations; both books are under contract with Cambridge University Press. Much of her published work has involved cross-national surveys (2017, 2019, 2021, 2023, and 2025). She has published a series of highly cited meta-analyses on the topics of digital media use, political behaviour, and public opinion. In June 2025, she was awarded a SSHRC grant to study the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in meta-analysis to inform public policies about information and communication technologies (ICTs).  She has published 65+ peer-reviewed journal articles.