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Tanner Mirrlees
PhD

Associate Professor

Undergraduate Program Director

Communication and Digital Media Studies

Dr. Mirrlees' research focuses on: the global creative and entertainment industries; social media platforms, politics and cultural policy; the transformation of work and labour in the digital age; persuasion, public relations, public diplomacy and propaganda; war, new media & conflict; the Internet and society; digital media activism; and, the social shaping of technology.

Languages
English

Tanner is available for:
  • Graduate student research supervision
  • Media inquiries
  • Partnerships

tanner.mirrlees@ontariotechu.ca
905.721.8668 ext. 6807


Social media

Areas of expertise


  • PhD - Communication and Culture York University and Toronto Metropolitan University 2008
  • MA - English and Theatre Studies University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario 2002
  • BA - English and Theatre Studies (Honours) University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario 2001
Papers presented at conferences
  • The US and China’s Media and Digital Tech Industries Go Global: A Rivalry in the New Digital Media Imperialism? International Association of Media and Communication Research (Political Economy Section), Tsinghua University Beijing and Xi’an Jiaotong - Liverpool University, July 11-15, 2022.
  • The Freedom Convoy’s “Energy Politics”: Communicating Carbon Capitalism. Canadian Communication Association, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, May 17-20, 2022.
  • GAFAM’s Global-Local “Power”: A Structural and Relational Approach. International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) – Political Economy Section, Nairobi, July 11-15, 2021.
  • Unmasking GAFAM’s Power: Marx and Foucault Go to Silicon Valley. UDC 2021: Masking the Crisis - Social Movements, Street Politics and the Political Process, June 23-25, 2021.
  • Sanctioning China’s Tech Industry to “Secure” Silicon Valley’s Global Dominance. Canadian Communication Association, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, June 1-4, 2021.
  • Privatizing Hate Speech Governance on Social Media Platforms: Outsourcing, Downloading and Automating Hate Content Moderation. Communication and Cultural Policy in the Age of the Platform, Communication Governance
  • Observatory and the Centre for Networked Media and Performance, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, May 7, 2021.
  • “Marveling” the World with Hollywood Militainment: The U.S. Air Force and Captain Marvel Go Higher, Further, Faster, More! International Studies Association (ISA), Las Vegas (ZOOM), April 8, 2021.
  • Social Media, for Empire’s Ends: Digital Free Trade, Platform Surveillance, Network Propaganda, and Cyber-Warfare. Ends of Media Symposium, University of Toronto, November 15, 2019.
  • Mainstreaming White Supremacy via YouTube Country Music Videos: The Digital Revival of “Johnny Rebel.” Paper presented for British Society of Criminology Conference 2019, Public Criminologies: Community, Conflict and Justice, Lincoln, U.K., July 3-5, 2019.
  • Not (Yet) The Chinese Century: The Global Endurance of the US Cultural Industries. Paper presented for The Arts in Society Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, June 21st, 2019.
  • The Political Economy of the Cultural Industries, in Canada. Paper presented for the Canadian Political Science Association, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Vancouver, BC, June 5, 2019.
  • Canadian TV Goes Global: Within and Beyond Cultural Imperialism. Paper presented for the International Communication Association 69th annual conference, Blue Sky Workshop: Communication Beyond Boundaries in World Entertainment Media, Washington Hilton Hotel, Washington, May 25, 2019.
  • Contextualizing Dr. Jordan Peterson’s ‘Cultural Marxism’: A Blue Pill for the Alt-Right. Paper/video presented for Responding to Jordan Peterson: An Intervention in Lieu of a Debate, Boise State University, October, 2018.
  • Doxxing, Trolling and Swarming the Alt-Right: A Digital United Front against Platform Fascism? Paper presented for Rethinking United Fronts and the Far Right, York University, July 20-21, 2018.
  • The Alt-Right’s “Cultural Marxism”: A Conspiracy Theory for White Nationalist Hate. Paper presented for UDC, Media, Resistance, and Justice: The Fight for Humanity, Loyola University, Chicago, IL, May 10-13, 2018.
  • The US Department of Defense as a Cultural Policy Agency. Paper presented for Canadian Communication Association, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Ontario, May 27-June 2, 2017.
  • Social Media Populism in the Service of Authoritarianism. Paper presented for Society for Socialist Studies, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Ontario, May 27-June 2, 2017.
  • The MOOC: Rhetoric, Political Economy and the value of Technological Citizenship. Paper presented for Higher Education in Transformation (HEIT) conference, Â鶹´«Ã½ University, Oshawa, Ontario, November 4, 2016.
  • Teaching to/About Work in the Communication Industries. Paper presented for International Communication Association, Fukuoka, Japan, June 9-13, 2016.
  • Tracking Emergent Digital Life Inventions. Paper presented for the Canadian Society for Study of Rhetoric, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, May 31-June 2, 2016.
  • Reality TV’s Unpaid Interns: Hope Labour. Paper presented at Historical Materialism, York University, Toronto, Ontario, May 13-16, 2016.
  • What is the ‘Media’ of Empire? Paper presented at “What is Media? Conference,” Portland, Oregon, April 14-17, 2016.
  • Transforming Transformers: How the DOD Communicates through Global Hollywood. Paper presented for the Popular Culture Working Group, International Association of Media and Communication Research, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, July 12-16, 2015.
  • Revisiting Herbert I. Schiller: Communication and American Empire Today. Paper presented for the Political Economy of Communication Section, International Association of Media and Communication Research, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, July 12-16, 2015.
  • Stuart Hall, Hegemony and Media 2.0. Paper presented for the Society for Socialist Studies, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, May 30-June 5, 2015.
  • Speculative Policy-making and Science fiction: Elysium as a Critical Dystopia. Paper presented for the Canadian Communication Association, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, May 30-June 5, 2015.
  • Reality TV’s Low to Now Wage Workforce. Paper presented for the Alternate Routes Conference: Labour Pains/Capital Gains - The Paradox of Low-Wage, No-Wage Work, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Ontario, March 27, 2015.
  • The Canadian Army’s YouTube Channel and Soldier-Generated Content. Paper presented for the Canadian Communication Association, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, May 24-30, 2014.
  • Hollywood, the Financial Crisis and the End of the World. Paper presented for Historical Materialism, York University, Toronto, Ontario, May 8-11, 2014.
  • Technology in the Classroom: Friend or Foe? The Pros and Cons of Teaching with Technology. Paper presented for Rethinking Higher Ed: Beyond the Buzzwords, Toronto, November 7-8, 2013.
  • DOD Censorship of Medal of Honour: Operation Anaconda. Paper presented for UDC/Project Censored Joint Conference, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, November 1-3, 2013.
  • Victim of U.S. Media Imperialism or Secondary Imperial Media Power? Canadian Media Conglomerates Go Global. Paper presented for the Political Economy Section, International Association for Media and Communication Research, Dublin, Ireland, June 25-29, 2013.
  • xXx as Soft Power: Global Hollywood and American Empire. Paper presented for Historical Materialism, York University, Toronto, Ontario, May 13-16, 2010.
Invited presentations
  • Social Wellness, Society and Social Media. SHAD Canada (Â鶹´«Ã½ University), July 7, 2022.
  • Rise of the Far-Right: Technologies of Recruitment and Mobilization book launch roundtable. With Noell Brett, Luc Cousineau, Melody Devries, Andrey Kasimov, Marc Tuters, and Rob Watts. Canadian Communication Association, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, May 17-20, 2022.
  • Right-Wing Extremism and Islamophobia on Twitter: #RemoveKebab. Transnational Right-Wing Extremism and Digital Disinformation Webinar series. The Intersectionality Research Hub (Concordia University), the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism (Â鶹´«Ã½ University), and the Institute of Islamic Studies (University of Toronto), April 1, 2022.
  • The Far Right and Online Hate Incidents: Islamophobia on Twitter. Hate in the Pandemic Inquiry, British Columbia’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner (BCOHRC), April 1, 2022.
  • How GAFAM Got into Hate Content Moderation: Exporting an American Way of Living, with Hate Speech. Hating on Social Media Symposium. Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism (CHBE) (Â鶹´«Ã½ University, Oshawa), February 7, 2022.
  • Media Imperialism: An Introduction. School of Communication and Information (Rutgers University, New Jersey), February 2, 2022.
  • Alt/Right, Alt/Media: Encountering the alt-rights in Canada: Roundtable with Greg Elmer, Ganaele Langlois, Fenwick McKelvey, Steve Neville, Melody Devries, Anthony Burton, Marc Tuters, Ahmed Al-Rawi and Sabrina Ward. Infoscape Lab/Canadian Journal of Communication, December 3, 2021.
  • The ‘Mythical Muslim’ Stereotype in Global War on Terror Video Games. Roundtable on Racial Representation in Video Games, with Kishonna L. Gray, Nicolas Guérin and Taha Ibaid. College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (Justice Studies) (Arizona State University, Arizona), December 2, 2021.
  • Digital Futures of Work: Roundtable (Cardiff University, United Kingdom), November 16, 2021 (participant).
  • GAFAM’s Power: Political Economy and Governmentality in Digital Capitalism. Department of Mass Communication & Journalism (St. Pious X Degree & PG College for Women, Hyderbad, India), July 28, 2021.
  • War Games, Islamophobia, and the Geopolitics of Empire. Transnational Feminism in a Time of Digital Islamophobia. Islamophobia Studies Center (University of California, Berkeley) and the Intersectionality Research Hub (Concordia University, Montreal), May 18, 2021.
  • EdTech Inc. University of Toronto – St. Michael’s College, Media and Book Studies, Zoom, December 9, 2020.
  • Hollywood Movie Magic and Military PR. Beyond the Walls: Virtual Public Lecture Series. Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at Â鶹´«Ã½ University and Oshawa Public Library, June 18, 2020.
  • Social Media in Society: A Primer. Connection Café, Â鶹´«Ã½ University, ZOOM, October 22, 2020.
  • GAFAM’s EdTech Gameplan. Platformizing, Automating and Globalizing Higher Education in a Digital Age. Carleton University, School of Journalism and Communication, Ottawa, Ontario, March 10, 2020.
  • The Alt-Right’s Authoritarian Populism (and What We Can Do to Counter It). Power of Many: 15th Biennial Convention of the Ontario Federation of Labour Ontario Federation Labour, Sheraton Hotel, Toronto, Ontario. November 28th, 2019.
  • A Political Economy of the Cultural Industries, in Canada (book launch of Change and Continuity: Canadian Political Economy in the New Millennium, edited by Leah Vosko, Mark Thomas, Carlo Fanelli and Olena Lyubchenko). York University, Ontario, October 23, 2019.
  • The Alt-Right’s Threat to Democracy (and What We Can Do to Counter it). Third Age Learning, Lakehead University, Orillia, Ontario, October 16, 2019.
  • For whom EdTech matters: Silicon Valley’s higher education ‘massage.’ For Whom the Medium Matters. McLuhan Centre Annual Pecha Kucha, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, September 15, 2019.
  • The Digital Revolution and its Discontents. Day 2 - Keynote for Rebuild+, Toronto, Ontario, April 24, 2019.
  • Mediated Spaces of Empire: A Cognitive Map. Keynote for Intersections 2018: [Re]claiming Space. Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Ontario, March 9, 2018.
  • Ubiquitous Media War: A New Paradigm? Decimal Lab Speakers Series: An Evening of Technocultural Questions, Center for Social Innovation, Toronto, Ontario, March 1, 2018.
  • The Canadian Cultural Industries @150: Hollywood’s Runaway Production to Ontario. Rotary Club of Oshawa, Oshawa, Ontario, November 20, 2017.
  • Writers’ Rights. Culture/Work/Resistance, McLuhan Centre, University of Toronto, Ontario, May 30, 2017.
  • Information Super-Abundance: Is Better? #OwnYourEd Conference, Clarington Secondary School, Bowmanville, Ontario, May 24th, 2017.
  • The Politics of Ken Loach’s Bread and Roses (2000): Organizing Immigrant Workers in the Age of Trump’s Racist Whitelash. Filmsocial, Eative FilmCafe, Toronto, Ontario, April 6, 2017.
  • From Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home (1966) to I, Daniel Blake (2016): Poverty and the Welfare State, Then and Now. Filmsocial, Eative FilmCafe, Toronto, Ontario, March 23, 2017.
  • The Political Economy of Labour in the Canadian Cultural Industries. Paper presented for Global Labour Research Centre Speakers Series, York University, Toronto, Ontario, March 14, 2017.
  • Social Sciences and Humanities in the 21st century Economy. Â鶹´«Ã½ University, Oshawa, Ontario, November 1, 2014.
  • Teaching (to) Labour in the Creative Industry: A Pedagogy of the Precariat? Labour in Circulation: Perspectives from Communication and Cultural Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, April 25, 2014.
  • Political Communication 2.0. Paper presented for Engage: Community Connections: Speakers Series, Â鶹´«Ã½ University, Oshawa, Ontario, November 20, 2013.
  • Global Entertainment Media. Paper presented for Facultad de Comunicación, Universidad de La Sabana, Chía, Colombia, February 4, 2014.
  • Racism and Media Stereotypes. Paper presented for Â鶹´«Ã½ University Caribbean Students Association public debate: “Racial Bias in the Media,” Oshawa, Ontario, 2013.
Single-authored books
  • 2016. Hearts and Mines: The U.S. Empire’s Culture Industry. Vancouver, B.C.: University of British Columbia Press
    (UBCP)/Chicago: University of Chicago Press (320 pages).
  • 2013. Global Entertainment Media: Between Cultural Imperialism and Cultural Globalization. New York: Routledge (300 pages).
Co-authored books
  • 2019. EdTech, Inc.: Selling, Automating, and Globalizing Higher Education in a Digital Age. New York: Routledge (210 pages).
Co-edited Books
  • Press (455 pages).
Co-edited journals (special issues)
  • 2014. Watching, Playing and Resisting the War Society. Democratic Communiqué 26(2): 1-186.
  • 2015. A Military-Industrial Communications-Complex in Canada? Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition 8(1): 1-115.
Journal articles
  • 2021. #Remove Kebab: The Far Right and Islamophobic Hate Propaganda on Twitter. Canadian Journal of
  • Communication. 46(4), 853–874.
  • 2021. The Virtual Killing of Muslims: Digital War Games, Islamophobia, and the Global War on Terror. Islamophobia
  • Studies Journal. 6(1): 33-51
  • 2020. Getting at GAFAM’s ‘Power’ in Society: A Structural-Relational Framework. Heliotrope.
  • 2019. Power, Privilege and Resistance in the Digital Age. The Monitor (May/June): 18-23.
  • 2019. The Alt-Right’s Platformization of Fascism and a New Left’s Digital United Front. Democratic Communiqué. 28 (2): 28-46.
  • 2019. The Dangers of Porous Borders: The Trump Effect in Canada? Journal of Hate Studies (Special Issue: Interrogating the Place of Hate in the 2016 Presidential Campaign). 14(1): 101-123.
  • 2018. Global Hollywood: An Entertainment Imperium, by Integration. Cineaction. 99(1).
  • 2018. The Alt-Right’s ‘Cultural Marxism’: A Political Instrument of Intersectional Hate. Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice. 39(1): 49-69.
  • 2017. The DoD’s Cultural Policy: Militarizing the Cultural Industries. Communication + 1 (Media: Culture: Policy) 1 (3): 1-26.
  • 2017. Transforming Transformers: The DOD-Hollywood Complex. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 76 (2): 405-34.
  • 2017. Exoskeletons, Transhumanism, and Culture: Performing Superhuman Feats. IEEE Technology and Society 36 (1): 37-45.
  • 2017. Elysium as a Critical Dystopia. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 12(3): 305-22.
  • 2016. Reality TV’s Low Wage and No Wage Work. Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research 27 (1): 187- 212.
  • 2016. U.S. Empire and Communications, Today: Revisiting Herbert I. Schiller. Political Economy of Communication 3(2): 3-27.
  • 2015. Reality TV’s Embrace of the Intern. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 13(2): 404-22.
  • 2015. The Canadian Armed Forces “YouTube War.” Global Media Journal – Canadian Edition 8(1): 71-93.
  • 2015. A Critique of the Millennial: A Retreat From and Return to Class. Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research 26 (1): 277-303.
  • 2015. Hollywood’s Uncritical Dystopias. Cineaction 94(1): 5-12.
  • 2014. Medal of Honour Operation Anaconda: Playing the War in Afghanistan. Democratic Communiqué (Special Issue: Watching, Playing and Resisting the War Society) 26(2): 84-106.
  • 2014. How to Read Iron Man: the Economics, Politics and Ideology of an Imperial Film Commodity. Cineaction 92(1): 4- 11.
  • 2009. Digital Militainment by Design: Playing SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 5(3): 161-181.
  • 2005. Cognitive Mapping, or the Resistant Element in the Work of Fredric Jameson. Cultural Logic 1(1).
Book chapters
  • 2023 (forthcoming). Globalization. Energized: Keywords for a New Politics of Energy and Environment, edited by Imre Szeman and Jennifer Wenzel. Morgantown, VW: West Virginia University Press (“Energy and Society” series).
  • 2023 (forthcoming). A New Cultural Imperialist Rivalry? A Global Political Economy of Communication, for neither Washington nor Beijing. Global Media Trajectories: Industries, Politics, and Cultures, edited by Lee Artz. New York: Routledge.
  • 2022. Alt-Right. Shades of Deviance, edited by Rowland Atkinson and Tammy Ayers. New York: Routledge.
  • 2022. The Trump Presidency and the Alt-Right. Far-Right Extremism in North America, edited by Barbara Perry, Jeff Gruenwald and Ryan Scrivens, 67-96. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
  • 2021. Sanctioning China’s Tech Industry to “Secure” Silicon Valley’s Global Dominance. Sanctions as War, edited by Immanuel Ness and Stuart Davies. Leiden: Brill Press.
  • 2021. Resisting the far Right in Racial Capitalism. Rise of the Far-Right: Technologies of Recruitment and Mobilization, edited by Melody Devries, Judith Bessant and Rob Watts. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • 2021. GAFAM and Hate Content Moderation: Deplatforming and Deleting the Alt-Right. Media and Law: Between Free Speech and Censorship, edited by Mathieu Deflem and Derek M.D. Silva. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing.
  • 2021. “Marveling” the World with Hollywood Militainment: The U.S. Air Force and Captain Marvel Go Higher! Further! Faster! In The Routledge Handbook of Digital Media and Globalization, edited by Dal Yong Jin. New York: Routledge.
  • 2020. Socialists on Social Media Platforms: Communicating Within and Against Digital Capitalism, in Beyond Digital Capitalism: Socialist Register 2021, edited by Leo Panitch and Greg Albo. New York: Monthly Review Press.
  • 2020. Canadian Military Public Affairs and Recruitment in an Age of Social Media Platforms. Propaganda and Public Relations in Military Recruitment: Promoting Military Service in the 20th and 21st Centuries, edited by Brendan Maarten and Tom Bivins. New York: Routledge.
  • 2020. Social Media. Reimagining Communication: Mediation (Volume 1), edited by Michael Filimowicz and Veronika Tzankova. New York: Routledge.
  • 2020. Global Culture. Reimagining Communication: Meaning (Volume 4), edited by Michael Filimowicz and Veronika Tzankova. New York: Routledge.
  • 2019. Weaponizing the Internet and World Wide Web, for Empire: Platforming Capitalism, Data-Veillance, Public Diplomacy and Cyber-Warfare. Media Imperialism: Continuity and Change, edited by Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Tanner Mirrlees, 213-233. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • 2019. Canadian TV Goes Global: Within and Beyond Cultural Imperialism. World Entertainment Media: Global, Regional and Local Perspectives, edited by Paolo Sigismondi. New York: Routledge.
  • 2019. Medal of Honor Militarism. In How to Play Video Games, edited by Matt Payne and Nina Huntemann. New York: New York University Press.
  • 2019. A Political Economy of the Cultural Industries, in Canada. Change and Continuity: Canadian Political Economy in the New Millennium, edited by Leah Vosko, Mark Thomas, Carlo Fanelli and Olena Lyubchenko, 203-228. Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press.
  • 2018. Ideology. Bloomsbury Companion to Marx, edited by Andrew Pendakis, Imre Szeman and Jeff Diamanti. London: Bloomsbury Press.
  • 2017. Ubiquitous Media War. From Here to Ubiquity: Critical and International Perspectives, edited by Michael Daubs and Vincent Manzerolle. New York: Peter Lang.
  • 2012. The Future of TV: Revolution Paused, Media Conglomeration Continued. The Television Reader: Critical Perspectives in Canadian and American Television Studies, edited by Tanner Mirrlees and Joseph Kispal-Kovacs. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
  • 2012. Critical Approaches to Studying Television. In The Television Reader: Critical Perspectives in Canadian and American Television Studies, edited by Tanner Mirrlees and Joseph Kispal-Kovacs. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Magazine articles
  • 2022. The Carbon Convoy: The Climate Emergency Fueling the Far Right’s Big Rigs. Energy Humanities.
  • 2020. A US-China Rivalry? Not in the Global Digital Technology and Cultural Industries. Global Dialogue.
  • 2009. Media Capitalism, the State and 21st Century Media Democracy Struggles: An Interview with Robert McChesney. Monthly Review.
News articles and op-eds
  • 2019. The Alt-right’s YouTube Entrepreneurs. DurhamRegion.com, August 1.
  • 2016. Information Overload: Is Big Data the Solution? Oshawa This Week/Metrolandmedia, November 2.
  • 2016. Do Social Media Sites Control Us? Oshawa This Week/Metrolandmedia, October 5.
  • 2016. Pokemon Go’s Precarious “Playlabour”: Real Work, Augmenting the Economy. Oshawa This Week/Metrolandmedia, August 3.
  • 2016. If Automation is the Future, What comes next? Oshawa This Week/Metrolandmedia, July 6.
  • 2016. Hollywood as Inventor: That’s ‘techno-tainment.’ DurhamRegion.com, June 8.
  • 2016. The Global Village is mostly ‘American’. Oshawa This Week/Metrolandmedia, May 11.
  • 2016. Social media transparency is not always a two-way street. Oshawa This Week/Metrolandmedia, April 13. May 26.
  • 2021. Unmasking GAFAM’s Power: Marx and Foucault Go to Silicon Valley. Union for Democratic Communications, June 30.
  • 2021. The GAFAM’s Privatized Hate Speech Governance: The Case of the Alt Right in Canada. Communication & Cultural Policy in the Age of the Platform, June 14.
  • 2021. Socialists on Social Media Platforms: Communicating Within and Against Digital Capitalism, March 21.
  • 2019. The Digital Revolution and its Discontents, May 7.

  • Additional publications can be viewed here:

Faculty of Social Science and Humanities Teaching Award

Â鶹´«Ã½ University June 1, 2013

Upon completion of his first year of teaching at Â鶹´«Ã½ University, Dr. Mirrlees was received the award for his inspiring and engaging teaching methods.

Guelph-Humber Student Association Faculty Appreciation Award

June 1, 2011

This award is granted to a professor, selected by students, who demonstrates exceptional teaching skills and a willingness to go above and beyond the course requirements to meet student needs and facilitate a positive learning environment.

Governor General’s Award (Gold Medal)

June 1, 2008

This award is granted to a doctoral student for their outstanding scholastic achievements and graduation with the highest average.

Mirrlees is the former president of the Canadian Communication Association (CCA) (2020-2022), the past organizer of
the CCA’s annual conference for the Congress of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2018-2020), a
member of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism (CHBE), and an associate of the Digital Life Institute, the Global
Labour Research Centre and the Energy Humanities network. Mirrlees is also on the editorial boards of the Canadian
Journal of Communication, Media, War & Conflict, and Democratic Communiqué, and is a member of the Canadian
Communication Association (CCA), International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) - Political
Economy Section, International Communication Association (ICA), and Union for Democratic Communications (UDC).
  • Historical and Cultural Perspectives on Globalization
  • Entertainment Goes Global
  • Global Media Industries
  • Globalization and the Global Media
  • International Relations and Communication
  • Public Diplomacy as Communication: From the United States to the World
  • Introduction to Communication Studies
  • Mass Communication
  • Information & Society
  • Computer-Mediated Communication
  • Power, Technology and Social Change
  • Communication, Technology and Culture
  • Popular Technologies and Cultural Practice
  • Television as Communication and Culture
  • Subcultures and the Mainstream Media
  • Work in the Digital Age / Work and Labour in the Creative Industries
  • Watching, Analyzing and Making Media, for Digital Media Literacy
  • The Military Publicity State: Cultural Industries Go to War
  • War, Propaganda and Media Culture
  • Digital Media, Politics and Democracy
  • Theories of the State
  • Canadian Foreign Policy