Research & Publications

My research sits at the intersection of comparative political economy, international political economy, and information politics. I study how states, markets, and digital communities negotiate authority as emerging technologies and economic sectors become increasingly salient and subject to state regulation. My dissertation and book project examines cryptocurrency regulation across the European Union, the United States, and Canada, asking why governments adopt different approaches to governing an economic sector that emerged largely outside traditional systems of financial authority.

This research provides the foundation for a broader comparative research agenda on the political economy of emerging digital technologies. I am particularly interested in how states respond to technologies and sectors that develop faster than existing regulatory institutions, how firms and communities seek to shape the rules governing them, and how regulatory strategies vary across political and institutional contexts. I am developing this agenda beyond cryptocurrency to examine artificial intelligence and other emerging fintech and digital technology sectors that are economically significant, rapidly developing, and increasingly subject to government scrutiny.

A second strand of my research examines information politics and the use of digital platforms by states. I study foreign influence, disinformation, and strategic communication, with a particular focus on how governments construct and disseminate narratives across borders. This work combines large-scale computational analysis with qualitative and comparative approaches to examine both the production of political information and its effects on audiences.

Across these research areas, I use computational and mixed methods, including natural language processing, machine learning, large-scale text analysis, survey and experimental designs, causal inference, interviews, and field observation. I am particularly interested in methodological approaches that combine computational analysis with substantive theories of political and economic behaviour.

Selected Publications

Peer-Reviewed Publications:

Forthcoming. Dubé, D., Boucher, J.-C., & Farouk, I. “Russia’s Narrative Dominance Beyond the West: Constructing an Alternative Information Order.” British Journal of Political Science.

Forthcoming. Zheng, K., Boucher, J.-C., & Dubé, D. “Taiwan-China Relations Coverage in Canadian Media.” The International Journal.

Revise and Resubmit. Dubé, D. “Crypto at the Gates: Why Crypto Entrepreneurs Seek Regulatory Integration.” Review of International Political Economy.

Revise and Resubmit. Dubé, D., & Erlich, A. “The Sources and Limits of European Influence on Public Opinion in EU Candidate Countries.” Journal of Experimental Political Science.

Peer Reviewed Book Chapter:

2024. Dubé, D. “Baby You Can Drive My Car: From Trump to Biden, the US-Canada Auto Industry Commercial Policy.” In F. Gagnon & F. Cloutier-Roy (eds.), America First, Then Canada. University of Montreal Press, pp. 55–68. (Original book in French).

Working Papers:

Dubé D., Boucher J-C., “Short Videos, Long Wars: Chinese Foreign Information Operations in Japan on TikTok.”

Research Projects

Cryptocurrency, Regulation, and Digital Financial Governance

My dissertation and book project, Crypto at the Gates: Why Crypto Entrepreneurs Seek Regulatory Integration, examines the political economy of cryptocurrency regulation in the European Union, United States, and Canada. The project asks how actors in an emerging economic sector negotiate with regulators, financial institutions, and other gatekeepers as governments seek to bring cryptocurrency into established systems of financial governance. Based on fieldwork and interviews with entrepreneurs, industry associations, regulators, lawyers, and other actors, the project examines how regulatory integration reshapes relationships among state authority, private governance, and digital communities.

Emerging Digital Technologies and Comparative Regulation

Building from the comparative framework developed in my cryptocurrency research, this research agenda examines how states govern emerging digital technologies and economic sectors as they become increasingly salient, commercially important, and subject to regulatory scrutiny. Artificial intelligence provides the next major extension of this research. I am interested in comparing AI regulation with cryptocurrency and fintech to examine how governments respond to technologies that challenge existing regulatory boundaries and develop faster than established institutions. The broader goal is to understand when and why states integrate emerging technologies into existing regulatory frameworks, develop new forms of governance, or rely on hybrid arrangements involving public and private actors.

Strategic Communication and Information Operations

This broader research stream examines how states use digital platforms to communicate strategically and influence political meaning across borders. In collaboration with Prof. Jean-Christophe Boucher, I study major great powers (Russia, China, US, UK, France, India) foreign information operations across social media platforms and compare their strategies with those of other major powers. The research combines large-scale natural language processing with comparative analysis to identify how states structure, adapt, and disseminate strategic narratives across different international audiences.

A related methods-oriented project examines how information operations and inauthentic content can be identified on increasingly multimodal platforms. This work combines video, audio, and textual information to develop approaches for detecting coordinated or inauthentic content on TikTok and other short-form video platforms, with potential extensions to YouTube. Together, these projects form a broader research agenda on how states communicate through digital platforms and how researchers can measure and identify increasingly complex forms of digital influence.

Academic Conferences

American Political Science Association Annual Meeting — Los Angeles (2023), Philadelphia (2024), Vancouver (2025).

International Studies Association Annual Convention — San Francisco (2024), Chicago (2025).

European International Studies Association Pan-European Conference — 2026.

Midwestern Political Science Association Annual Conference — Chicago, March 2023.

Northeastern Political Science Association Annual Conference — Boston, 2022.

Association for Canadian Studies in the United States Annual Conference — Washington, DC, 2024.

Invited Talks:

Network for Strategic Analysis Annual Colloquium — University of Ottawa, 2022 & 2023. Presented research on Russian foreign information operations targeting the Global South and Global North.

Network for Strategic Analysis Workshop — Laval University, March 2025. Presented dissertation research design and a policy-oriented version of my research for publication on the NSA’s online article platform.

Université du troisième âge (Third Age University), University of Sherbrooke, Fall 2022. Invited lecturer for a series of classes on geopolitical issues in Ukraine and Russia.

CEGEP de Lanaudière, Terrebonne, April 2022. Invited talk on US politics and its impact on Canada.

CEGEP de Lanaudière, Joliette, Fall 2021. Invited talk on being part of a research chair in academia, studying the US and its impact on Canadian and Quebec politics and society.