Research & Publications

My research interests are at the intersection of comparative political economy, political behaviour and communication. My dissertation investigates the governance of emerging economic markets in Central and Eastern European countries, its relationship to state capacity and its impact on economic and political preferences at the individual (civilians and elites) and firm level.

I am also interested in issues pertaining to identifying and measuring misinformation both from the supply and demand sides in a multi-methods perspective, using quantitative (survey, experimental & causal inference designs), qualitative (interviews, focus-groups, field observations) and approaches at the convergence of both (e.g. large language models).

Research Projects:

Narrative Architectures of Authoritarian Disinformation: This research, in collaboration with Prof. Jean-Christophe Boucher (University of Calgary), investigates the foreign disinformation strategies of China and Russia on social media platforms (Twitter/X, Telegram, Facebook, TikTok) in Western and Global South countries. We leverage unsupervised natural language processing (NLP) models to analyze and structure Chinese and Russian strategies and narratives in a data-driven fashion to enable the construction of a theoretical framework of authoritarian foreign disinformation. This research stems from the willingness to use highly strategically-structured and centralized state-disseminated (dis)information to make sense of the much broader complex ecosystem of authoritarian disinformation.

Great Power Strategic Communication: This project extends the authoritarian disinformation framework into a broader comparative analysis of great power information strategies, examining the United States, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and India. The goal is to situate authoritarian disinformation strategies within a wider comparative context of how major powers, both democratic and authoritarian, construct and deploy strategic narratives internationally.

Multimodal Detection of Inauthentic Content on TikTok: This methods-oriented project develops multimodal analysis techniques, combining video, audio, and text, to detect inauthentic material linked to disinformation and information operations on TikTok and other multimodal platforms, with potential extension to YouTube.

AI Regulation in Comparative Political Economy: This project (in early development) examines the regulation of artificial intelligence in comparison to other digital technologies, including cryptocurrency and fintech, in the United States and

Peer-Reviewed Publications:

Dubé D., Boucher J-C., Farouk I. (Revise and Resubmit at British Journal of Political Science), “Russia’s Narrative Dominance Beyond the West: Constructing an Alternative Information Order.”

Dubé D. (Under Review at Reviews of International Political Economy), “Crypto at the Gates: Why Crypto Entrepreneurs Seek Regulatory Integration.”

Dubé D., Erlich A. (Under Review at Journal of Experimental Political Science), “The Sources and Limits of European Influence on Public Opinion in EU Candidate Countries.”

Dubé D., Zheng K., Boucher J-C. (Forthcoming at International Journal), “Taiwan-China Relations Coverage in Canadian Media,” 2026

Peer Reviewed Book Chapter:

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

Working Papers:

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