This event examines how policymakers attempt to shape public discourse on key policy issues and the role media ecosystems play in that.
SPPGA Expert-in-Residence Diamond Isinger examines how policymakers attempt to shape public discourse around key policy issues and the role media ecosystems play in amplifying, reframing, or constraining those efforts.
Speakers also include:
Justin McElroy is the Municipal Affairs Reporter for CBC Vancouver, covering local political stories throughout British Columbia. He has previously worked as a journalist at other Canadian outlets and, on campus, as Coordinating Editor for The Ubyssey while studying Political Science at the University of British Columbia.
Eila Park Robertson founded Anecdotia, an award-winning progressive communications and storytelling agency, and has spent her career at the intersection of power and narrative. She shapes strategy for elected officials and candidates, and advises national and subnational governments negotiating on the frontlines of the global climate crisis. Before that, she ran communications for the City of Portland — and spent more than a decade as a journalist covering climate on the West Coast and geopolitical tensions in East Asia.
Kiran Nazish is the founding director of the Coalition For Women In Journalism – a global support organization closing the gender gap in press freedom advocacy in 145 countries. She is an award winning journalist and former professor of journalism. For almost two decades, Kiran reported from across the world, during which she covered various post 9/11 wars including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan, drug cartels in Mexico and often crumbling democracies during the Arab Spring and Turkey under President Erdogan. She has also covered terrorism trials at the Manhattan High Court, and racism within the NYPD for publications including the New York Times, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, La Stampa and various others. A new initiative she has founded relevant to this conversation called Revive Democracy is to be launched in 2026.
Taking a comparative, global perspective, this session will engage multiple perspectives from invited guests, to explore how narratives are constructed, contested, and strategically deployed across different political and institutional contexts, as well as analyze how media—traditional, digital, and social—can be influenced or manipulated to sway public opinion, legitimize policy choices, or marginalize competing viewpoints.
