Mélanie Millette

Mélanie Millette, PhD, is a full professor in the Département de communication sociale et publique of UQAM and a regular member of the Laboratoire sur la communication et le numérique (LabCMO, UQAM et Université Laval), where she has been the director of the methodological axis of programming since 2016. She is also a member of the Chaire-réseau Jeunesse du Québec (volet Éducation, citoyenneté et culture), as well as the Institut de recherches féministes (IREF) and the Chantier sur l’antiféminisme du Réseau québécois en études féministes (RéQEF). She serves on the advisory committee of the Chaire de recherche du Canada sur les médias, les handicaps et les (auto)représentations. She is the host of the podcast Interface : Nos expériences numériques, available for listening on your favorite platforms!

Her research focuses on the use of social media such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, as well as blogs and podcasts. Her current work addresses, on the one hand, issues of visibility/invisibility in the public space and civic participation for women and people in minority or marginalized positions, and on the other hand, the methodological problems and opportunities of feminist research on the Internet.

More specifically, she is interested in people who use digital platforms for speaking out, social recognition, identity claims, civic organization, resistance, or political participation. Her expertise also covers the ethical issues of research, especially at the methodological level (data policies, big data and thick data, research with minoritized or marginalized people, feminist approaches).

Among other things, she leads the project Résistance, which aims to document the digital communication practices of women in the face of online anti-feminism. This research addresses the different ways in which feminist women and non-binary people deal with various forms of oppression and online anti-feminist logics. Mélanie Millette also leads the "media" component of the research Des pratiques aux discours sur la dé*transition directed by Annie Pullen Sansfaçon, to analyze how media discourses on detransition and gender desistance are articulated. Conducted with a trans-affirmative approach respectful of individuals' self-designation, this innovative research highlights the rhetoric of media discourses. She was also one of the founders of the feminist collective The Fourchettes – Critical Methods in Technoculture. She co-directed with Florence Millerand the scientific communication initiative for the general public Le Numérique en questions. For more information on her other research projects, consult the professor's profile in the UQAM directory (General Information tab).