My name is Valérie Bélair-Gagnon. I am an Associate Professor and Cowles Fellow in Media Management at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where I currently serve as Director of Undergraduate Studies and previously directed the Minnesota Journalism Center. I am also an Affiliated Fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and remain actively engaged in international research networks across.

My scholarship examines how digital platforms, artificial intelligence, and sociotechnical systems reshape democratic knowledge production, professional authority, and public trust. Grounded in qualitative and mixed-methods research, my work bridges journalism studies, media sociology, and policy-relevant research on technology and democracy. A central contribution of my research is to reframe disinformation, online harassment, and credibility crises not as individual failures of journalists or creators, but as systemic and organizational challenges embedded in platformized information environments.

Much of my work focuses on disinformation, platform governance, and the changing conditions of media and creative labor. I examine how journalists, fact-checkers, news-adjacent creators, and communicators operate within shared platform infrastructures shaped by algorithmic visibility, monetization logics, and generative AI. This research advances theoretical debates on professional autonomy and authority while informing institutional, policy, and community-level responses to digital harms and democratic vulnerability.

A central component of my research agenda is my collaborative book project, Fake Frictions: Actors, Interests and Power in the Fight Against Disinformation. Emerging from the SCAM project and drawing on international comparative research, the book theorizes how platforms, journalists, policymakers, creators, and civil society actors negotiate responsibility, legitimacy, and trust in contemporary information systems. The project serves as a foundation for ongoing article-length scholarship, collaborative research, and public-facing engagement on AI, platform power, and democratic resilience.