Dr. Maria Bakardjieva holds a Chair in Communication and Media Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada. She is the author of Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life (2005, Sage) and co-editor of three collections, most recently, Socialbots and their Friends: Digital Media and the Automation of Sociality (Routledge, 2017) with Robert Gehl. She has numerous peer-reviewed publications in leading journals and influential anthologies in the area of Communication and Media Studies with a focus on the Internet and digital media use in various social contexts. Between 2010 and 2013, she served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication published by the International Communication Association. Her current projects investigate the role digital media play in citizen engagement and democratic participation.