Based on the recently published Petroturfing: Refining Canadian Oil through Social Media (University of Minnesota Press), this talk examines how the Canadian pro-oil movement took shape through social media and ignited the oil culture wars – wars waged from positions founded on either dirty or ethical oil imaginaries – in order to undermine resistance to the fossil fuel industry and delay energy transition by symbolically refining Canadian oil as a progressive and, indeed, decolonial force.

 

Jordan B. Kinder is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.

​This event is presented in partnership with Laurier’s Department of Communications Studies. Feature by Daniel Olah on Unsplash.