Mira Sucharov - Public Influence: A Guide to Op-Ed Writing and Social Media Engagement

A Guide to Op-Ed Writing and Social Media Engagement

Mira Sucharov

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto Buffalo London

University of Toronto Press 2019

utorontopress.com

Printed in Canada

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Sucharov, Mira, author

Public influence : a guide to op-ed writing and social media engagement / Mira Sucharov.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4875-8746-8 (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-4875-8745-1 (softcover)

1. Editorials Authorship. 2. Social media. I. Title.

PN4784.E28S83 2019808.06607C2018-905770-X

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University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

I owe a debt of gratitude to many friends and colleagues. Thanks goes first to Mat Buntin, my outstanding editor at University of Toronto Press, whose superb vision and sage guidance helped this book grow from inception to print. Thanks goes too to Natalie Fingerhut at UTP who helped nurture the seed of the idea. Copyeditor Kerry Fast, production editor Christine Robertson, proofreader Gina Nicholls, indexer Siusan Moffat, and Anna Maria Del Col and her colleagues in sales and marketing made the entire process smooth and enjoyable.

Brent Sasley, Thomas Juneau, Marc Caplan, and Nathaniel Berman each read parts of the manuscript and provided thoughtful feedback. Three anonymous reviewers also helped make the manuscript stronger.

Joshua Busby, Chaya Halberstam, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Shaul Magid, Atalia Omer, and Tamara Cofman Wittes each offered helpful articles or conversations at key points in the project. Many friends and followers on social media answered my various crowd-sourcing calls for observations about your experiences and for that I am grateful.

Some of the issues covered here were workshopped at the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa, with Brent Sasley in the pages of PS: Political Science and Politics and on the London School of Economics and Political Science Impact blog, and with Lena Saleh in Israel Studies Review.

Thanks to my department chair, Jonathan Malloy, who supported the creation of my Political Opinion Writing course at Carleton and to the students in all my courses who have to (or get to, depending on ones perspective) learn how to write op-eds and who continue to teach me a lot.

The many editors Ive worked with in the opinion pages of various news outlets over the years have helped sharpen my op-ed voice. Thanks goes to Peter Beinart, Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, Ali Gharib, Rob Gilroy, Lisa Goldman, Yoni Goldstein, Charlotte Hall, Jillian Jones, Basya Laye, Sara Miller, Andrew Phillips, Cynthia Ramsay, Michael Regenstreif, Sigal Samuel, Doug Saunders, Dahlia Scheindlin, Esther Solomon, Rhonda Spivak, Simon Spungin, Leonard Stern, Batya Ungar-Sargon and Rutie Zuta.

Peter Eisenstadt, Bernie Farber, Brent Sasley, and Joshua Schreier, co-authors of several op-eds I have written, have each helped me think through pressing topics in a new way.

Thanks to Dara Pavlich and Ryan Nadel, my younger and hipper cousins, who in December 2006 first introduced me to Facebook, and to my early mentor, Rex Brynen, who modelled fine scholar-social media use from the beginning of the platform.

Most of all, thank you to my family: to my parents and stepparents for their ongoing enthusiasm and curiosity about my creative projects; to my husband for his constant, loving support in every way; and to our two amazing kids who infuse my days with fun and meaning and give me added reason to want to write towards a better world.

M.S.

Ottawa, October 2018