Influence U

When the twenty-­third Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences came to Vancouver in June 2019, Melanie Doucet sat behind a CBC Radio microphone and gave the standing-­room-­only crowd her Twitter handle — it’s @MelanieMDoucet — and then rejected the label of “influencer.”

Doucet’s a Trudeau Scholar — a recognition given to only a handful of Canadian PhD students each year — and a doctoral candidate in social work at McGill.* She was also a finalist in this year’s federally sponsored storytelling challenge, put on by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She’s striving to influence child welfare policy and to improve the experiences of young people leaving the foster care system.

But she doesn’t seek media attention to build a following, enhance her profile, or flaunt her expertise. She’s not an influencer.

Influencers — those prolific social media entrepreneurs who turn their Instagram selfies...