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The Canadian Information Ecosystem during the 2025 Federal Election
A warning for Canada’s democracy: Act now to protect future elections. Canada’s 2025 federal election upheld its integrity but exposed a digital ecosystem under mounting strain.
Kremlin Doppelgänger Tactics and the Exploitation of the Charlie Kirk Murder
With high confidence, it appears that though the Kremlin has exploited Kirk’s death as part of its information warfare strategy, employing tactics outlined in the FBI’s Doppelgänger affidavit.
Information Incident Notification: Ripple Effects of the Charlie Kirk Assassination in the Canadian Information Ecosystem
The assassination of Charlie Kirk has been followed by a massive amount of polarized online discussions in the Canadian information ecosystem, fuelling disinformation, partisan conflict, and mobilization exposing the risk of targeted and/or large scale unrest and physical harm.
NOVEMBER 2024: X Marks the Vote — How Influencers Shape Canadian Politics
Canada post strike, tied for the most talked about story of the year
Canadians place little trust in celebrity and well-known political influencer endorsements
Concern about US foreign influence jumps 7%
Persistent misinformation in the Canadian information ecosystem
OCTOBER 2024: EH OR NAY? CANADIANS WEIGH IN ON THE US ELECTION
The US Election was closely followed and discussed in Canada.
Canadians think the Trump presidency will be terrible for Canada.
Huge spike in Canadians attributing foreign influence to India.
Widespread awareness of calls for Trudeau to step down.
SEPTEMBER 2024: TUNING IN TO THE CANADIAN PODCAST ECOSYSTEM
TikTok increasingly dominates news engagement.
Elected officials lose trust.
Podcasts playing an increasingly important role in Canada, particularly for the politically interested.
CBC surges in popularity, BlogTO enters the Top 5 and appetite for local news increases.
AUGUST 2024: WHAT’S ALL THIS BUZZ ABOUT BOTS?
Key findings:
Canadians want the government to get involved in the fight against bots
The ecosystem has become slightly more polarized
Engagement with misinformation and concern about fake content increases
Incident Debrief ︱August 3 Bot Activity on 𝕏 Related to Rally in Kirkland Lake
This minor incident was likely caused by a single entity or actor using a set of newly created bot accounts with posts composed by either a low-quality (cheap) or poorly prompted generative Large Language Models (often described generically as AI) [Incident Update (IU) 6]. This network of bots consistently posts about recent news topics and are only incidentally interested in Canada or Canadian politics content [IU6].
Incident Update 6︱Bots and LLMs
In this final update on the bot incident related to Pierre Poilievre’s rally in Kirkland Lake, we aim to provide additional context about bot activity in the Canadian information ecosystem. Specifically, we wanted to know: 1) the extent to which Large Language Models (LLMs) were used in combination with bot profiles to produce the messages; 2) how many people saw these messages; 3) how blame attribution was a major part of the subsequent discussion; and 4) what other messages the bots produced.
Incident Update 5︱Survey Findings : Kirkland Lake Bot Incident
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's rally in Kirkland Lake on July 31st drew subsequent attention from bot posts on 𝕏 praising the event with variations of similar phrasing. To learn more about public opinion of the event, and of how online bot activity interacts with democracy in Canada, we fielded a survey of 1437 Canadians from August 16th to 21st. The margin of error for a comparable probability-based random sample of the same size is +/-2.59%, 19 times out of 20.