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Incident Update 4︱Spot the Bot: The Presence of Suspected Bots on Canadian Politician Accounts
While we continue to study the bot incident related to Pierre Poilievre’s rally in Kirkland Lake, we also aim to provide additional context about bot activity in the Canadian information ecosystem. Specifically, we wanted to know to what extent bots were present in commentary directed at other politicians, and how these bots tend to engage across politicians and platforms. To do so we examine potential inauthentic coordinated activity on the Facebook and 𝕏 accounts of Leader of the Official Opposition Pierre Poilievre and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to better understand what bot activity looks like in regards to prominent Canadian politicians.
Incident Update 3︱Exploring incident replicability using commercial AI tools
To try and better understand how the Kirkland Lake bot incident might have happened, we investigated whether free generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Co-Pilot could be used to deliver this type of attack. We wanted to see if there are any safeguards in place to prevent commercial AI tools from being used in cases like this. We show almost all large free commercial AIs are not prepared to mitigate this kind of election interference.
Incident Update 2︱More Bot than Bite: A Qualitative Analysis of the Conversation Online
Beyond trying to better understand the incident, we turn our attention to the impacts. Specifically, the topic of this update explores the impact on conversation. How did news outlets talk about the story? What voices were loudest in the conversation? How (if so) did the dialogue compare between partisan voices? How did engagement with the bots compare to the event itself? What did people say about it?
Incident Update 1︱Bot Campaign most likely the work of an amateur, reports CDMRN partner The Social Media Lab
Did a single person create the suspected bot attack in which hundreds of users posted about the Conservatives’ rally in Kirkland Lake, Ontario?
JULY 2024: CANADIAN INTEREST IN AMERICAN NEWS & POLITICS
Canadians care equally about US news and politics
More than one third of Canadians believe that the United States covertly influences Canadian politics
Significant increase of attention paid to news and politics
One third of Canadians report using print for news weekly
Canadian Vulnerability to Russian Narratives About Ukraine
July 2024 — In Spring 2024, DisinfoWatch and Canadian Digital Media Research Network conducted a survey of 2,127 Canadians to assess their exposure to several leading Kremlin narratives about Russia’s war against Ukraine and to understand the vulnerability of Canadians to these narratives.
When journalism is turned off: Preliminary findings on the effects of Meta’s news ban in Canada
April 2024 — This document presents preliminary findings of an ongoing research project on the effects of Meta’s decision to end news availability on its platforms for Canadian users. It examines the impact of this “news ban” on Facebook, specifically focusing on how it affected engagement with Canadian news outlets on Facebook and behaviour within politically-oriented Canadian Facebook Groups.