Summary by Julia Bugiel
On March 29, 2022, the Media Ecosystem Observatory convened an online roundtable on “The Present and Future of Misinformation in Canada.” The event was moderated by Centre Director Taylor Owen and featured Holly Ann Garnett, Associate Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and Director of the Electoral Integrity Project; Gallit Dobner, Director of the Centre for International Digital Policy at Global Affairs Canada; Colette Brin, Professor at Université Laval and Director of the Centre d’études sur les médias; Justin Ling, a freelance investigative journalist; and Aengus Bridgman, Director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory.
The panel discussed how concerns over political misinformation have intensified over the past decade as well as how misinformation threatens Canadian democracy and how best it can be combatted. Although misinformation tends to circulate in small communities where people are already predisposed to being convinced of falsehoods, numerous incidents of misinformation contribute to the erosion of a shared factual reality and reduce confidence in democratic institutions. As witnessed in recent elections around the world, manipulating the information environment surrounding an election can be an effective tool for those seeking to jeopardize electoral results and undermine the legitimacy of the vote.
Justin Ling recounted how changes in the information environment now allow subsets of the population to be constantly and massively exposed to misinformation, conspiracy theories, and messages telling them not to trust mainstream media and governments. He highlighted the recent Truckers for Freedom convoy to Ottawa as the perfect embodiment of this trend, with participants being continuously exposed to like-minded messages while in downtown Ottawa and through digital networks—a combination of livestreams, alternative news sites, and more.
This growing fractionalization of the media ecosystem makes misinformation harder for journalists and researchers to track. When it comes to Canadian elections, traditional monitoring practices have not kept up with this changing information environment. This is a problem Dr. Garnett and her colleagues are trying to solve at the Electoral Integrity Project. The growing number of platforms and changing patterns in usage and barriers to public access means that researchers require more resources to get a more accurate picture of the information environment.
And yet, the panelists found reasons for optimism. Aengus Bridgman highlighted the Media Ecosystem Observatory’s latest report, Mis- and Disinformation During the 2021 Canadian Federal Election, which found widespread misinformation but only a limited electoral impact. He also mentioned the Observatory’s previous work during the 2019 election, which found that Canada’s political information ecosystem tended towards resilience to misinformation. Gallit Dobner assured listeners that among Western democracies, Canada ranks low on the list of prospective targets for foreign election interference, and shared progress made on the Plan to Protect Canada's Democracy and the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism. Dr. Garnett stressed the advantages of having an electoral system that helps blunt ideological extremes and an electoral process and central election administration body that remains well-funded, consistent, and easy to understand. Dr. Brin affirmed Canadians’ comparatively high levels of trust in the media.
Nevertheless, both this trust in the media and Canadians’ confidence in democracy are on the decline. Canada’s resilience to misinformation will not last if efforts to guard against it are not strengthened. Panelists stressed the need for interventions, including bottom-up approaches to better understand how misinformation affects different communities, programs to raise digital literacy so that audiences can better navigate online content, and coordinated international efforts to develop norms and strategies to protect against the worst forms of misinformation.