Armed with newfound awareness about foreign interference, Canadian social media users have demonstrated a pattern of leaping to conclusions for partisan purposes, according to researchers examining the online response to the recent indictment of two Canadians accused of participating in an alleged Kremlin-backed influence campaign.
In its final report on its study of the Russian government’s alleged funding and influence of Tenet Media, the Canadian Digital Media Research Network (CDMRN)—led by the Media Ecosystem Observatory jointly run by McGill University and the University of Toronto—found that the firm is using the reach and following of its media personalities to align its content with “Russian objectives of sowing distrust and division.“
