Marie Woolf, The Canadian Press Published Wednesday, June 8, 2022 3:22 PM EDT Last Updated on Wednesday, June 8, 2022 6:12 PM EDT
OTTAWA – An analysis of more than six million tweets and retweets – and where they come from – has found that Russia is targeting Canada to influence public opinion here.
A study by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy found that a large number of tweets and retweets about the war in Ukraine date back to Russia and China, with even more tweets expressing pro-Russian sentiment. United States.
Assistant Professor Jean-Christophe Boucher said in an interview that the Russian “state apparatus” is associated with many tweets in Canada, and is influencing posts that are retweeted, liked, or repeated by different accounts. once.
Tweets often express pro-Russian points of view, such as the fact that Ukraine is a fascist state or that NATO wants to expand, which poses a threat to Russia.
The University of Calgary team of experts analyzed 6.2 million tweets from around the world and applied algorithms to track their origins.
He outlined tweets and retweeted accounts, including key terms associated with the Ukrainian war. A location filter was applied that reduced it to tweets associated with Canadian Twitter profiles.
The team then established connections between the accounts and traced online conversations about the war.
The algorithms identified major clusters and influencers in Canada and abroad that promote pro-Russian narratives.
He found that in the “Canadian Twitter ecosystem” talking about the war, about 25 percent of the accounts were broadcasting pro-Russian talk points.
Boucher warned that some accounts were “Trojan horses,” with some Canadians unaware that pro-Putin narratives date back to Russia, China, or right-wing influencers in the United States.
Analysis of the content of the tweets found similar pro-Russian views expressed among right-wing figures and their supporters in the United States and Canada, he said.
He said supporters of the “Freedom Convoy” and the anti-vaccine movement, some of whom may not realize they have been digesting messages from Russia, were also tweeting messages in support of the invasion of Ukraine.
Many of the tweets from pro-Russian social media conversations also express distrust of the institutions and “a specific distrust of the Liberal government of Canada, and especially of Prime Minister (Justin) Trudeau,” the report found.
Boucher said “foreign interference in the Canadian information space” is now so widespread that it is sowing distrust in Canada’s democratic institutions, including the federal government and the mainstream media.
“Social media has become more and more capable of shaping people’s vision. It weakens our democratic resilience, “he said.” It creates dissent and erodes confidence in institutions. “
He said that although foreign robots were used to spread misinformation on social media, their role was often exaggerated.
Influencers with millions of followers, including the United States, had a wider reach on Twitter than robots and “are retweeting and amplifying Russian narratives.”
The scholar found that influential Americans were tweeting pro-Russian comments. Some of these publications, in turn, were retweeted by accounts associated with the Russian state.
Boucher said that since the end of the study, his team had collected an additional four million tweets about the Ukrainian war, for a total of 10 million tweets, and the number was growing.
Boucher said the “path of influence” of many pro-Russian tweets dates back to accounts “associated with Russia, including the Russian state apparatus.”
He said “Russian accounts are retweeting and amplifying” pro-Russian tweets in the U.S. and elsewhere.
“We have the state apparatus in Russia and China that promotes propaganda.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on June 8, 2022.