Information Incidents
On this page, we monitor information incidents that have the potential to mislead the public to disrupt democracy itself by analyzing their impact on the Canadian information ecosystem. Our updates assess the nature and impacts of incidents, as well as provide valuable insights and lessons learned.
Russian Funding of US and Canadian Political Influencers
On September 4, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two Russian nationals for funding Tenet Media, whose owners, Canadian influencer Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan, allegedly accepted nearly $10 million USD from Russian-funded RT to promote Kremlin-approved narratives.
Latest updates:
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Alexei Abrahams, Digital Lead, Media Ecosystem Observatory (alexei.abrahams@mcgill.ca)
Expertise: Social network analysis/Digital trace, media observatoriesAengus Bridgman, Director, Media Ecosystem Observatory (aengus.bridgman@mcgill.ca)
Expertise: Political science, social network analysisJennie Phillips, Project Director, Project on Infrastructure Ecosystem Resilience, Media Ecosystem Observatory, (jennie.phillips@mcgill.ca) Expertise : Research Project lead/research design
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Stephanie Carvin, Associate Professor, Norman Peterson School of International Affairs (stephanie.carvin@carleton.ca)
Expertise: Canadian national security and technology
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Elizabeth Dubois, Director, PolCommTech Research Lab (elizabeth.dubois@uottawa.ca)
Expertise: Social media influencers; political users of digital media -
Marcus Kolga, Director, Disinfo Watch (info@disinfowatch.org)
Expertise: Central and Eastern European politics; disinformation and propaganda; media and foreign policy
Key contacts:
Past Information Incidents
Everything you need to know about the Kirkland Lake Bot Campaign (Instagram, Aug 28 2024)
Kirkland Lake Bot Incident
Last updated: August 28th, 2024
On July 31st, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilièvre's rally in Kirkland Lake drew a large crowd, with online engagement around the event surging days later on X (formerly Twitter). The sudden influx of posts from accounts, many with bios based outside Canada, sparked speculation about potential foreign interference and raised ethical concerns about political manipulation and its impact on public trust.
What are information incidents?
Events of this nature–information incidents– are disruptions in the information ecosystem, including both sudden and prolonged interruptions, that significantly impacts the normal flow and/or integrity of information, leading to potential or actual harm to the public, government, Canadian democracy, and/or the broader information ecosystem.
Information incidents have the potential to mislead the public, destabilize trust, and disrupt broader democracy.
CDMRN’s Information Incident Protocol
When the CDMRN detects an information incident, we activate our incident response team (consisting of CDMRN partners with subject matter expertise) to design, conduct and share rapid research about the incident as we find it. For each incident, we provide an initial incident notification (including a timeline of events and key questions we seek to address), incident updates (rapid sharing of research findings as they emerge) and an incident summary (summary of and reflections on research findings for the incident).