Archives: Commentary

Friday, April 22, 2022

The Information Arms Race: Media and the Russo-Ukrainian War

By Nicolas Surges On February 26, 2022, Meta began ramping up their independent fact-checking on posts about Ukraine, labelling those which originated from Russian state-owned agencies or media groups and banning Russian authorities from running ads on their platform. The following day, the social media giant purged a network of accounts, pages,... More

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

#WeAreEssential – Redefining Essential Work during COVID-19 Lockdowns

By: Leslie Rao & Maria Urso What does it take to be considered “essential” in a pandemic? How is the term “essential” used by small businesses—particularly those deemed as not essential by provincial health orders over the past two years—as they navigated and coped with Covid-19 closures? The Government of Canada defines essential... More

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

“Who watches the watchmen?”: Digital Moderation in the Age of Misinformation

-- by Nicholas Surges Meta (formerly known as the Facebook Corporation) has increasingly come under scrutiny for the role it plays in shaping the social media landscape. As the largest social media company, it has set many precedents in how hate speech, misinformation, and manipulated or inauthentic content is moderated online. This raises an... More

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Triangular Hate receives major grant from Government of Canada

Triangular Hate, a Populist Publics project tracking the distortion of historical memory across social media networks by populist and far-right groups and persons on both sides of the Atlantic, has received support from the Government of Canada in the form of a major grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Digital Citizen Contribution... More

Monday, October 26, 2020

Folk devils and fear: QAnon feeds into a culture of moral panic

People display Qanon messages on cardboards during a political rally in Bucharest, Romania on Aug. 10, 2020. (Shutterstock) Jennifer Evans, Carleton University Using conspiracy theories that include child sex traffickers and restaurants serving human flesh, QAnon has unleashed a modern-day moral panic. It is now more than 30 years since... More

Monday, June 29, 2020

Hate Speech 3.0

--Dr Laura Madokoro Over the past few decades, the idea of Canada as a multicultural national has been celebrated in popular and official culture alike. The introduction of an official multiculturalism policy in 1971, elaborated in the 1988 Multiculturalism Act, with funding support to promote the culture and history of ethnic communities in... More

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