Lessons in Resilience: Canada's Digital Media Ecosystem and the 2019 Election

Executive Summary

The Digital Democracy Project (DDP) was created to build an international evidence base on the impact of disinformation and online media manipulation, with a robust Canadian case study monitoring the digital media ecosystem in real time ahead of the Canadian federal election on Oct. 21, 2019. Data collection ran from August to the end of November 2019, combining online data analysis with a battery of representative national surveys to contextualize online activity alongside media consumption, trust and partisanship.

Overall, the findings suggest the Canadian political information ecosystem is likely more resilient than that of other countries, particularly the U.S., owing to relatively high trust in traditional news media, relatively homogenous media preferences with only a marginal role for hyperpartisan news, high levels of political interest and knowledge, and fairly low levels of ideological polarization overall despite online fragmentation. While affective polarization (how individuals feel about other parties and their supporters) was found, there was less polarization on issues, a key vulnerability in other international elections.

Despite some concerns about automated activity gaming trending hashtags on Twitter or the presence of a few disreputable online outlets, their impact appeared limited; despite significant blind spots caused by limited researcher data access, no evidence was found of impact attributable to a co-ordinated disinformation campaign. Looking forward, however, potential future vulnerabilities were identified, most related to growing partisanship and polarization, and to the segmentation of the populace into online information environments that reinforce existing world views.