Season 3, Ep. 5: False narratives with real consequences – The impact of social media disinformation on migration policy
Show notes
Below, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
More about the Projects
The hybridization of political communication: Politicized news formats and the boundaries of journal (external link) . Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Foundation (RJ).
Migrant Integration in the Mid-21st Century: Bridging Divides. Canada First Research Excellence Fund.
Social Media Lab (external link) .
Donate or Get Involved!
Campaign for Accountability (external link)
Integrity Institute (external link)
News Literacy Project (external link)
Media & Blogs
After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News (external link) (2020). Directed by Andrew Rossi. HBO.
Caulfield, T. (18 Sept 2024). Welcome to the Poilievre conspiracy theory vortex: Adopting absurd narratives has become a staple of right-wing politicking (external link) . The Walrus.
Cadwalladr, C. (3 Aug 2024). ‘A polarisation engine’: how social media has created a ‘perfect storm’ for UK’s far-right riots (external link) . The Guardian.
Isaac, M. & Schleifer, T. (7 January 2025). Meta Says It Will End Its Fact-Checking Program on Social Media Posts (external link) . New York Times.
Social Media Lab. (12 February 2024). Inside the Social Media Lab’s Bridging Divides studies on online migration discourses. Toronto Metropolitan University.
The Social Dilemma (external link) . (2020). Directed by Jeff Orlowski-Yang. Netflix.
Urban Refugees | Empowering refugee-led organisations (external link) . International Civil Society Centre. Youtube.
Woolf, M. (23 Oct 2024). Ottawa to cut immigration targets in a major policy reversal (external link) . Globe & Mail.
Reports and Policy
Annual Report 2023 (external link) . Integrity Institute.
Banulescu-Bogdan, N., Malka H. & Culbertson, S. (2021). How we talk about migration: The link between migration narratives, policy, and power (external link) . Migration Policy Institute.
Bateman, J. & Jackson, D. (31 Jan 2024). Countering disinformation effectively: An evidence-based policy guide (external link) . Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Boswell C. & Smellie, S. (2023). Migration narratives in political debate and policy-making (external link) . BRIDGES Working Papers, number 19.
Chadwick, J. (3 June 2024). It’s time to restore some sanity to the Internet: Why we need a 180 on Section 230 (external link) . Mother Jones.
For Sale on Facebook: Accounts That Can Run U.S. Election Ads. (external link) (18 September 2024). Tech Transparency Project.
Facebook Black Market for Ad Accounts Looms Over India Election (external link) . (6 May 2024). Tech Transparency Project.
lanier, J., Stranger, A. & Tang, A. (30 Oct 2024). Sunset and renew: Section 230 should protect human speech, not algorithmic virality (external link) . Harvard Kennedy School, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
Lu, S. (3 Jan 2025). Tech law in 2025: A look ahead at AI, privacy and social media regulation under the new Trump administration (external link) . The Conversation.
Wang, M., Lin, P. & Knockel, J. (2024). Should We Chat, too? Security analysis of WeChat’s MMTLS encryption protocol. (external link) The Citizen Lab, University of Toronto.
Books & Book Chapters
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (external link) . Verso.
Ekman, M. (2018). Online Islamophobia and the politics of fear: Manufacturing the green scare (external link) . In Muslims, Migration and Citizenship (pp. 149-165). Routledge.
Herman, E. S & Chomsky, N. (2002). Manufacturing consent : The political economy of the mass media (external link) . Pantheon Books.
Scholarly Articles
Balibar, E. (2002). (PDF file) World borders, political borders (external link) . Pmla, 117(1), 68-78.
Ekman, M. (2019). Anti-immigration and racist discourse in social media (external link) . European Journal of Communication, 34(6), 606-618.
Ekman, M. (2018). Anti-refugee mobilization in social media: The case of soldiers of Odin (external link) . Social Media+ Society, 4(1), 2056305118764431.
Ekman, M. (2022). The great replacement: Strategic mainstreaming of far-right conspiracy claims (external link) . Convergence, 28(4), 1127-1143.
Ekman, M., & Krzyżanowski, M. (2021). A populist turn?: News editorials and the recent discursive shift on immigration in Sweden. (external link) Nordicom Review, 42(s1), 67-87.
Ekman, M., & Widholm, A. (2017). Political communication in an age of visual connectivity: Exploring Instagram practices among Swedish politicians (external link) . Northern lights, 15(1), 15-32.
Ekman, M., & Widholm, A. (2015). Politicians as media producers: Current trajectories in the relation between journalists and politicians in the age of social media. (external link) Journalism practice, 9(1), 78-91.
Gruzd, A., Mai, P., & Taleb, O. (2024). Digital battleground: An examination of anti-refugee discourse on Twitter against Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (external link) . First Monday.
Gruzd, A., Paulin, D., & Haythornthwaite, C. (2016). Analyzing social media and learning through content and social network analysis: A faceted methodological approach. (external link) Journal of Learning Analytics, 3(3), 46-71.
Gruzd, A., & Roy, J. (2014). Investigating political polarization on Twitter: A Canadian perspective (external link) . Policy & internet, 6(1), 28-45.
Gruzd, A., Wellman, B., & Takhteyev, Y. (2011). Imagining Twitter as an imagined community (external link) . American Behavioral Scientist, 55(10), 1294-1318.
Nasuto, A. & Rowe, F. (2024). Understanding anti-immigration sentiment spreading on Twitter. (external link) PLoS ONE 19(9): e0307917.
Schneider-Strawczynski, S., & Valette, J. (2025). Media coverage of immigration and the polarization of attitudes (external link) . American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 17(1), 337-368.
Triandafyllidou, A., & Monteiro, S. (2024). Migration narratives on social media: Digital racism and subversive migrant subjectivities (external link) . First Monday.
Transcript
Maggie Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores innovative migration research and connects the dots to real world impacts. This series is produced by CERC Migration in collaboration with lead podcasting. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University. In recent years, we've seen a rise in false narratives surrounding immigrants and refugees, often amplified by social media and manipulated for political gain. These narratives don't just affect individual perceptions, they drive policy decisions and fuel societal polarization. Whether it's framing immigrants as national security threats or questioning their willingness to integrate, these harmful stories have real world consequences. To help us unpack this, we have two distinguished guests whose research projects shed light on the dangerous intersection of digital disinformation and immigration. But first, let's talk about how technology is shaping more than just the way we stay connected, it's influencing the way we think, act and make decisions. Platforms we use every day, like Instagram and Tiktok aren't just for socializing. They become powerful tools that impact politics, public opinion, and even migration issues. Today, we're digging into the world of big tech, starting with Facebook, a platform that's come under fire for spreading harmful content that could influence national elections, war crimes, and terrorist movements. Leading the push to hold tech companies accountable is the Tech Transparency Project or the TTP, an information and research hub that explores the influence of the major technology platforms on politics, policy, and our lives. It's a research initiative of the Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog organization that exposes misconduct and malfeasance in public life.
Katie Paul
These companies have an outsized role in our everyday lives and are largely unregulated, and we are really trying to give the public a seat at the table when it comes to these massive corporations.
Maggie Perzyna
Katie Paul is the director of the Tech Transparency Project. Her career didn't start off in tech, though.
Katie Paul
I actually wanted to be an archeologist. My degree is in anthropology. My last semester of grad school was the Arab Spring, and when I had been going on digs and I saw the trafficking of antiquities from so many of these countries that I wanted to work on was really exploding, and in my effort to research that area, I stumbled across these massive black markets for conflict antiquities from countries like Syria, Libya, Iraq on Facebook, and when I say massive, I'm talking some of these Facebook groups that are called, 'Antiquities for sale', in Arabic, have 500,000 members or more, trading everything from statues from Palmyra to coffins from Egypt.
Maggie Perzyna
The sale of conflict antiquities is considered a war crime in countries like Syria. The discovery led Katie to a career in tech. Now she works every day to educate the public about how massive companies like Facebook face no consequences for facilitating illegal activity.
Katie Paul
This isn't something that there's any incentive for these companies to address. There's really no backstops on moderation. There's really no effort. This is a region where I know that there are extremists using this for profit and using this platform to drive those profits, and at the same time, we see so many people suffering because of those harms, and there's just no action on these massive American corporations that are making so much money and not applying any of it toward efforts to address these problems.
Maggie Perzyna
Recently, the Tech Transparency Project released a new report looking into Facebook and how it's, quote, "allowing users to buy and sell accounts that can run political ads under a fake identity".
Katie Paul
If you want to run an ad about a specific issue that relates to politics, social issues like immigration or an election, you have to have a special kind of approval from the platform. And this was part of Meta's efforts after the 2016 election interference by Russia to try to thwart foreign entities from running political advertising on the platform. But what we've seen is that Meta really does not effectively enforce this, and ultimately, these foreign entities are buying and selling accounts that they've gotten approved to run political ads in specific countries like the US, using false documentation. In some cases, they'll even sell images of stolen US passports, ID cards that were used to get an accounts verification with the account, so that if you have to resubmit, you can still use those documents. It's a pretty sophisticated and large black market.
Maggie Perzyna
This isn't just a problem in the US, either. Earlier this year, the TTP released a report highlighting the concerning rise of political ad account trafficking during elections in India and Bangladesh. In both cases, they discovered Facebook accounts in Pakistan being sold between users, creating opportunities for foreign interference.
Katie Paul
What's different about this black market is it's the only one where Meta actually profits no matter what is happening. So, even if meta takes the money, runs an ad and then deems whoops, maybe we shouldn't have approved this and later removes it, they kept the money. They still made the money. And so, there's really no incentive for the company to deal with this black market that is harming users, potentially influencing political campaigns, elections, because they're profiting the entire time, regardless of who is behind the advertising accounts.
Maggie Perzyna
There are laws around the world to stop companies from practices like these, but not in the US, where Meta, the company that owns and operates Facebook is based. Instead, Katie says American companies have twisted an antiquated American law from 1996 to shield themselves from any consequences at all.
Katie Paul
And what this law does is it essentially was meant to protect what were at the time, in the 90s, up and coming, startups, small companies, small tech companies, and protect innovation. Let's go back to the days of like AOL chat, right? You create an online forum and somebody is sharing something harmful, like child sexual abuse material on it. The goal of this law was basically companies saying, "well, whoa, wait, we didn't create that content, somebody's abusing our service. If we get sued or threatened by this, you know, it's going to stifle innovation". No company can be up against that. So, what this law does? It says that anything posted by a third party, or published by a third party, these companies are not liable for that content. Now at the time, again, we're talking 1996, the algorithms that we know today did not exist. The social media companies that we know today did not exist, and these companies have stretched the meaning of 230 protections to really shield them from absolutely everything, including algorithmic amplification of harmful content.
Maggie Perzyna
Several lawsuits accused Meta of amplifying ISIS and other terrorist content in ways that radicalized users and led to terrorist attacks. The company used section 230 to argue it was not responsible.
Katie Paul
Meta has been able to get pretty much all of those cases thrown out under these section 230 protections that they're not liable for content posted by third parties, and that's something that we've seen bipartisan desires in Congress to try to combat that.
Maggie Perzyna
Think about how widespread Facebook is. Think about all the people who use it, like your friends from high school or your great aunt. In some countries, Facebook is actually one of the only ways people can access the internet, and that was by design.
Katie Paul
Around 10 years ago, Meta, at the time, Facebook, launched what they pushed as a philanthropic effort, but it was a broader effort for the company. It was called internet.org and the idea was, okay, we've kind of peaked being able to get the developed world online, but there's all these other billions of people who can't get online because there's no internet access where they are and data is too expensive for them to use it on their mobile phones.
Maggie Perzyna
Facebook partnered with cell carriers all over the world to offer zero rated data for its users to access the Facebook apps, which also include WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.
Katie Paul
When you're on Facebook with the zero rated data, you don't get charged for that, and if you see misinformation, you couldn't go to a news outlet to fact check something that was pushed to you. So, there's also a disproportionate amount of responsibility on Meta platforms, specifically because of the way that they've pushed this to the developing world.
Maggie Perzyna
Katie says that getting your news from Facebook is problematic because you're being fed content that was catered specifically for you, not just by news outlets, but by ad agencies.
Katie Paul
So, when you and I get on New York Times or CNN or AP, we all see the same homepage. We all see the same content. Whatever news you see there in New York, you're going to see on the same homepage in LA but when it comes to Facebook, that's not the case. And a lot of people don't understand that what you see on your Facebook is not what I see on my Facebook. It's very different. What you're being pushed is manufactured and designed to keep you engaged. If it's something that just makes you so mad you have to comment, that's the point. The point is to keep you online as long as possible to engage. Because the longer you're online, the more ads you see, the more these companies make
Maggie Perzyna
In 2022 the TTP worked with journalists to survey migrant communities. They wanted to determine how the migrants had received the information they used to inform their decision to migrate to the United States.
Katie Paul
Number one was word of mouth, most common. Number two, by far, was Facebook, and that's because Facebook is such critical infrastructure, because of the way it's designed itself and infiltrated itself, that way in these countries, that there's really no other way to get information. Add in low moderation in foreign languages, and you have a disaster. We've seen this, for instance, in Myanmar, where the Rohingya genocide, even the United Nations, has implicated Facebook as partially responsible. And after they were implicated in that, they quietly ended their internet.org program for zero rated data for Facebook in Myanmar.
Maggie Perzyna
Not only is the mis and disinformation on Facebook affecting the way migrants travel to the US, it also affects the way those in the US view migrants and immigration.
Katie Paul
When we see the disinformation about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, it's really racist disinformation, and we know that it may have started as misinformation as you know, the advance campaign heard things from their constituents that they didn't really confirm and passed on. But since it has been confirmed as false, and they have acknowledged that and continued to perpetuate that, that's really where we see it as reach the realm of disinformation. It has a specific goal of denigrating immigrants, even ones that are here legally, and it's doing something with a specific goal of creating negative connotations around this community to push immigration policies in a certain direction, as opposed to just being a rumor that got out of hand.
Maggie Perzyna
And for now, Katie says it seems like Meta has no interest in fixing these issues.
Katie Paul
We know from whistleblower documents that people within Facebook, researchers, executives, have raised solutions to some of these issues. Have researched that these things are happening, raised solutions and been shot down because it would hurt the financial bottom line of the company. There have been shareholder resolutions, but unlike other tech companies, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg owns the majority of shares and can shoot down any shareholder resolutions. I believe Mark Zuckerberg said he's, there's no more apologizing. He's, you know, he's not apologizing anymore. And that's pretty shocking, considering the role this company plays.
Maggie Perzyna
With such a wide reach, it's no wonder that the content on Facebook plays such a huge role in the way people migrate and how immigration is viewed. But Katie says there are ways to make sure you don't fall prey to disinformation and to avoid spreading it further.
Katie Paul
When it comes to arming yourself against disinformation or you see something that you think is kind of fishy, or maybe a meme like, oh, that doesn't seem true. Go to traditional news sources. Why? These are held to different journalistic standards. These are companies that have to go through specific fact checks, vetting, confirmed number of sources before they can ever publish something online. Now we see traditional news agencies doing fact checks on crazy viral stories like the misinformation and disinformation about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, that are doing fact checks on these to confirm the stories, and that's the kind of information you need rather than just trading memes of accounts you may not be familiar with online.
Maggie Perzyna
Katie Paul is the director of the Tech Transparency Project, many thanks to her for sharing her insights on the role of social media and shaping public opinion and policies, especially around migration and global human rights. Joining me today to explore the intersection of social media, disinformation and how these can impact immigration policy are Anatoliy Gruzd and Mattias Ekman. Anatoliy is the Canada Research Chair in Privacy Preserving Digital Technologies, and a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. He's also the director of TMU's Social Media Lab and a part of the Canada First Research Excellence funded program Bridging Divides, which is examining how advanced digital technologies are impacting immigrant integration. Mattias Ekman is an associate professor at Stockholm University specializing in far-right online strategies and the politicization of migration. Mattias studies the role of conspiracy theories like the great replacement in spreading disinformation and fueling xenophobia in Europe. Thank you both for joining me today.
Anatoliy Gruzd
Thank you. Thank you.
Maggie Perzyna
So, let's start with some background. Can you tell me briefly about your current project and the research questions that you're trying to answer? Mattias, let's start with you.
Mattias Ekman
Yeah, I've just finalized two projects looking into the normalization of racism in relation to migration and migrants within the Swedish context. So, we have looked at in total of seven years on how the immigration issue has been politicized in a negative way, and also how the boundaries of publicly acceptable speech around immigration and immigrants has been pushed further and further out to the right, so to speak, and also how internet and online communication play a significant role in this process.
Maggie Perzyna
And Anatoliy, what research questions are occupying you these days?
Anatoliy Gruzd
Yes, so, at the Social Media Lab, we're examining digital discourse, public discourse across multiple social media platforms, because that's where people are. And we did notice how the topic of immigration and refugees being used by different kind of actors, to sit divisions in different societies, to polarize society, and essentially to weaponize this topic of immigration. And it's not just in Canada, it's around the world. So, we take a case study approach to look at specific groups or specific conflicts where this type of discourse prevalent, to try to understand what are the common narratives and frames used to either support immigration or against immigration, and also who are the actors involved? So, that the end goal for us is essentially to understand how social media platforms can be used to support more meaningful discussions, policy discussions, democratic discussions on these topics, as opposed to politicization and polarization topics.
Maggie Perzyna
So, let's lay out a little bit of background information. How would you define misinformation and disinformation? Mattias?
Mattias Ekman
I think the European Commission and the specific group called the High Level Expert Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation actually produced a very good definition of this information in 2018. And they call disinformation, "all forms of fake, inaccurate or misleading information designed presented and promoted to intentionally cause public harm or for profit." And I think this definition is good because it points out that information needs to be deceptive. It needs to have potential for harm, and it has to have an intent to harm, whether as misinformation could just be false or misleading information spread for no particular purpose or unintended. So, disinformation distinguishes through its intentionality.
Maggie Perzyna
And Anatoliy, who is spreading false information about immigrants and migrants and why?
Anatoliy Gruzd
Well, so, quite often we see partisan actors actually using that type of narratives against immigrants and refugees, essentially to draw support towards their causes or create a distraction on the other hand. So, for example, in our recent paper, when we examine anti-refugee narratives against Ukrainians displaced due to the Russia-Ukraine war, we found that it's a lot of pro-Kremlin actors who are often on the far right of the political spectrums, either in Europe or the US or Canada, are using this, the language the narratives against Ukrainian refugees to either undermine support for Ukraine or kind of to to mount political attacks against those who support Ukrainian refugees in particular countries. And you can see a range of attacks. Some of them do use misinformation or disinformation, if it's done with intention. I. But others will just trying to tap into the human nature of existing conspiracy theories around immigrants. For example, saying that immigrants might be dangerous, kind of using security threat narrative, or they cannot integrate within the society, or just purely identity attacks, so against immigrants of certain race or ethnicity. You see that range of attacks and a range of actors, but quite often it comes down to the politically motivated actors, partisan actors in a particular country.
Maggie Perzyna
Mattias, what's your perspective from the Swedish context?
Mattias Ekman
Yeah, I can point to two very concrete examples over the past years. We had one quite large disinformation campaign aimed at Swedish social service agencies, and this disinformation campaign was orchestrated by militant jihadists outside Sweden and targeted particularly Muslim immigrants living in Sweden. And the campaign was basically stating that the Swedish Social Services kidnapped Muslim children, took them away from their parents, and then put them in Christian homes instead, in order to de-Muslimize or de-Islamize them. So, this is an example of an sort of multinational campaign that actually attracted a lot of immigrants within Sweden in relation to the social services, and very recently, during the European elections in May, June, 2024 an investigative reporter at one of our news channels infiltrated the second largest party, the far right Sweden Democrats and their communication departments, and it turned out that they had hired several people to work as trolls online. Basically, spreading information with cloaked identities or seemingly public identities in order to affect the outcome of the election, mainly by spreading information regarding political opponents, but also in relation to their biggest issue, which is immigration policies and immigrants. Those are two very recent example of disinformation campaigns, or disinformation strategies by two very different political actors.
Maggie Perzyna
Anatoliy, you've written about Twitter as an imagined community. Can you tell us about that idea?
Anatoliy Gruzd
I'm glad you mentioned this, article. So, the concept of imagined communities emerged from, not just on the internet, but in the real world. We try to apply the Anderson concept to Twitter, and it was about 10 years ago where social media was a different place, where we viewed social media as a place for good, as a place for these communal discussions, collaboration. A lot of activist groups, pro democratic movements use social media so and that's where that paper emerged, trying to understand whether Twitter is or can be used to create this imagined community. Since then, many things changed. Where we saw social media being weaponized by bad actors. Where it's trying to target a particular group. Where you have bots, you know, automated accounts propagating mis and disinformation or just hate speech. So, I would actually add probably time to revisit that notion, or that article from 10 years ago, whether Twitter is still a place for us to imagine as a community there certainly. It's certainly true for some groups, fringe groups, or some communities that may not see themselves in the mainstream media or mainstream platforms, and that's where they may be drawn to. And it's not just Twitter, of course, with Elon Musk leading Twitter, the content moderation policies have been lacking and all this hard work that content moderators built around Twitter safety and wellbeing are kind of disappearing, sadly, in my view, on X. And so, as a result, you may see those imagined communities on Twitter becoming much more far right and much more hostile towards diverse opinions. So, maybe for them, it is not imagined, but actually a community where they can kind of post anti-immigration, hateful comments and polarizing topics. But yeah, it is kind of an interesting concept that can be applied to different platforms. And depending what community are we studying, it's maybe a yes or no answer.
Maggie Perzyna
Mattias, what do you think?
Mattias Ekman
Yeah, I agree, particularly when it comes to Twitter X that since the overtake by Elon Musk, it has changed dramatically, even if that transformation was visible before that also. And the sad thing, I think it's that there are very few alternatives to the major players within the platform industry, so to speak. Either people are facing sort of that very negative down spiraling as on X, or they're stuck in very small and perhaps even echo chambered communities on other platforms. So, this idea of an of an open place for deliberation seems to be very hard to affiliate with the structure and infrastructure of commercial social media platforms.
Maggie Perzyna
So, I guess, related to the question of mainstreaming, Mattias, you've written about how the theory of great replacement has been mainstreamed. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?
Mattias Ekman
Yeah, I mean, the conspiracy theory of the great replacements is basically an idea that immigrants are used as political tools for vicious and malevolent political leaders in the West in order to make the ethnic native populations in minority. And of course, it ties into older conspiracy theories such as white genocide, which is a neo-Nazi fascist conspiracy from the 1980s or the idea of Eurabia, which is very similar to the great replacement, but that sort of flourished 15 years ago online. And the mainstreaming process of the idea of migrants not only posing a threat in terms of a more traditional anti-immigration rhetoric, but also existential threat to native cultures and nations, has been going on for quite a while, spearheaded by political figures at the absolute top in Western European or a European context, by Prime Minister Orban in Hungary, Fico in Slovakia, and also by various right wing political parties in various countries. And the idea that immigration is not, that immigration can't be explained by, for example, migration waves due to conflict, war, famine and other more traditional explanations, but that it's an orchestrated plot to actually change the demography in Western countries in favor, particularly for Islam and Muslims, seems ridiculous, but is actually being more and more accepted as a political argument in various contexts. So, we can see a mainstreaming process in the sense that political leaders and political actors who couldn't express these views before now actually does it online and in public debates. And in Sweden, for example, we have a clear example with our second largest party, the far right party, Swedish Democrats, who on several occasions have advocated the idea that Muslims are actually not only immigrating to Sweden and Europe, but also with the intent to change the whole structure of nations within the West.
Anatoliy Gruzd
And I can just add also, it's not just in Europe. We also see this conspiracy theories taking root in Canada. I'm looking at a message on X by Maxime Bernier, the leader of the People's Party of Canada. And the Tweet says, "it's not a far-right conspiracy theory. It's a mathematical reality." He said, "We are being replaced by immigrants". And that particular message got over 1 million views on X. And so, I agree it's becoming mainstream in a way that, you get a lot of, actually the leaders that speak and support this conspiracy theory don't get a lot of pushback, and they do have those communities on far right side of political supporting and amplifying their messaging. While you can fact check a particular claim on social media or elsewhere, when the party leaders, like, in this case, Maxime Bernier or others are using that language, it's really hard to fact check politicians. So, and that's where the democracy becomes at risk.
Maggie Perzyna
So, I guess, connected to this question and to this issue of mainstreaming, how does misinformation contribute to xenophobia or anti-immigrant sentiment in society, in general? Mattias, what have you found from your research?
Mattias Ekman
I mean, it's a very large question. I would say that both misinformation and more, sort of strategically orchestrated disinformation campaign are used for political purposes, not only in election campaigns, but also sort of more strategically in the long run, in order to affect public perceptions of immigrants and immigration. And also the idea that citizenship is tied to ethnos, to ethnicity or cultural background, is also something that has been sort of played up in the political discussion. To a larger extent, the idea that you can't be a Swede or a Canadian or French without sort of sharing the same cultural background. So, it's also a backlash towards the idea that a nation could build on demos, the idea that we could all be citizens if we share sort of a set of common values, not depending on our particularly ethnical language or nation national backgrounds. So, I think that I mean misinformation is, is one thing, and disinformation is, is easier to trace to specific political projects. And I would say that the far right in Europe has been quite successful in a very long term strategy in order to change, or at least attempt to transform, public perception about both nationality and what it means to be a citizen or a potential citizen. So, we've talked about the political side of the spectrum and those actors. What about the mainstream media? How do they factor into this issue? Anatoliy?
Anatoliy Gruzd
Well, sadly, mainstream media now often have to kind of hunt for eyeballs online as well, so that sometimes dictates the editorial decisions, the topics they cover or don't cover in reality, and as a result, they may go in more sensational stories. So when, let's say, Donald Trump made his infamous remarks about supposedly Haitian immigrants eating pets, like eating dogs and cats, that message went viral. And so, you know, a number of far right influencers online reposted it. But you also see a huge coverage of this topic by the mainstream media, and potentially indirectly, trying to, even if they trying to dismiss that claim, mostly focusing on that viral nature of it and amplifying it as well. So, sometimes you can have that backfire effect when mainstream is trying to put a spotlight on dangerous conspiracy theory. And in fact, it actually introduces more people to it, if it's not done right. But just essentially, to summarize, in my view, because you have mainstream media derived from advertisement revenue, trying to find other ways to bring viewers, viewership and readership to their platforms, they may the editorial choices or the type of topics they covered, uncover the play into that, unfortunately. So, you may not view some of the mainstream media as an arbiter or of truth anymore, because they may be also playing this partisan game.
Maggie Perzyna
Manufacturing consent. Mattias, your thoughts?
Mattias Ekman
Yeah, I agree to a certain degree. I also think that we need to make distinction between various media systems. I mean in highly commercialized media systems, for example, the tabloid industry in the UK, it's very obvious that tabloids have sort of spearheaded anti-immigration and also anti-immigrant sentiments for decades. Whether, as in other media systems, we can also see legacy media or mainstream media playing a quite positive role in combating these sort of political forces that pushes the boundaries of acceptable speech further. So, I would say that mainstream media has the possibility also to counter disinformation and misinformation and negative politicization of the immigration issue in various contexts as well. So, it's not the sort of black and white picture. I think it's context dependent. And it's also, I think, dependent on what type of legacy or mainstream media we are talking about, because it's not one unit. It's a very diverse system of various actors that looks very different depending on context, but also in terms of what kind of mainstream media we're talking about. So, I still have some sort of faith in in the role of mainstream media, particularly in relation to the huge information flows on social media, which is uncontrolled and very hard to verify in terms of sources and accuracy. So, mainstream media plays a very important role within a more complex hybrid media system.
Maggie Perzyna
Anatoliy, based on your research, are there any regions or countries where the impact of social media disinformation on immigration policy has been particularly stark compared to others?
Anatoliy Gruzd
There are many examples, it depends on the time frames. But looking at right now, we focus on Canada specifically, and we've been observing this increasing rhetoric against immigrants refugees in this country. And now you know this morning and reading articles that the Liberal government is to announce a major drop in immigration to Canada, to I think they're trying to match about 5% of population going forward, which right now about 6.5%. So, that's an example to me, how this campaign against immigrants and refugees to this country over the last couple of years resulted in that. Forcing the current government to drop immigration rates. Whether justified or not, but the reality that you have this perhaps minority trying to go in kind of mainstream, getting into divisive points, using anti-immigration rhetoric to change the policy for the whole country, and it seems to be working. So, we don't so essentially, to answer a question, we don't need to go far to look far for examples. Here in Canada, that's happening already.
Maggie Perzyna
Mattias, what are your thoughts?
Mattias Ekman
Yeah, I think the impact of disinformation is stronger in countries where trust to public governance, to traditional mass media, is lower than general. So, it's easier to penetrate, so to speak, if there is a general low trust among the public. So, I think a question of resilience towards disinformation on social media is sort of higher trust within society in general, both in terms of public institutions, but also trust in each other and in legacy media. So, but as Anatoliy said, I mean, it's easy to find examples where this trust also could erode quite quickly around certain questions, particularly if an event or an issue becomes highly negatively politicized by political forces who want to gain from it.
Maggie Perzyna
What strategies can governments, advocacy groups and the mainstream media used to combat the spread of misinformation.
Mattias Ekman
Well, I guess I mean, an informed and enlightened public is the best defense towards misinformation and disinformation, and in order to have that, of course, you need strong education. You need deliberate debate on political issues in society, which also includes opinions that you're not comfortable yourself, but there that's up for debate. So, I think it's a very in an essence a systemic question, that if you have an open, flourishing, democratic society, you will also provide resilience towards disinformation among the publics. But of course, that's also very hard question. If we look at the trends around the world today, we can see that many countries are going the other way, that there is less trust, there is diminishing democratic structures and dismantling of the democratic structures. Within Europe, for example, we have several very concrete examples of nations where democratic institution has been eroded by political power. So, I think that it's not about single strategy, it's more about providing a society with various factors that could sort of amplify and strengthen the democratic institutions and practices within a society.
Anatoliy Gruzd
Yeah, I agree. It's not one kind of tool that can fix it all. And when we examine different mis and disinformation campaigns and different contexts, for example, during the COVID 19 pandemic in Canada, we did notice that when a surge of Canadians relied on mainstream news outlets, whether online or in print, to get up to date news and information about COVID and the vaccination rates were quite high during that time. So, that means that the source where people get the information and news is quite important, especially if it's coming from credible sources. Unfortunately, we do have that shift, and the scenario where you have underfunded journalism, mainstream journalism, that doesn't have capacity to cover and do detailed investigative work and fact-checking the way they used to, and then you have users, especially the younger population, going into the online spaces and getting the news from Tiktok influencers. So, those are trends that are quite problematic. What other tools we can consider other than, of course, supporting journalistic practices, funding mainstream journalistic organizations, we can also look at online spaces and what are the intervention strategies that can help us to at least slow down the spread of misleading and false claims around different topics, including around refugees and immigration. And so one of the studies we looked at warning labels, especially fact checking labels on social media posts, and we did find that even just you add a little bit of notice, that the content of the message kind of alludes to or represents a misleading claim, that slows down the engagement with that particular content substantially. But platforms, unfortunately, social media platforms, unfortunately, are not interested in slowing down the spread of a particular message because they want things to go viral. So, that's kind of in conflict with their business interest, and that means we as a society, as policy makers, need to keep pressing on social media platforms to make those environments more credible, make sure that false and misleading claims are not amplified just so that they get more ad revenue.
Maggie Perzyna
So, with the dawn of AI and as misinformation becomes more sophisticated, how do you see the impact on policy and public sentiment evolving? Mattias?
Mattias Ekman
Yeah, I mean, it's obviously that generative AI techniques will complicate already very complicated situation in terms of huge amount of information flows, which is hard to fact check, verify and so forth. And obviously, since AI techniques and technology are available, they can also be used with malevant intent by people and groups and actors who want to do harm in society, to polarize groups against each other, or to create sort of animosity and fear in general. I would guess that it will become, or it's already becoming, a very important policy issue in order to understand not only the more sort of existential threat that AI perhaps poses against humanity, but more concrete things concerning, for example, huge scale disinformation campaigns which is also enabled by AI technology. So, I guess it will have a huge impact, and it already has, obviously, if you look at the sort of transnational political debate around AI. But I also think it's something worrying that it's quite hard to foresee how such combat resilience would be provided to a technology that is evolving all the time, which it's also very hard to overlook how sophisticated and how complex it will look in a couple of years. So, I think it will be a great challenge to policymakers, to researchers and to the society as a whole, how to deal with information created, steered, amplified by AI technology.
Anatoliy Gruzd
Yeah, generative AI poses a big challenge for the democratic institutions and our society, because we, as technology becomes more and more realistic in terms of content, it produces images and videos becoming more realistic. It's becoming harder and harder for us, average social media users to figure out which is real authentic and which is not. So we need to make sure that the platform, the tools, software that generates those generative AI content, will place special watermarks or some kind of licensing as part of the file content they generate so it's easier for systems displaying that content to flag to the end users that, hey, this content was generated with such and such software. And so while you know, I'm sure hackers can create their own generative AI models, but to bypass those licensing and what we're talking about at least covering those more popular platforms, like things you create with child ChatGPT, or other generative AI tools. So licensing is essentially allowing end users to be informed and aware that this content they're looking at is actually fake is quite important, because the scale with which the content is being created is humanly impossible to fact check everything, right? So, even right now, we can look at the fact checks by professional organizations. It's only the content that goes viral that usually being fact checked. But when we look at the means and disinformation content that is circulated in Canada by actors in Canada, we're usually considered by larger fact checking organizations and platforms as a relatively smaller country, and sadly, most of the fake, false, misleading claims on social media platforms are not labeled as such in Canadian spaces. So yeah, so you have to go to the source where the content is being generated so it's properly kind of labeled as such. But of course, how do you, quote, unquote, encourage platforms to do that? That's through effective, you know, policymaking within each country, you have to kind of demand that to be happen. Otherwise, technology companies probably will be reluctant to to put more efforts and tools unless they're required to do so.
Maggie Perzyna
So, I think you've both made an excellent case already, but we'll conclude with the question, why is this research important? Mattias?
Mattias Ekman
Well, I think it connects to wider issues on how social media and the digital in general has evolved over the past 10, 15 years, and the threats and challenges this poses for democracy and democratic societies. And I think not only the issue about immigration and immigrants, but also public issues and questions of deliberation and participation in society in General are at stake when we see so much information that are spread, disseminated with the sort of malicious intent, but also for political purposes by actors that that want to divide or splinter or just gain for their own political views online. So, I think it's important to contribute to a wider discussion on the digital within democracy, I think. So, I think research has a important task in order to bring up democratic issues, or democracy as a system, to their agenda when it comes to discussions on of social media platforms, internet communication and so forth.
Maggie Perzyna
Anatoliy, same question for you. Why is this research you're doing so important?
Anatoliy Gruzd
Well, just like Mattias said, it's because of the importance that social media platforms and other online platforms hold in our society. Their ability to impact public opinion is significant, and as more people are getting their news and updates about major political and cultural events from social media as information professionals, as an information scientist, I feel responsible to kind of put a spotlight on what's happening in online environments on social media, how that impacts our society, how it impacts democratic institutions, and what can we do about it? We talk about some of the strategies to combat misinformation, well we need to do research to understand where misinformation is happening, when it becomes harmful, when it's disinformation, how do you detect one or the other? We talk about generative AI challenge. How do you detect that a message was generated by generative AI and features fake content? How do you inform users about it? Because the way you inform them about it can also have a backfire effect. They may actually think it's real by just you trying to tell them that it's not. So all that requires rigorous academic research where we can cross validate our intervention strategies and apply it to different domain areas. So, it's scary to see what's happening in terms of the anti-immigration, anti-refugee rhetoric, how it's been politicized and used in polarizing contexts around the world. But I'm also excited as a researcher with the range of tools we now have to detect and study this type of information propagation, and I'm hopeful, but we have to be vigilant. We have to be vigilant.
Maggie Perzyna
Thanks to Anatoliy Gruzd and Mattias Ekman for joining me today and thank you for listening. This is a CERC Migration podcast produced in collaboration with Lead Podcasting. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe to Borders & Belonging on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information on misinformation and disinformation surrounding migration, please visit the show notes. Do you want to share your thoughts or additional research on the spread of misinformation about migrants and refugees through social media. We'd love to hear from you. Follow the Borders & Belonging LinkedIn page and be part of the conversation. I'm Maggie Perzyna. Thanks for listening.
