Foreign ministry raised alarm on countering disinformation

Canada s foreign ministry has expressed concern over its diminishing capacity to counter foreign disinformation online due to limited data access and evolving adversary tactics, as revealed in a recently released memo. The memo, presented during a federal inquiry into foreign interference, highlighted Canada s leadership in the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) for identifying and responding to threats to democracy through open-source data analytics. Deputy Minister Marta Morgan, at the time, warned that the data analytics capacity had become increasingly constrained, mainly due to a sudden and unforeseen denial of sanctioned access to data from social media platforms. The memo, dated between summer 2020 and October 2022, underscores the challenges faced by RRM Canada in providing policymakers with situational awareness and insight about potential foreign interference online. The memo also emphasized the difficulties in identifying foreign state-sponsored activity online, as adversaries blur the lines between domestic and foreign actors, and overt and covert messaging. The challenges are further amplified by a pandemic-related infodemic and the proliferation of social media platforms used by adversaries. To continue fulfilling its mandate, RRM Canada is exploring alternative avenues, such as elevating engagement with social media platforms through the G7 and expanding partnerships with civil society partners and scholars for real-time information and data exchange. The memo s release comes amid a federal inquiry focused on agencies ability to detect, deter, and counter foreign meddling. The inquiry also examines the experiences of diaspora communities and the flow of information in an era of mistruths and polarized views. In an interview with the inquiry, Taylor Owen, an associate professor at McGill University, highlighted the complexity of gauging the effect of media content on people s behavior. He emphasized that behavior is influenced by a person s experiences, beliefs, values, politics, and overall media consumption, rather than any single piece of content. The MEO, a collaboration between McGill and the University of Toronto, faces restrictions on accessing social media data

Source: ctvnews.ca
Published on 2024-09-25

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