August 2024: What's All This Buzz About Bots?

Executive Summary

This fourth edition of the Canadian Information Ecosystem (CIE) Situation Report covers the state of the information ecosystem in August 2024 as it relates to politics, media, and democracy, combining digital trace data across TikTok, X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Telegram with monthly opinion tracking and media monitoring. Prompted by the bot activity on X surrounding Pierre Poilievre's visit to Kirkland Lake in late July and early August, the report focuses on what bots are, the threat they pose, and who is responsible for addressing them. (This month's report excludes Facebook data following Meta's shutdown of CrowdTangle.)

Canadians want government involvement in the fight against bots: public opinion this month shows a preference for the government to investigate bot incidents on social media (58%), while many Canadians also believe social media platforms should do more (44%). Asked how the government should respond to the Kirkland Lake incident, most wanted the RCMP (54.4%) or the Election Commissioner (57.8%) to investigate, and only 44% thought social media companies should publish transparency reports. While 60.2% of Canadians consider bots an effective tool to mislead the country, they view generative AI and foreign interference as bigger threats to democracy.

The ecosystem became slightly more polarized, with increased insularity scores across all parties indicating communities are drifting apart, NDP and Liberal members in particular were more divided, perhaps foreshadowing the dissolution of the supply-and-confidence agreement. Engagement with misinformation and concern about fake content rose: Canadians were slightly more concerned about generative AI (+2.3%) and foreign interference (+1.8%) than the previous month, while engagement with links to known misinformation sites increased (+6.8%).