Canadian Digital Media Research Network

The network was established in 2023 and has since monitored the elections in Alberta in 2023 and British Columbia in 2024, the federal election of 2025, the 2026 Québec election and the 2026 Alberta referendum, building on MEO’s earlier work on the 2019 and 2021 federal elections and the 2022 Québec election. In October 2023 it published the first report on the Canadian information ecosystem, a map of how Canadians produce, share and consume information. The 2025 federal election report found no evidence of material covert foreign interference, but it also found an environment shaped by influencers, digital manipulation and polarization, with manipulation attempts and claims questioning election integrity undermining public trust. For the October 2026 Québec election, the network published a baseline portrait of the province’s information environment and weekly updates through the campaign. Ahead of Alberta’s October 19 referendum, it reported on the influencers, AI content and foreign interest shaping the online debate and on election fraud claims circulating before the vote.

Three findings recur across this work. First, political influencers are now louder than news outlets or parties: during the 2025 campaign they produced nearly half of all political content, compared with 28% from news outlets and 18% from politicians. Second, the conversation is largely a Canadian one, driven by creators here. Foreign state interference in 2025 was minor, while domestic information disorder was significant. The exceptions are notable precisely because they are rare, such as the Russian state funding of Tenet Media that paid Canadian influencers. Third, the platforms themselves have changed the ground. Meta’s withdrawal took most Canadian news off Facebook and Instagram, engagement with federal Conservative politicians on X rose 52% after Musk’s takeover, and researchers have less access to platform data than they did five years ago. The AI platforms make choices of their own: chatbots answer from Canadian journalism but rarely name the outlet, and under sustained pressure, some produce harmful content far more readily than others.

The network’s investigations have exposed operations that profit from Canadians. During the 2025 election it found platforms hosting and profiting from AI scam ads that imitated CBC and CTV. It identified a foreign-run network of 340 Facebook pages pushing AI-fabricated news to audiences in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Europe for ad revenue, funded in part by Canadian advertisers. And it uncovered a network of 20 inauthentic YouTube channels selling Alberta secession and U.S. annexation, which was taken down after the report was published.