As Alberta referendum nears, seeds to dispute results planted online: report
Researchers at McGill University have found no evidence that recent strikes on Russian bot farms have impacted online discourse regarding Alberta's upcoming independence referendum. They suggest that the perceived 'inauthentic' activity is actually driven by a highly active, passionate local community.
Why it matters
This highlights the challenges of distinguishing between genuine grassroots political movements and foreign interference in digital democratic processes.
Just days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said strikes on Russian bot farms halted some of that traffic online, social media researchers at McGill University say they’ve found no significant change in “inauthentic” online discourse connected to the Alberta referendum.
However, they’re warning that significant narrative groundwork has been laid to contest the validity of the next week’s vote.
Researchers are McGill’s Media Ecosystem Observatory (MEO) have been keeping tabs on the online discourse around the province’s referendum which will ask, among other questions, if Albertans want a binding provincial vote on independence from Canada.
With widespread concerns about foreign interference in the vote, a narrative began circulating last week that Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centres had led to a drop in online separatist accounts — suggesting those accounts were inauthentic “bots.”
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