QAnon

By Scott DeJong When it comes to understanding the Freedom Convoy and right-wing extremism, play offers a unique entry point. A week into the Freedom Convoy, a new symbol for the occupation graced social media: a bouncy castle. The children’s play feature, at first, seems off-kilter for a movement whose arrival in Ottawa began with ...

This Blog post is the second—the first is HERE—in a four-part series of article summaries from the EU H2020-funded BRaVE project’s  First Monday Special Issue exploring societal resilience to online polarization and extremism. Read the full article HERE [Ed.].  By James Fitzgerald The rise of QAnon presents researchers with a number of important questions. While emerging literature ...

By Marc-André Argentino What is the cost of propaganda, misinformation and conspiracy theories? Democracy and public safety, to name just two things. The United States has received a stark lesson on how online propaganda and misinformation have an offline impact. For weeks, Donald Trump has falsely claimed the November presidential election was rigged and that’s ...

By Vivian Gerrand The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified calls for urgent action to mitigate some of the worst harms societies are experiencing as a consequence of time spent immersed in social media environments. During the lockdowns, this immersion has gone from partial to almost total. While social media enables information to travel fast, it allows disinformation to spread ...