Toxic MisInformation Campaigns/Russia, Iran

"Over the past nine months at DisinfoWatch, we've observed social media accounts that were previously posting aggressively anti-Ukrainian content, adding anti-Zionist content to their toxic mix."

"We also know that Russian intelligence has been sponsoring antisemitic active measures and influence operations."

"We've observed a clear cross-over of pro-Kremlin/anti-Ukrainian and anti-Zionist/pro-Hamas narratives by prominent far-left and far-right influencers." 

"It's not at all surprising that there's a significant inauthentic network and activity being observed amplifying narratives that are supportive of Hamas. Their conclusions seem to confirm what experts and activists like myself have previously hypothesized."

Marcus Kolga, founder, DisinfoWatch, cyber-expert, The Macdonald-Laurier Institute

"Since Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, McGill [University] and its students have been the target of a co-ordinated inauthentic, and foreign narrative attack."

"The campaign extensively utilized inauthentic profiles to amplify the discourse and broaden the reach of the narrative. Many of these profiles are inauthentic foreigners."

"In summary, there is a very clear attempt by a foreign power to sow discord and incite public unrest within Canada."

"When the activity is authentic [it] is very different. This is due to the fact that with authentic activity, we don't see cases in which hundreds of thousands -- up to millions of accounts -- are operated to follow a certain command or to promote a certain target."

POZ using AI to combat disinformation

"Iranian intelligence now targets Western domestic cultural and political weaknesses and inflames them, as we saw in recent protests. If such an intelligence operation has been active in Canada, as reports suggest, most Canadians will not be aware of it."

"They may not be aware of the extent to which their protests or other activities have been amplified on social media by bots and trolls linked to [the Islamic Republic of Iran]."

Michael Bonner, historian of ancient Iran, senior fellows, Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy

The pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the McGill University campus. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)

 

Disinformation researchers, given reports of Iran's involvement by supporting anti-Israel activists in the United States, feel justified in their fears that a similar phenomenon is underway across Canada. Since the Hamas invasion last October 7 of southern Israel, Marcus Kolga has identified a spike in such activities. Reports of foreign governments stoking divisions in the West following conflict in Ukraine and Israel support the realities of foreign interference. In July a warning was issued by the U.S. director of National intelligence that the Islamic Republic of Iran was involved in anti-Israel online protests.

France, five months ago, laid an accusation against the Russian Federal Security Service, of a secret campaign to cover Paris with graffiti to plant fears of antisemitism. U.S. and Canadian intelligence agencies unearthed close to a thousand bot accounts in a joint effort; accounts whose purpose was to promote Russian government messaging, falling in line with efforts to exploit Western democracies. Now Iran has been identified as a major player in the network aligned with Russia.

Anti-Israel protests at McGill University were found in a new report from XPOZ, to have been boosted by a social media influence campaign with ties to Iran. XPOZ examined in their report how social media users spoke of the McGill encampment, interacting online with a disproportionate number of Farsi and Arabic commentators. Accounts that amplified support for the McGill student encampment, with open support for Hamas, while denouncing Israel for genocide in Gaza.

 

Pro-Palestinian encampment on McGill University's downtown Montreal campus 2024. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)

 

XPOZ reported that 60 percent of anti-Israel social media posts on McGill were posted by fake accounts, while the company found 75 percent of commentators critical of the encampment were authentic users. Close to 150,000 posts on X were utilized to produce the data which had collectively over a half million likes while eliciting over 65,000 comments. Fake accounts engage solely in political discourse by design. Network typology examined users' followers, people interacted with, their activity levels, language, retweets and likes.

Viral social media posts indicate how foreign actors amplified controversial messages since October 7, points out Joel Finkelstein, Network Contagion Research Institute co-founder. The Islamic Republic's decades-long campaign to infiltrate democracies fits into these foreign interference findings. Historian Michael Bonner with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy called on the federal government to impose "appropriate limits" on foreign meddling in domestic affairs and to properly recognize "the dangers posed by ... actors who do not respect us or wish us well".

The post to the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill Instagram page shows several armed fighters reading books. The photo dates back to 1970. (sphrmcgill/Instagram)

"The claims being made by the research may be hard to determine in specificity, but are largely uncontroversial in terms of broader trends. Based on our data these assertions align with observed  trends and are credible."

"The hashtag campaigns we've analyzed, such as #FreePalestine, are often inauthentic, driven by co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour. Our findings consistently confirm this trend, which is why these analyses are crucial."

Joel Finkelstein, co-founder Network Contagion Research Institute