A ‘Tiny Minority’ of Social Media Accounts Drive Canadian Conspiracy Content

A new study looking at how conspiracy claims spread on social media found that people who use X, formerly Twitter, are much more likely to both be aware of and believe conspiracy theories.

Demographically, people aged 35 to 54 were more likely to believe conspiracy claims than younger (18 to 34 years) and older (age 55 and up) age groups. Men also had a markedly higher belief in these claims than women.

But the study also found that while the majority of Canadians are aware of conspiracy narratives, a much lower percentage actually believe those claims.

Researcher Mika Desblancs-Patel, one of the authors of the Media Ecosystem Observatory study, said it was important to look at how conspiratorial claims spread and whether people actually believe them, because this kind of content can erode citizens’ trust in government and democracy. The Media Ecosystem Observatory is a collaboration between McGill University and the University of Toronto.

“Given that we do see conspiracies as a stepping-stone towards general political distrust and skepticism, we did think that it was an important time to study it,” Desblancs-Patel said.

“If we look at our neighbours down south, institutional skepticism and just general distrust in government authority have led to the political climate that we have in the U.S. today.”

The researchers looked at a number of common conspiracy claims that have been showing up in Canadian social media discourse:

• Public health threats like COVID-19 are exaggerated to expand government control.
• Schools are indoctrinating kids with “radical gender ideology.”
• Major Canadian media outlets conspire with political elites to manipulate public opinion.
• Vote counts are faked during Canadian elections.
• Digital IDs are used by the government to secretly control Canadians.
• Wildfires in Canada are intentionally started to advance an “eco-agenda.”
• Canada fakes environmental data on climate change to expand government control over Canadians.

To study the extent of conspiracy claims in Canada, the researchers did a survey of 1,459 Canadians, asking whether respondents had encountered specific conspiracy content and whether people believed the claims. In addition, the researchers analyzed over 14 million social media posts on X, Bluesky, TikTok and Instagram.

Although conspiracy content is commonly found on Facebook, it’s very difficult to get Facebook data from Meta, so the researchers did not include that platform in their analysis.

The research group’s report on their study points out that conspiracy content becomes popular during times of crisis when people are feeling unsettled. “They help reduce anxiety and restore a sense of control amidst uncertainty by offering coherent explanations for complex events.”

Desblancs-Patel said the research team found that the majority of Canadians have encountered one or more of these conspiracy claims on social media, but a much smaller number of people actually believe the claims.

For instance, 63 per cent of survey respondents had heard of public health conspiracy claims, but only 13 per cent of respondents believed them. When it comes to the belief that schools are teaching “radical gender ideology” to kids, 54 per cent of respondents were aware of the claim and 21 per cent believed it. For the other six claims, belief ranged from eight to 16 per cent of respondents.

“We see these initial results as reassuring, that Canadians don't believe en masse in these conspiracies,” Desblancs-Patel said. “But we do want to flag that it's not all reassuring in the sense that awareness was still quite high.”

Widespread awareness of conspiracy claims is a concern, Desblancs-Patel said, because seeing these claims repeatedly can act as a “stepping-stone” to lead social media users from healthy skepticism of government and institutions to total mistrust — and that can have a negative effect on society as a whole.

Across all the platforms the researchers analyzed, X hosted the highest volume of conspiracy claims and had 70 per cent of engagement in the form of “likes.” Users of X were “significantly more likely to be aware of and endorse conspiratorial claims than users of other platforms or infrequent social media users,” according to the Media Ecosystem Observatory report.

Desblancs-Patel said the reason X has become such a hotbed for conspiracy content can likely be traced back to changes implemented by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022. Musk, an enthusiastic backer of U.S. President Donald Trump who played a large role in his early administration, changed the name of the platform to X and introduced sweeping changes that gutted the platform’s safety team and introduced a paid option to boost accounts’ visibility on the site.

On his own X account, Musk has increasingly posted and reposted white supremacist, transphobic, anti-immigrant and other far-right content.

“His opinions do have a very strong conspiratorial leaning... and his voice is being amplified,” Desblancs-Patel said. “X also has now built this connotation of being a good supplier of ‘alternative’ news.”

Desblancs-Patel said the Media Ecosystem Observatory’s study also shows that much of the conspiracy claim content is being created by a small number of accounts.

According to its social media analysis, just 100 social media accounts push out 68 per cent of conspiratorial posts. Those posts capture 90 per cent of views and 80 per cent of likes. The content these accounts are posting about include talking about the deep state, election fraud and the idea that the news media and politicians are working together.

To counter the proliferation of conspiracy content, the researchers are suggesting some fixes.

They want to see greater transparency from social media platforms, so researchers and social media users can get a better understanding of how recommendation algorithms work and users have more control over what content they see. They say the European Union’s Digital Services Act provides a model for compelling platforms to reveal how content recommendations work.

The researchers are suggesting that “pre-bunking” — public education campaigns that tackle common conspiracy narratives — can be effective, especially before elections or wildfire seasons or during public health emergencies.

The researchers are also recommending that digital creators who already have large followings could team up with governments, independent agencies and civil society organizations to help with media literacy and pre-bunking initiatives.

This article is part of The Tyee’s reader-funded Reality Check project exposing and explaining the rise of digital disinformation.