Nearly a third of voters said they were exposed to misinformation during the last Quebec election in 2022, according to a report released last Thursday.
This is double compared to the Canadian election campaign of 2021, where 16% of Quebecers then indicated that they had read, seen or heard misinformation. This includes false information deliberately disseminated in order to mislead, but also those relayed accidentally, explained the director of the Election Disinformation ProjectMathieu Lavigne, in an interview with Duty.
With his colleagues, he collected more than 2.3 million posts on Twitter related to Quebec politics during the elections. They also conducted a two-part survey: the first with approximately 3,500 respondents during the election campaign and the second with 1,547 of them after the election.
According to the researchers’ conclusions, the misinformation that circulated on social networks during this period focused mainly on the COVID-19 pandemic and the integrity of the electoral process. “One of the themes that was really dominant was the question of the use of lead pencil to vote,” said Mr. Lavigne, during an event held Thursday for the unveiling of the report. “Some thought it would allow election workers to erase votes or change them. »
He notes that the volume of false information concerning electoral integrity peaked during the advance polling period as well as the day after the election.
This misinformation was mainly propagated by a small group of Internet users suspicious of democratic institutions, argued Mathieu Lavigne, who is also a researcher affiliated with the Center for Media, Technology and Democracy. An online community that has grown stronger in the context of the health crisis, he continued.
Such speeches, however, find little support in the general population, he qualified.
Among the false information that Quebeckers say they have read, seen or heard during the election campaign, the erroneous – and highly publicized – declaration of the former Minister of Immigration, Jean Boulet, stands out. 73% say they have been exposed to it.
During a debate, Mr. Boulet had wrongly asserted that “80% of immigrants go to Montreal, do not work, do not speak French or do not adhere to the values of Quebec society”. He later changed his mind on Twitter, saying he had “poorly expressed” his thoughts.
Little influence on elections
As in the 2021 federal election, around 40% of Quebecers believe that false information represented a “serious problem” during the 2022 elections.
According to his analyses, however, nothing suggests that misinformation could have had a decisive impact on the results of the elections, argues Mathieu Lavigne. “There was no significant movement in voting intentions during the election campaign,” he argued.
In addition, 72% of respondents indicated that they were confident in the election results. Thirteen percent said they didn’t trust and 15% said they were ambivalent or didn’t know. “The level of confidence remains comparable to that observed in previous elections,” said Mr. Lavigne.
Those who knew less about the electoral process generally had less confidence in the electoral results, raises the director of the project. According to him, more education on this subject would improve the situation.
For example, only 53% of Quebecers surveyed knew that all votes are counted by hand in Quebec elections.
In the fight against misinformation, social networks also have their role to play, insisted the researcher. “We can demand more transparency and accountability from digital platforms to better understand what content is being amplified,” he argued.