The Parti Québécois (PQ) Instagram account experienced a prodigious and suspicious jump in new subscribers in the days leading up to and following the elections. The party president says he does not know what explains this growth, but that the “competent authorities” have been asked to investigate a possible attempt at foreign interference.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Wednesday at 8 p.m., when The Press began reviewing account activity, the PQ had 287,000 followers on Instagram. Thursday at the same time, it had more than 328,000, and it continued to rise.
Growth has been so rapid that social media engagement analytics tool HypeAuditor was still showing the PQ account as having less than 13,000 followers on Thursday night — which it did until recently.
What explains the phenomenon? “The prevailing theory for the moment is that we don’t know,” drops party president Jocelyn Caron. “What is certain is that it is absolutely not our doing and that we have never had anything to do with it,” he says.
“If we had bought these things, it would appear in public reports, then we would look like a nice bunch of dishonest people, which we are not”, defends Mr. Caron, referring reports on Elections Québec’s election expenses, which are made public in the months following the election.
If it were real subscribers, this wave would make the PQ the leader in this area, and by far. Québec solidaire has some 53,000 subscribers on Instagram, and the other parties much less. The Coalition avenir Québec has about 12,000 subscribers, while the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party each have less than 7,000.
But the vast majority of recent PQ subscribers have all the hallmarks of fake accounts.
They have usernames like “brianturnerpraggykpmi” or “nikatartookat3542181275”, and follow hundreds or thousands of other accounts, but only have a few dozen followers themselves. The content they post seems randomly chosen and shows little to no engagement.
Foreign interference?
According to Mr. Caron, they also come from abroad, notably from Russia, Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia. Do we fear foreign interference? “We don’t know,” repeats Mr. Caron. “A priori, when we follow politics, we can say that this may be it,” he adds, referring to American politics, in particular. But it could just as easily be people who want to “taunt” the party, he says. “We have absolutely no idea. »
“What I was told was that the competent authorities were going to investigate, then perhaps come back to us on this,” said Mr. Caron.
It’s a bit strange. This is not the modus operandi that we are used to observing in what we know of cases of attempted foreign interference.
Alexis Rapin, researcher at the Multidimensional Conflicts Observatory of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair
Mr. Rapin points out that it is possible that private and domestic actors are behind the campaign, even if the accounts come from abroad. However, the objective remains nebulous.
Political attacks via social media have already targeted Canada. In 2018, Saudi “trolls” waged a smear campaign on Twitter on the sidelines of a diplomatic crisis between Canada and Saudi Arabia over activist Raif Badawi. They criticized the “cultural genocide committed against the natives” in Canada and defended “Quebec’s right to become an independent nation”.
The novelty here is the electoral context, notes the researcher. Consequently, “the sensitivity of the issue is greater”.
The Press sent a series of questions to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), which “has the role of investigating activities that could pose a threat to the security of Canada”.
The federal agency notes that “Canada remains a target for cyber espionage, sabotage, foreign interference and terrorism,” but does not answer any of our questions. “CSIS cannot publicly comment on, or even confirm or deny, its investigations, operational interests, methods, and activities,” spokesman Eric Balsam said.
By late Friday evening, the PQ had some 397,000 followers on Instagram.