How non-traditional media platforms have played into this federal election

The ongoing Meta news ban has made it increasingly difficult for news organizations to cover this federal election campaign and share their reporting via social media. As a result, some non-traditional media organizations have begun to play an increasingly influential role in this election cycle.

Justin Ling is an investigative reporter based in Montreal. Riley Yesno is an Anishinaabe scholar and commentator based in Toronto. Robyn Urback is a current affairs columnist at The Globe and Mail.

Today on Commotion, the three political commentators join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss the role social media and non-traditional media platforms have played in politics and civic engagement in this federal election.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Riley, what are you hearing in terms of where people are getting their election information?

Riley: I find it scary because even though there can't be news on so many of these platforms, people do still feel like they're getting all their information from these platforms…. There is, I think, a growing number of people who are in places like Substack and Discord and Bluesky and Signal, who are still able to share information there and to get things there. But it's definitely more curated, and probably is very specific to their media ecosystem and their politics. And so it's not a big picture. 

I notice myself on my newsfeed, I follow these accounts that post year-round, and often not about elections at all. So I'm thinking like @indigenous.tv. And I usually follow them for memes and media updates. And then all of a sudden when the election comes around, they switch to posting more left-leaning news. And people are sharing them that I know, and liking them. And then I have a moment of being like, "We're sharing @indigenous.tv as the news of this campaign?" So there are these unlikely voices and players that have entered into the election race, both on the right and the left. Though I do agree that I think the left is much worse at it, and has less of a presence and power, perhaps, there than the right does….

Elamin: This stuff has real-life implications…. It ends up affecting the way that institutions function. A good example of this is what happened last week at the post-leaders debate scrum at the English language debate. Do you want to elaborate on what happened there? Because I do think it's a perfect example of how sometimes something that you think is only happening online knocks directly at the door and says, "No, no. It's also right here."

Justin: Yeah. I mean, the really short version of it is that a constellation of right-wing broadcasters, including Rebel News, the biggest of the lot — which is not a journalism organization; it is registered with Elections Canada as a third party advertiser. It has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars … advertising against Mark Carney, right? So they are advertising a political partisan organization. They showed up to the debates. They got accredited, after a bunch of legal threats. They got room for 16 of their staff, and they decided to monopolize the post-debate scrums, and then disrupted the initial French debate so [much] that after the English debate, they canceled all the scrums. They got their way. 

You know, they were inside meddling with the debates, and they were outside driving a box truck around that said Mark Carney has ties to Jeffrey Epstein and that he is a big fan of Hamas. Like, this is all of the weird, kooky Twitter conspiracy theories kind of metastasizing in real life and actually disrupting a thing that is really important, right? The leaders debate, and the access journalists get to our leaders afterwards — and I know there were so many people at home watching TV going, what's happening? Who are these people? How did they get here? How did we get here? And it's really a shame.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender.