Social Media Monitoring – CEO Appearance: Supplementary Estimates (B) 2019-20

Subject: Social Media Monitoring

Key Message

• Elections Canada established a dedicated Social Media Monitoring Unit to provide timely, actionable information to support effective election delivery and communications, and to safeguard Canadians’ trust in the electoral process.
• We proactively published, on our website and through our social media accounts, quick facts to address inaccurate information circulating on social media about the electoral process. For example, content about the accuracy of the National Register of Electors and rules around campaign lawn signs.
• Through our social media monitoring, we were able to improve our situational awareness and respond more quickly to incidents and developments across the country that may have interfered with electors’ ability to vote.

Facts

Mandate:

The Social Media Monitoring Unit monitored relevant keywords in public social media posts to detect:

• Events that could impede electors or election delivery
• Feedback on Elections Canada’s services
• Websites and social media accounts that falsely claimed to belong to Elections Canada
• Inaccurate information about the electoral process, whether intentional or unintentional

Platforms we monitored:

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Tumblr, WeChat, SnapChat, TikTok, and various online forums.

Team:

During the writ period, there were 18 FTEs monitoring in 21 languages. They worked from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 midnight daily (longer on polling days).

Findings:

• Incidents: The team detected and followed several incidents across the country. For example, in the cases of Hurricane Dorian and the Manitoba storm, it gathered information on power outages, road closures and evacuations.
• Feedback on EC services: The team found isolated reports of line-ups and other issues at the polls. It also saw some reports of issues with other matters, such as voter information cards and applications on the EC website.
• Inaccurate information: The team did not find widespread inaccurate information on where, when and ways to register and vote. However, it did find many instances of inaccurate information about other aspects of the election process, including voter eligibility and ballot handling procedures.
• Accounts using EC name or variants: The team found several such accounts, seemingly with little reach. We followed up with the platforms to request removal of these accounts (see summary below).

Limitations of monitoring:

• Due to the way some platforms are configured, we could not see all relevant public posts (this was especially true for Facebook).
• We had no visibility into private groups on social media platforms, or into private messaging apps, such as WhatsApp.

Summary of impersonation accounts / inaccurate information reported to digital platforms:

• 28 cases were reported to digital platforms from August to October 2019. As of March 6, 2020, 20 were removed.
• Some additional accounts have been removed since the election.
• We are still working to have certain impersonation accounts removed.
• In some cases, the platform will not remove the account because it is inactive, or because the way the account is using the Elections Canada name does not violate the platform’s terms of use. None of these accounts has high volumes of followers or activity.
• In one or two cases, Elections Canada did not receive a response from a platform.
• We have been working to follow up on all cases and/or accounts that remain a concern to the agency.