Flame wars: Carleton researcher on team tracking how misinformation spread in last year’s wildfires

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What caused the unprecedented wildfires that raged through Canada’s forests last year?

According to some online sources, it was lasers, drones, weather control, eco-terrorism and state-driven arson.

This type of misinformation circulated widely as people searched for information about evacuation and support services.

The chaos affected political leaders managing the crisis, firefighting, evacuation routes and residents making decisions about the safety of their families and communities, said the authors of Flame Wars: Misinformation and Wildfire in Canada’s Climate Conversation, a report from a team of experts on digital networks, climate communication and misinformation, including Carleton University’s Chris Russill.

“There was a lot of misinformation,” said Russill, an associate professor of journalism and the academic director at Re.Climate, a centre for climate communication and public engagement. “We wanted to have a bit of explanation for what happened.”

The team, which included researchers from McGill’s Centre for Media, Technology, and Democracy, McGill’s Media Ecosystem Observatory and Climate Action Against Disinformation, identified accounts, events, key terms, and hashtags on X (formerly Twitter) to “map” the conversation. Any accounts that used the keywords at least six times was included, yielding a sample of about 13,000 accounts, with 11, 620 active when the researchers pulled the data.

The accounts included those of political leaders, major media outlets, journalists, Environment Canada and celebrities. Former academic and commentator Jordan Peterson and author Margaret Atwood ranked among the top 20 most influential accounts. 

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One of the narratives the researchers tracked was the “arson explanation” for the fires.

Online conversations began in May and surged in June 2023, with right-wing and anti-establishment groups posting and reposting content claiming that arsonists, not climate change, were responsible for the fires, and suggesting that the federal government and left-wing extremists started fires.

“Arson is not climate change it’s done on purpose to push climate communism. Our government is probably responsible,” tweeted former hockey player Theo Fleury. 

People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier tweeted: “I bet a good portion of the wildfires raging across the country were started by green terrorists who want to give their climate change campaign a little boost. The far left are experts at inventing and creating crises that they can then exploit.”

The narrative showed skepticism of any emergency that requires state intervention and suggested elites had created the crisis or were using it to control people. “You saw this idea that governments are trying to support global elites,” said Russill.

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This narrative was not unique to Canada’s wildfires. During the August 2023 Maui fires in Hawaii, rumours and conspiracy theories circulated that the U.S. government or a foreign actor had used “energy beams” to start the fires. One rumour claimed there was a reason why the homes of billionaires like Bill Gates had been spared. 

Arson actually does happen, as do planned ignitions by government agencies, said Russill. But it’s misleading when facts or images are taken out of context, exaggerated or re-contextualized to advance an ideology, narrative or alternative explanation that’s false or misleading, he said. 

Arson was a minor factor in Alberta fires last year, for example. But none of the large-scale fires that threatened communities were determined to be caused by arson, according to figures provided to Postmedia by Alberta’s forestry and parks ministry last year.

As of Dec. 5, out of a total of 1,121 wildfires counted, 91 were deemed by investigators to be caused by arson, affecting a total of 262 hectares — about 0.01 per cent of total land affected by wildfires in 2023.

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Chris Russill
Chris Russill is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Communication and Academic Director at Re.Climate, a centre for climate communication and public engagement, both housed at Carleton University ott

Meanwhile, in a bizarre twist, a 38-year-old Quebec man who had posted online conspiracy theories that forest fires were being deliberately set by the government pleaded guilty to starting a series of fires. In January, Brian Paré, 38, pleaded guilty to 13 counts of arson and one count of arson with disregard for human life. Two of the fires forced the evacuation of around 500 homes in Chapais, Que.

Some of the misinformation could be traced back to the 2021 federal election, when social media posts suggested that if the Trudeau government was re-elected, there would be climate lockdowns.  Some influencers “retrofitted” narratives originally meant to attack the public health system, said Russill.

Misinformation capitalizes on vulnerabilities in the communications system, including distrust of media and fears that inequalities will be intensified, said the study.

Social media platforms gained audience on the back of promises that they would build community, said Russill. But they need to ask themselves if they want to give a megaphone to rumour, lies, misleading content, misinformation and even violent fantasies in life-and-death situations, he said.

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In May last year, the mayor of Yellowhead County in Alberta, Wade Williams, urged residents to get accurate information. 

“Take Facebook and throw that damn thing in the garbage,” he said. “There is so much false information out there, it’s unbelievable. I’m just stressing to people, get the proper information and don’t spread the gossip. It’s ridiculous what’s out there right now.”

There needs to be a better understanding of why people like to engage with conspiracy theories, said Russill. There’s also a need for transparency on the part of digital platforms.

Moving forward, the researchers want to study the lived experience of those dealing with misinformation during a crisis — such as emergency managers, first responders, political and community leaders, local media to get a better sense of its significance and to learn how professionals prepare and cope with it.

People should choose their information sources and digital platforms with care and engage with information in a more deliberative way, especially in times of crisis, said Russill. Investigating a source and tracing claims to their original context are good ideas. But these are band-aid solutions that transfer a problem generated by poor regulatory frameworks to people who use social media platforms, he said.

“Something isn’t working and it’s not as simple as to better educate people,” said Russill. “Without demanding better from them, as consumers or through better regulation, I don’t see a clear way forward.”

The larger problem is that there’s distrust and that challenges social cohesion in times when its badly needed, he said.  

“That distrust is corrosive. You would have expected that we would all have come together. We need to be able to draw on commonality in crisis moments.”

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