Building Resilience in a Digital Age: The Spread and Impacts of Disinformation in Canada’s Ethnocultural Diasporas

Dr. Bessma Momani’s work examines disinformation and how it is experienced by ethnocultural communities in Canada. Her research focuses on a pressing societal problem: the ways different communities encounter, interpret, and respond to false or misleading information. Through this project, she sought to better understand the specific challenges ethnocultural groups face and to generate knowledge that can inform policymakers, government, and civil society organizations.

A central finding of Dr. Momani’s research is that ethnocultural communities process disinformation differently from the broader Canadian population, with important variation across communities. These groups often face a “double burden”: they must respond both to disinformation connected to their countries of origin, often from government-linked sources, and to disinformation targeting the general Canadian public. The research also found that disinformation within ethnocultural communities often circulates through family and social networks, making it more difficult to challenge than information coming from anonymous or unfamiliar sources.

Dr. Momani emphasized that community leaders are already aware of many of the challenges their communities face and are often doing the difficult work of pushing back against disinformation. Prooviding more funding to civil society organizations and communities that represent ethnocultural communities would help these leaders and groups to fight the problem head on.