Bots and Indian TV spread fake news about Canada after clashes with Hindu temple
A wave of misinformation about Canadian institutions is fueled by dubious bot accounts on social media and pro-Modi news outlets in India, which could threaten relations between Sikhs and Hindus in Canada.
CBC News reported in Surrey, BC and Brampton, Ont., in November. He reviewed hundreds of posts on X and dozens of hours of footage posted on YouTube in the days before and after the clashes near Hindu temples.
The analysis identified several posts containing misleading and inflammatory comments about the Khalistan movement, which advocates an independent state for Sikhs, and Sikh Canadians in general, which were re-posted by questionable accounts.
Some of these claims were later repeated in Indian media outlets sympathetic to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A parallel analysis of pro-Khalistan accounts also revealed numerous unverified claims, but only marginal amplification by dubious bots.
Even before the clashes last month, Global Affairs Canada’s media watchdog said “Modi-aligned” media outlets in India were pushing “frequently heated” stories alleging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government was aligned with Khalistani extremists.
Ward Elcock, the former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), said that continued opposition to the Khalistan movement is an integral part of the Hindu nationalist ideology that the Modi government has promoted both at home and abroad.
“The violence of those demonstrations (in Brampton and Surrey) shows that this agenda (in Canada) has become something better than any of us realize,” Elcock said.
A feeling of insecurity after confrontations
Sikh separatists have been demonstrating outside consular events at Hindu temples since Trudeau claimed the Indian government was involved in the 2023 killing of prominent Khalistan activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey.
These demonstrations, though small, are often held near the temple entrance and may chant provocative slogans such as “Who supports Nijjar’s killers: Hindu temple”.
Demonstrations in Surrey and Brampton last month were met by counter-protesters. Within 48 hours, a series of confrontations took place, resulting in several arrests and condemnation from politicians across the spectrum.
“Almost everyone who has been here for 10, 15 or 20 years was of the opinion that they should never have to deal with this,” said Balwinder Singh, who hosts a Punjabi-language call-in radio show from the basement of his home. in Brampton.
“They never thought … they would feel safe in Canada.”
In the days following the demonstrations, social media was abuzz with unconfirmed allegations of retaliatory violence, government impunity and police corruption.
CBC News investigated the activity of six accounts on X during the first two weeks of November: three belonging to prominent Canadian influencers who frequently criticize the Khalistan movement, and three belonging to prominent Canadian advocates of the Khalistani cause.
CBC News used publicly available data to calculate how many times a post was reposted by an account with bot features. The D.C.-based Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab defines a suspicious account as one that posts more than 72 times per day.
This type of analysis does not identify who is controlling the bots or whether they are coordinating with each other.
For example, pro-Khalistan accounts published unconfirmed claims that Indian diplomats were using places of worship to establish a spy network. But there was little evidence that these posts were significantly boosted by questionable bots.
The account belonging to Khalistan’s leading advocate Gurpatwant Singh Pannu has only 3,600 followers. CBC News discovered 13 suspicious bots pushing its content in early November; The other two pro-Khalistan accounts in the sample had their content amplified by fewer than 10 bots.
Suspicious bot accounts cause misinformation
On the other hand, posts by critics of the Khalistan movement showed evidence of significant amplification by suspected bots.
Two of the accounts received more than 1,000 retweets from different suspicious bots, and the third had more than 500.
Daniel Bordman, a Toronto-based journalist for The National Telegraph, a right-wing publication with 70,000 followers on X, had the highest bot participation in our sample, receiving about 6,000 retweets from about 1,800 questionable accounts when we expanded the analysis to include it. all of November.
Three men were arrested after a series of violent demonstrations outside a Hindu temple and a Sikh gurdwara in the Toronto area over the weekend. Similar clashes occurred in Surrey, B.C., and came at a time of heightened tensions between Canada and India.
In at least two cases, these questionable bots reinforced misinformation posted by Boardman.
For example, on November 13, Boardman released a video of a gathering in Surrey where yellow Khalistan flags were seen.
“Khalistanis are marching around Surrey, BC, claiming ‘we own Canada’ and ‘white people should go back to Europe and Israel,'” Boardman wrote. offensive term and implies that Canadian foreign policy is shaped by Khalistanis.
Boardman’s post has garnered nearly 1.5 million views and 16,000 likes and has been retweeted more than 5,000 times. As of last week, 469 of those reposts were from suspicious bot accounts, CBC News reported.
Boardman’s post was cited in reports on the incident by NDTV, one of India’s most popular television networks, and by the Delhi-based financial publication Mint. Other major Indian media also covered the event.
But contrary to Bordman’s description, the video shows Sikhs singing hymns during a religious ceremony called Nagar Kirtan.
The original video belongs to local vlogger Inderjit Singh Jaswal, who live-streamed the ceremony saying “we own Canada” and “white people should go back to Europe and Israel”.
In a Nov. 17 Instagram post, Jaswal said he was not a “Khalistani” and that his comments in the video were aimed at people who made racist comments live.
“Thousands of racist people came there (in the comment section) and abused our gods, our culture, our values,” he said in a video showing the racist comments he received during the live stream.
“Why did Daniel (Bordman) hide the comments? I was responding to racist people,” Jaswal says in the video. He released a separate video giving a similar explanation in Punjabi.
Boardman later appeared on the podcast to discuss Jaswal’s explanation. He mocked and imitated Jaswal’s accent and called him a “mentally deficient Khalistani”.
In another post, backed by more than 370 suspicious bot accounts, Boardman claimed that two Surrey police officers were caught on video performing Gatka, a Sikh martial art, at a religious festival. .”
Boardman added: “Can we trust these two to be honest arbiters of justice?”
A day later, NewsXLiveA Delhi-based pro-Modi news channel aired a segment on the Surrey video, questioning whether the officers “can be trusted as impartial enforcers of justice”.
Pro-Modi media has a size advantage, Ottawa says
Press freedom in India has declined significantly since Modi came to power in 2014, according to Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.
Many of the country’s largest media outlets are owned and controlled by Modi loyalists, and their coverage is often sympathetic to the government’s goals, according to a 2023 Reporters Without Borders report.
Global Affairs Canada said in a September report that the size of its audience, which includes diaspora communities, means that fashion-oriented outlets “have a distinct advantage in reinforcing negative narratives about Canada.”
Boardman has given numerous interviews over the past year to Indian media, including ANI, which is known for its pro-Modi bias and disinformation.
In an interview with CBC News, Boardman said some of those media appearances were paid, but declined to specify which ones.
“I will never take money from the Indian government,” he said.
Bordman said given the size of his following on X, it’s not unexpected for bots to repost some of his content.
“Some bots retweeting me? Sure,” he said. “But I don’t think bots are that important in the propaganda they have.”
“The New Normal”
The presence of artificial social media activity in online discussions of Sikh-Hindu relations in Canada is not new.
Researchers at the Media Ecosystem Observatory at McGill University in Montreal discovered remnants of a bot farm spreading the same anti-Canadian messages in mid-October, shortly after the RCMP linked Indian government agents to the killings and other acts of violence. In Canada.
India on Saturday formally challenged the Canadian government’s claim that the country’s powerful Home Minister Amit Shah had ordered the targeting of Sikh activists inside Canada, calling it “absurd and baseless”. More details: cbc.ca/1.7371969.
Earlier this year, social media company Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) announced A group behind a so-called pro-Sikh activist movement called Operation K had taken down fake accounts.
The company said the network operating the accounts was based in China and that the campaign was targeting Sikhs worldwide, including Canada.
“This is the new normal,” Aengus Bridgman, who heads the Media Ecosystem Observatory, said of the proliferation of bot activity on sites like X.
He said politicians and social media users should expect some degree of manipulation “to happen with every issue.”
Singh has completed another broadcast of his radio show For the guard (meaning harmony in both Punjabi and Hindi languages), he said he was concerned that the flow of misinformation was creating tension between the two communities that had once coexisted peacefully.
He said “a narrative has been created” aimed at making Hindus and Sikhs fear each other.
“I think it’s very, very dangerous.”
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