成人大片

成人大片 Master's students share their experience researching the impact of mis- and disinformation on immigrants and immigration policies, as part of four Bridging Divides projects at the Ted Rogers School of Management鈥檚 Social Media Lab.

The , an interdisciplinary research laboratory at the Ted Rogers School of Management at 成人大片 (成人大片), has recently to study the impact of mis- and disinformation on immigrants and immigration policies. Led by the Lab鈥檚 co-directors Anatoliy Gruzd, Canada Research Chair in Privacy Preserving Digital Technologies and Researcher at Bridging Divides, and , Senior Researcher and Director of Business and Communications at the Social Media Lab, the initiative is part of the Bridging Divides program.

Student researchers from 罢惭鲍鈥檚 M.Sc. Data Science and Analytics program, Sameer Ladha, Vaidehi Atodaria, Ricky Yu, and Pavleen Brar, are already working under the supervision of Dr. Gruzd on four projects for the Bridging Divides initiative as part of their Major Research Projects.

鈥淲e got an email explaining this unique opportunity to work with Dr. Gruzd,鈥� says Ladha. 鈥淢y research background is different, coming from psychology at Carleton University, but I鈥檓 interested in the topic and how relevant it is today.鈥�

Ladha is examining the relationship between political polarization and the spread of hate speech about refugees and migrants. He鈥檚 identifying public Reddit groups (subreddits) and relevant YouTube videos from which public discussions on this topic can be analyzed. Narratives and counter-narratives on social media inform the intersection of public policies, misinformation, and personal biases; by analyzing these narratives, the project seeks to understand the dynamics behind the spread of hate speech and its possible connection to misinformation about refugees and migrants.

Atodaria is collecting posts shared on public Facebook groups and pages to study how these positive, negative, or mixed attitudes shape public discourse on immigration. Coming from both undergraduate and graduate programs in computer science, she鈥檚 expanding her data literacy by using methods such as sentiment analysis and topic modeling in her research.

The central aim of this case study is to uncover the potential impacts of geopolitical strains on immigration and diaspora communities in Canada. Facebook was selected as the primary source due to its diverse user base and because it is the . 

鈥淚ndia-Canada immigration-related discourse is especially relevant because of the between India and Canada,鈥� she explains. By examining these public posts related to Indo-Canadian relations, Atodaria may be able to see 鈥渟pillover鈥� effects related to immigration topics, such as negative posts discouraging immigration to Canada.

Yu entered the Data Science and Analytics graduate program straight from the University of Toronto, where he majored in physics and astronomy while completing a minor in data science. Working on this research as part of Bridging Divides allowed him to gain experience applying data science techniques to answer empirically significant research questions.

More specifically, he鈥檚 examining a Twitter dataset of over 1.8M posts with the #StopAAPIHate hashtag to counter racist and hateful messages targeting Asian Americans and Asian Canadians, a significant number of whom are immigrants.

鈥淲e鈥檙e conducting sentiment analysis on public discourse around immigration topics, with a goal of developing a way to extract common keywords depending on the sentiment expressed in a tweet,鈥� he says. By uncovering patterns of potentially coordinated hate campaigns on social media, Yu believes his project can find insights to inform protective strategies against targeted and coordinated attacks towards immigrants.

Brar entered the Data Science and Analytics program to gain an in-depth understanding of machine learning after six years of experience as a data scientist at Hewlett-Packard. In her project, she is using topic modeling to analyze a dataset of over 7M posts disseminated by the official Twitter account of Russia鈥檚 Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2011 to 2023.

This case study aims to understand the extent to which the Russian Foreign Ministry strategically employs immigration and refugee-related themes as a potential tool for propaganda against the West (including Canada). With over a decade of data, examining these tweets鈥� content, frequency, and framing sheds light on how pro-Kremlin communication strategies shape Western perceptions of migration issues.

Together, these four studies, which cut across four very different social media platforms, are part of the Lab鈥檚 larger research initiative to provide policymakers with a better understanding of the forces that are driving much of the anti-immigration and anti-refugee narratives online and offline. Studying and understanding these narratives can help build more effective countering strategies against online mis- and disinformation about immigration and foster more inclusive and informed public discussions about immigration and the immigration policies that will continue to shape Canadian society.

This article was originally written by the Social Media Lab team and edited for Bridging Divides. Read the full article .