(MENAFN) In recent times, Canada finds itself immersed in a growing sense of suspicion surrounding China, with Ottawa asserting that Beijing is orchestrating a bot-driven campaign on social media platforms. The purported aim? To discredit critics of China within Canadian political circles, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Despite repeated claims by Canadian intelligence services, substantive evidence supporting this allegation has remained elusive. This surge of what some have dubbed "yellow peril" paranoia has now entrenched itself as the prevailing narrative in the country, echoed by mainstream media outlets.
A significant proponent of the narrative surrounding cyber-interference is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), an entity with a dubious authenticity as a think tank. It draws funding from the Australian Department of Defense, various Western defense industry corporations, and the United States Department of State. The question that naturally arises is why China would harbor such an agenda to meddle in a nation like Canada, which, in reality, lacks a definitive foreign policy of its own, often aligning itself with American directives. Yet, one thing remains evident, a pattern observed in past allegations of "Russian interference": claims of "foreign influence" and "social media manipulation" serve as a pretext for justifying and institutionalizing censorship and narrative control. This, in turn, leads to the marginalization of non-elite perspectives, branding them as conspiracy theories propagated by adversarial nations.
The year 2016 marked a pivotal moment in history, as it heralded the universal recognition of social networks' unprecedented power to shape public opinion and influence elections in ways that Western elites had never encountered before. This emergence posed a fresh challenge to their established dominance over media discourse, prompting a reevaluation of existing narratives and strategies for information dissemination.
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