In total, there were 20,463 tweets from Russian trolls and 13,079 from Iranian trolls over that period, which included one of over 50 keywords relating to Canadian political life. He said he’s seen tweets by Iranian trolls written in French falsely linking former prime minister Stephen Harper to ISIS ahead of the 2015 election. He’s seen Russian trolls falsely suggesting the man who killed six people in a Quebec City mosque in 2017 is innocent. In other instances, though, Al-Rawi found state trolls from Russia and Iran amplifying messages about Canada, seemingly directed at Canadian citizens. In the case of Russian trolls, the disinformation came from the world of right-wing conspiracy theories.

Source: thestar February 18, 2021 10:52 UTC