Disruptive Information in Canada - by Ahmed Al-Rawi (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This book examines Canadian news content that references different terms related to fake news and disinformation while providing an analysis of Canadian journalists' views on how to report on fake news and its impact in today's society.

Disruptive Information in Canada presents a discussion on the public's discourses on disruptive information in relation to Canadian issues, as the majority of previous studies are limited to the US or European contexts. It offers unique insight into fake news reporting and discourses in Canada since it examines several main areas like news coverage, journalists' views, advertising, and trolling on social media.

This book offers a new theoretical conceptualization of our post-truth era by introducing the concept of "Disruptive Information" via focusing on news and social media content as well as journalists reporting on these issues. With the use of a mixed methods approach, it provides different insights into this important topic.

Review Quotes

Disruptive Information in Canada is an important book for critical technology scholars, political economists, journalists, and policy makers who want to understand the current state of misinformation, disinformation, and other disruptive information in a Canadian context. The book is thorough, well researched, and provides solid empirical evidence of the complex domestic and geo-political forces influencing the spread of disruptive information. Al-Rawi situates the challenges of disruptive information for Canada, showing that information operations interacts with each person's community, media exposure, and individual psychology to spread information that is detrimental to democratic engagement. A must read for anyone concerned about the health of democratic communication in this country.
Jaigris Hodson, Canada Research Chair in Digital Communication for the Public Interest (Tier 2), Royal Roads University, Canada

An impressively comprehensive guide to understanding how disruptive information is deployed in both Canadian news media and online discourse. It's an essential text if one wants to make sense of this often disorienting age of disinformation and misinformation.
Adrian Harewood, Professor of Journalism, Carleton University, Canada

Confused, conflicted, feeling tricked? For years, Ahmed Al-Rawi has questioned how Canada's media system works and doesn't. Pulling together his wide-ranging research, his book introduces the novel concept of disruptive media to explore how successful media manipulation today leaves us less informed, as well as how the business of confusion is driving our contemporary media system.
Fenwick McKelvey, Associate Professor, Concordia University, Canada

About the Author

Ahmed Al-Rawi is Associate Professor of News, Social Media, and Public Communication at the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He is also the founder of the Disinformation Project. His research interests are related to news, global communication, and social media with emphasis on Canada and the Middle East. Al-Rawi is also a founding member of the Media & Digital Literacy Academy in Beirut, Lebanon. His new research project which is funded by a SSHRC Insight grant investigates the issues of racism and democracy from the perspective of racialized Canadian journalists, the online public, and news content, partly to understand whether racism negatively influences democracy.