Sustaining political community

[00:00:18] Barrington Walker: Welcome, I am Barrington Walker, Vice Provost for equity and inclusion and a professor of history at McMaster university and vice chair of the Board of Directors of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.  

[00:00:33] On behalf of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and McGill University, I'm delighted to welcome you to the final Big Thinking event at the 93rd Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, sustaining political community.  

[00:00:48] Today, Omayra Issa and Colette Brin will draw upon their work to discuss rising threats to democracy and what can be done to promote a more sustainable political community. They will be joined in discussion by moderator Francine Pelletier.  

[00:01:10] Today's event will take place in English and French as well as American sign language and Québec sign language, LSQ. We will be providing close captioning in English and French. Interpreters will appear on the screen, onstage, and on the zoom screen for those of you joining virtually.  

[00:01:30] For those of us joining in person, to access simultaneous interpretation, scan the QR code posted on the door as you entered in the room. For those of us joining virtually, you can click on the close captioning button to enable captions and use simultaneous interpretation, click on the interpretation button and select the language you would like to listen to.  

[00:01:55] Now, I am going to turn to a land acknowledgment. If you are joining us virtually, we recognize that the following land acknowledgment might not be for the territory you are currently on. We ask that if this is the case, you take the responsibility to acknowledge the traditional territory you are on and the current treaty holders.  

[00:02:17] We begin by acknowledging that McGill University, where we are gathered today, is on land that long served as a side of meeting and exchange among Indigenous peoples. We recognize and thank the diverse Indigenous peoples whose presence marks the territory on which we now gather.  

[00:02:38] Now, I have the pleasure of introducing the Big Thinking series. The Big Thinking series at Congress brings together scholars and public figures to address some of the most pressing questions of our time.  

[00:02:50] For Congress 2024 this series amplifies the theme of sustaining shared futures with conversations reflecting on what remains collectively attainable and what must be done to bring forth solutions for today with sustained systems of tomorrow.  

[00:03:04] On behalf of the Federation and McGill University, I would like to thank the leading sponsors of the series, The Canada Foundation for Innovation, Universities Canada, a presenting partner. Thank you for joining us today. Please welcome Gabriel Miller, president and CEO of Universities Canada, who will introduce today's conversation. 

[00:03:35] Gabriel Miller: Thank you, [Speaking Another Language] thank you, Barrington. This event has special meaning to me because for the previous seven years of my career I was the CEO of the Federation for Humanities and Social Sciences, and was intimately involved in the planning and organization of Congress. It's wonderful to be here with you not just in Congress but in the beautiful city of Montreal.  

[00:04:03] This Congress is one of the biggest in the world and we are very happy to be participating. It is a gathering of experts who will exchange on the news, current affairs, exchange their opinions and try to find new partnerships in order to build the future for Canada.  

[00:04:34] Because I haven’t been as busy at Congress this year as I typically have been, I have had a chance to reflect a bit on the event. It always takes me back when I first discovered it and walked back to my first Congress, at then was at Ryerson University in Toronto.  

[00:04:51] I had heard stories about this event that could attract 10,000 people, 60 or 70 different scholarly associations, lasting seven or eight days. I thought, that's not a conference I've ever seen. It must be something very unusual. It is. Congress is a very unique event.  

[00:05:16] For 90 years, through world wars, depressions, injustices and conflicts, Congress has continued, creating spaces for scholars across the country to help us understand our world and our country, and ourselves, in new ways. I think it is vitally important work.  

[00:05:41] I want to just say that from a personal point of view, how much I appreciate the work of the small team at the Federation who worked very hard over many years to make Congress possible. In addition to that, our scholarly associations, which I believe are a real jewel in Canada. Almost entirely driven by volunteers from the academic community themselves. So, thank you for your work. I am very proud to have worked with you and am looking forward to many more years of attending and supporting Congress.  

[00:06:24] This year's theme is timely. Canadians are facing tough social, economic, environmental, and technological challenges. We are facing rising threats to democracy fueled by political polarization and the fast spread of disinformation across society.  

[00:06:40] As a global community, we share the responsibility to bring forth solutions to guide us towards sustaining shared futures. During our next conversation, a panel of communication experts and democracy specialists will explore how we can respond to these challenges in order to have an inclusive and just society.  

[00:07:05] First I would like to introduce, a new friend of mine, Omayra Issa, who I along with others in Ottawa, was very happy to welcome her to that city over the past few months. She is an award-winning journalist for the Cable Public Affairs channel that connects Canadians to democracy.  

[00:07:25] Omayra has extensive journalism experience, having worked at Radio Canada anchoring Le Tele Journal Saskatchewan. And later worked at CBC news as a correspondent on flagship shows like "the national," and "world at six." She co-created and coproduced an internationally recognized series called "Black on the prairies," named one of Canada's top 100 Black women to watch.  

[00:07:55] Next, we have Colette Brin, Professor in the Department of information and communication at the University de Laval and director Centre d'études sur les médias. Throughout her 30 year research career, she has studied a range of contemporary media issues, from newsroom convergence to declining journalistic staffing levels and online public information practices and misinformation. Her most recent book provides a collection of studies on AI, culture, and media.  

[00:08:25] Finally, I am very pleased to introduce award-winning documentary journalist and journalist in residence at Concordia University, Francine Pelletier, who will moderate this discussion. Towards the end of the conversation they will take a few questions from the audience, or in person audience can ask a question by raising a hand and a microphone will be brought to you. Please, join me in welcoming our esteemed speakers and moderator to the stage.  

[00:09:12] Francine Pelletier: I thought that there would be thousands of you. [LAUGHTER] It's a smaller audience, but I know that there are many of you online who have joined us, so good morning and welcome. Welcome to this roundtable. Dedicated to -- we were going to talk about -- I don't know how to say it, but in Congress they have translated into French the sustaining, the word sustain. In French, I would say maintain, but we are not going to pick on the translations. Sustaining political communities is the theme of today, today's roundtable. It is a bilingual roundtable so that each panelist can choose the language of her choice, Ingrid -- English or French or both, I will do the same. You can also of course ask questions in English or French, it is up to you, it's a bilingual roundtable.  

[00:10:16] As you are aware, we are in a series of Big Thinking. Roughly translated in French, it's big challenges. That is the theme, the series of our conversations. So, if I understand well, we are not here merely to talk about major challenges of our era, but it is also in order to have a cross disciplinary for talking on the same topics.  

[00:10:55] So, it's a real privilege, I'm really honored to be here today. It is one of the largest gatherings on the world, in the world, particularly Canada. Therefore, let me kickoff the discussions. To define what we mean by political community, in the three other events that you might have participated in that were held during this Congress, sustaining nature, sustaining culture, sustaining AI, artificial intelligence, it's pretty clear what those terms mean. Everyone has a pretty clear idea of nature, culture, and artificial intelligence, but political community, at least this is how I feel, is not something quite so clear cut.  

[00:11:45] So, I thought it would be a good idea to tell you what we think we are talking about when we talk about political community. So, I think the best way of thinking about political community, and that's my two cents, is to talk about it in terms of political engagement. Which I defined in the following manner. Everything from members of a political party, like-minded activists that can be a part of a group or not, citizens who vote, and people who communicate political messages on social network. Those are all political communities. In my view it is the desire to engage in political discussion in order to influence the society we live in.  

[00:12:32] The other thing I thought would be helpful before launching into our discussion is to notice that contrary to the other three Big Thinking events -- nature, culture, artificial intelligence -- we don't think of political communities as threatened. We are certainly used to thinking of nature and culture in Québec, a big subject of discussion, the threat to French culture and artificial intelligence, not so much that it is threatened, but as it poses a threat, so I decided I thought this would be my first question to panelists. Do you think, do you think that the political community or political engagement is threatened today? And if so, how and why? Omayra?  

[00:13:27] Omayra Issa: Thank you, Francine. I would like to thank Congress, of course, for the invitation and the kind words. My answer to your question is yes. Is political engagement threatened? Absolutely it is in this moment. Let's talk about technology and the polarization of discourse in the digital age.  

[00:13:53] As a journalist, everyday I see this, right? We see it too in our daily lives, how people are on their devices and create digital spaces that are in many ways echo chambers that resonate with what they already believe. In many ways that creates a certain disassociation from place, right? When we talk about political organizing, political engagement, political community, a community is attached to a place. In the context of digital spaces, that is in many ways at stake.  

[00:14:32] Of course, coming with that is disinformation and misinformation. Democracy has been the consensus of how societies have organized themselves historically, is deeply at stake in the moment we live in. I mean, let's be frank, right? Our experiment with democracy has not been smooth. There have been very much limitations, right? When invoked, democracy, we have to think about who is excluded from the democratic process, right? Historically it is communities that are marginalized. Women, in moments. They have been excluded from the democratic project.  

[00:15:21] And I will just say one or two more things just to open up the conversation here. As we think about undemocratic political movements right now, we see them at stake in Europe, North America, we are seeing the wide rise of the far right, which in many ways refutes facts. When we don't have consensus on facts, then we don't have consensus on truth. When we don't have consensus on truth, we don't have consensus in the world we live in. When we don't have consensus in the world we live in, we certainly don't have consensus on political engagement.

[00:16:02] What is at stake in this moment in terms of the threatened moment around political engagement is our ability to live in a safe world. A recent, and I will just share a couple of data here for you, a recent poll by Abacus that was commissioned by the organization that I work with showed that more than three quarters of Canadians are concerned about disinformation and consider it to be one of the biggest threats to Canada.  

[00:16:36] Canada's security, Canada's sense of itself, Canada's myth of itself, how it organizes itself economically, politically, culturally. More than seven in 10 Canadians are concerned about the state of Canadian democracy. We know that means that trust in institutions is eroding right now.  

[00:16:59] I was just coming from Ottawa and foreign interference is at the forefront of everybody's mind, because it goes and points to where we are as a country and what many of our governments are having to deal with right now. And our citizens. I will just say one final thing about the far right, I was mentioning a bit earlier how it refutes fact, leads campaigns of disinformation very, very solidly and deliberately suppresses speech and, in many ways, through the digital platforms, the major Big Tech companies -- we have seen this historically, say in the genocide of the Rohingya, it was in many ways facilitated by meta, right? Those are the facts of the world we live in and the threat we are faced with right now as we think about our political communities.  

[00:18:12] Francine Pelletier: Thank you. Colette?

[00:18:13] Colette Brin: [Speaking Another Language] but I might go back and forth to English, occasionally. Thank you for the invitation. Privileged to be here. As a member of the Canadian Association of communication, I have been taking part in congresses for a long time now.  

[00:18:35] It's incredible that I've been invited on stage here. Usually I'm in the room. But this question is really interesting, even though I work in collaboration with other experts in political science, my research pertains to the media and information, mainly. So, I consider that journalism to be fundamental.  

[00:19:06] It is essential for democracy to exist. And I am really worried about the decline of my activity, of journalism, which is, which has enjoyed some comfortable conditions up through the 80's and 90's. Now journalism has eroded. Of course, we need to find an economic model to make it work and there hasn't been an equal development around journalism, so journalism was thriving thanks to dashed thriving. Thanks to inequality and exclusion, I believe that the digital world in which we are living today has fostered some kind of political engagement. When we talked about filtering and bubbles, yes, there are discourses. The polarization of discourse, indeed. Also, we have voices that we didn't hear before.  

[00:20:20] Namely, Indigenous communities can now be heard thanks to social media, including Facebook and others. Of course, I am against what Meta is doing against information and blocking that, what they are doing in Canada, but people have used those tools in order to express their opinion and show a different view of the world. This is diversity. I think we are in a transition where we need to learn how to keep what has been positive about the technologies and also integrate them into our realities. It is true, today there are many inequities and misinformation, disinformation exists. People are worried about that. What it is, maybe they believe that they are telling lies about us, about us as a group, they consider us disinformation sometime.  

[00:21:29] But first, we need to agree on the facts. Indeed, as you said. Journalism, with all of its imperfections, it was a space where we could agree on facts. It is shrinking, now. Declining. I see that a new generation that hasn't been educated to journalism as we understand it, they have difficulties in understanding what it is, exactly, journalism. Yes, sometimes it is opinions, but very often journalism is to listen. To listen to voices that are not heard and try to find a common ground. Common grounds today are very scared, very difficult to find in the fragmented space we are living today. Very fragmented, where each and every one can have its own virtual little space. A world where information flows extremely recklessly. I believe that for democracy, that for the political life, what is important is to have time, time to process and listen. At this time it is also shrinking, it goes too fast. But that is my personal opinion. There is a pressure to have everything immediately available. It is follow the progress and be ahead of technology, advances that mean we have lost basic, essential needs to take time, for instance, to be together and listen to each other quietly. And I believe that journalism is part of the solution, as my two colleagues next to me, we are a part of the solution, but it is really hard to take a step back from all of the noise, the hatred, and all of those dimensions that have been amplified today. We need to think together and take the time to do it.  

[00:23:55] Francine Pelletier: Well, thank you. Let's try and digest of this and distill. There are many topics that have been mentioned. Disinformation, polarization, discourse, exclusion, big technology, high technology, etc. So, we are here on stage, all experts in media, whether we studied it or worked with it. I would like to touch on what you have just said, Colette, regarding traditional media compared to social media.  

[00:24:35] This is the revolution that started 15 years ago, I think. We have not fully understood how profoundly it has changed the society. A former editor from "the Guardian," he wrote an amazing book called Breaking News. In the book, he explained how we shifted from an elite mentality, the club mentality to the mob mentality. That is to say up to very recently, 15 years ago, it was the traditional media held by a handful of white men, directors, they were gathering and they decided what we were going to read in your newspaper the next day.  

[00:25:26] So, someone was picking the news and put that on your table in your journal, your newspaper. But when the Internet rolled the digital revolution, now everybody can choose. Everybody. It's not a handful of people. It's not a club mentality. Everybody can choose. In theory, it is a fantastic democratic revolution, because many people can express their opinion. At the same time, it has consequences. Sometimes tremendous consequences. I would like to hear you both on the whole question of what is your evaluation of social networks, the impact of social networks, on democracy, on media as a whole, and on people for that matter. Omayra?  

[00:26:32] Omayra Issa: I think that's a really good question. You were mentioning how social media has democratized or at least given us the impression of the democratization of access to political space. This is not the case. This is what the idea was when Meta, Twitter, these major social media platforms were at their heyday of what they were supposed to do. You know? Everyone was excited. You could organize your movements, the BLM movement most recently -- although of course it didn't just start in 2020, some people think it did but it has been a long-standing tradition of Black political organizing.  

[00:27:28] So, the idea that everybody has -- can speak up and has the same level of access is in fact not true, right? Yes, anybody can go on twitter, send a tweet, go on Instagram and post something, right? But here's the difference, not everyone has access to influence, to power. That is where the question lies, right?  

[00:27:51] As we have this perception of democratization, of access, etc., we know the power is very much concentrated and increasingly concentrated with certain demographics, making it particularly dangerous in the moment we live in, right? Where in many ways social media platforms are fueling a regression of speech. What I mean by that is -- we have seen the campaigns of harassment against journalists of color, women journalists -- I can speak to this, I've been on the receiving end of this for years. Death threats, rape threats, people at the front line of reporting to the news being very much silenced. So, that is an important point to consider.  

[00:28:40] Francine Pelletier: Jumping in, are you saying that social networks, apart from giving the possibility for people to organize -- because it has done that, it has given people the chance to organizing and send out message that otherwise they could not have done, because otherwise they don't have the power or money to add their ties in a big newspaper, you are saying it is essentially being used as a hate medium?  

[00:29:12] Omayra Issa: I'm saying it's not a binary thinking. It's not one or the other. It's a very complex media landscape that we live in and we actually need to take in the complexities, the fragmentation, the political risks we are engaged in right now as social media platforms are more and more powerful. And you mentioned this, Colette, when Meta shut down access to information in Canada on its platforms, it had a huge impact and continues to have an impact, right? I'm saying yes, people can organize on those platforms and they have, historically, but it is also a space for political repression and silencing and that that is what we need to consider in this conversation. Complexify the conversation.

[00:30:02] Francine Pelletier: Colette?  

[00:30:04] Colette Brin: I would add to that that the social media space itself is becoming more and more complex. In the latest edition of the Digital News Report, this is a shameless promotion, because our center does this study, but we have seen that Facebook is actually losing -- well, we know this already, they are losing audiences, people are spending less time on it. Using it less for news in Canada and other countries for a few years. That means people are moving to other spaces, they are using news sites and news app's more, that's great, but also other platforms which none of them were designed for political debate and discourse, or journalism.  

[00:30:52] Essentially designed for entertainment and to make money. They still want to do that. For yes, connection, social connection, all of that. What companies want them to do and what people do with them are two different things. Now we have Instagram, becoming more and more a source for news, or people consider it to be a source for news, and TikTok, which is not at all a source for news but where young people are going increasingly, so it becomes almost inevitable for news organizations and anyone involved in the political debate to want to be in that space. Even on gaming platforms, like steam or twitch. Well, maybe not steam, so much.  

[00:31:38] It becomes complex to navigate, especially as a person not born with social media, and even for young people in that space to say -- what is the best use of this environment as a citizen? As a citizen who has to -- I'm thinking of my children who are in their late teens and early 20's, my students who are the same age. What does it mean to be a citizen? What does it mean to engage with the world in these different spaces and how do you do it? It's so chaotic and there is so much disinformation and hate.  

[00:32:17] Most people look at this space and say it is too much and a lot of people are dropping out of political debate and engagement completely. Of course, all the hate and radicalization really worries me, but people dropping out worries me more.  

[00:302:36] Francine Pelletier: So, you are saying that the way that social networks are going, it is a threat to community -- political community and democratic engagement?  

[00:32:44] Colette Brin: Yes, I think you could say that.  

[00:32:47] Francine Pelletier: I wanted to hear you about polarization. That's also something that we hear all the time. The polarization of discourses with no in between. What do you understand? First, it's a vague term. It's never defined but the media uses it all the time. What do you understand, Omayra, as being polarization, and is it a threat?  

[00:33:19] Omayra Issa: I think that’s a really good questions to ask, what do we mean by polarization, so that we have a common understanding of the terms we are working with. For me, polarization, the way I'm thinking about it and the work that I do, it's about how in many ways people are entrenched in their opinions and in many ways are divorced from what people are thinking. So there are these echo chambers in these digital spaces.

[00:33:56] When you think about it, you open twitter or x on your phone or tablet, you go to specific new sources that who agree with your political ideas and values, that too is polarization.  

[00:34:21] Historically, when we think about journalism it has allowed for us to have a way of consuming information, I would say pretty much in a consensus kind of way. Then we can ask the question, what was the consensus, then? You know that it was calling onto objectivity. We know that objectivity caters to a certain level of a certain demographic, right? Entrenching power that already exists.  

[00:34:51] That being said, is polarization a threat? Absolutely. So, this is the way that I see it being a threat in our political space and our country right now. I'm going to refer to foreign interference, because right now there is the commission on foreign interference into the Canadian democratic institutions, including our most recent federal elections.  

[00:35:19] If you are not following that commission, please do. It concerns you. If you are not reading about how other states, including China, India, Pakistan are interfering in the Canadian democratic process, please start reading about that, it concerns you. How are they doing this? They are doing this through social media channels, through disinformation campaigns, through all different kinds of ways.  

[00:35:53] We have platforms like we chat that target specific desperate communities. That is also a part of the polarization right. Desperate communities having access to the same information as other communities are in our country. That's a question that I pose right now is I am day in and day out reading about the commission interviewing players in the commission and our political process.  

[00:36:23] Francine Pelletier: Thank you. Colette, Omayra was talking about consensus and you were talking about how the traditional role of media was to come together to form consensus, in a way. Do you see polarization as something aimed at that is aimed at destroying the basis of, the tenants of journalism in media?  

[00:36:57] Colette Brin: What we are seeing is a growing of mistrust towards media. For many reasons. One of them is people who are more politically to the right, they tend to be more distressful of media, ,of journalists, of media organizations. So, those groups will break off and there is nothing journalism can do that they will believe.  

[00:37:24] You see media organizations trying to reach out to them, who are doing interviews with figures that they might not have done interviews with 10 or 15 years ago, because they would have been considered too radical to reach out and reflect those galleys in the world.  

[00:37:45] I'm never going to judge a journalists who is going to do an interview with someone who is very far to the right, in order to get a better sense of who these people are and what their views are and what is going on in the world. But they aren't ever going to come back.  

[00:38:03] That mistrust, I think you used the term divorce, one of you. I think that that divorce is consummated. That is a part of the polarization. The media necessarily becomes considered by those groups as a left-wing entity. Which they may have always been to a certain extent. At least left of center, but it is a problem. It's a problem because it is not the role of media to just represent a specific part of the population. It's supposed to be for everyone.  

[00:38:37] Of course, there is certain media because of columnists, the commentators, the editorials, there's a certain way that they talk about the news may feel more like home to people more on the right. But we see, you know, I don't want to target or identify a specific medium, but TVA, one of the most popular and wide-ranging audiences politically, they were among the most targeted by the convoy movement and all of that kind of group. Such a broad ranging media organization, they had to -- and if that's a problem I don't know what the hope is for what we would call mass media.  

[00:39:42] Francine Pelletier: Do we agree that polarization, without using the terms left and right, as we are in a much more complex world than to put every on the right or left, but the United States is certainly an example of extreme polarization, what they call culture war. Right and left enters into it, but essentially, it's not believing the same things and being sure that your principles are better than the other guy.  

[00:40:16] Should we ask ourselves if perhaps we are at a point in humanity or society where we just can't build consensus anymore. That was a dream of being in the center, that it exists to a certain extent, Canada being a pretty good example of centrism, but still we are going towards a world where more and more we will have conflicts of values and conflicts of cultural views, etc. Omayra?  

[00:40:52] Omayra Issa: That's a really good question. Conflicts of values have always existed, right? For as long as human beings have organizing themselves politically there has been conflict of values. Gabriel Miller mentioned in his speech, rightfully so, that Congress creates spaces even during world wars. Right? Conflict of values already exists. Right? We've seen the 20th century and the loss of life.  

[00:41:27] So, I refuse to accept that we live in a world where consensus cannot be built. That means we live in a world where we cannot agree that climate change is happening and cannot agree that human rights have to be protected. If I wake up tomorrow in a world where consensus cannot be built and is not built, I have no reason to be a journalist, right?  

[00:41:50] Because the role of the journalist is not just to gather news and information. That is where I think the profession of journalism has a major responsibility in the 21st century. Not just to gather information and news like it has historically done. Right now, journalism is faced with giving context to the news, to the data, to the experiences of people. Giving that context is how we are able to face some of the most incredible challenges we are facing.  

[00:42:25] Mass migration, pandemics, democratic projects and institutions being in crisis. Young people feeling completely pressed out of our economic system, unable to think of life beyond the day to day. The idea of now buying houses now dead, right? For young people. If we are not able to have a consensus on those major issues we face in a society, we are certainly not able to organize political communities and certainly not able to have conversations like these. I would like to jump in with a bit of hope, here.

[00:43:11] Colette Brin: I want to speak about hope, too. I hope we get there. What we are seeing in the report, and from other studies as well, is yes, there is polarization. Groups who are disconnected, disenfranchised. But there is a lot of -- there is an appetite for what Omayra just described. Not the doom and gloom, but the part about context and providing a sense of understanding what's going on in the world and that there are paths forward with these challenging issues.  

[00:43:52] I see it, I see it every day in journalism. Watching traditional television, reading newspapers, all of those dinosaur media, I see examples of journalists helping us to do that. Not everyone seems to realize that this exists. There needs to be kind of better channels to the audience and better ways of packaging those contents to people. So that people feel that empowerment. That they can be a part of that discussion. They can be a part of that.  

[00:44:29] I see that appetite in terms of context and informed diverse perspectives on the news. This is something we’re seeing from the population, there is a craving for that. We shouldn't be listening only to the loudest and angriest voices, though some are right to be angry. We should also pay attention to those who do not necessarily speak. You know, who can be a part of the conversation as well.

[00:44:59] Francine Pelletier: Maybe we can take the five or four left minutes to open the floor or for questions. You start speaking about solutions. It's our subject of the day. How can we, what the media shall do in context of so many issues and problems where we cannot see in the same direction. See the same thing. How the media can establish -- and will this feeling of conscience -- for me, I really think that the question of agreement that we can think about is not unique. We all have to have an open dialogue for different issues. They had lots to teach us.

[00:45:44] Omayra Issa: We all speak from personal experience, right, it allows us to speak yonder personal experience. Let me speak from my personal experience for a quick moment in the hopes of opening up a bit more. I'm a black woman. Black people have historically known the weight of the violence we live under. But that has not stopped black communities throughout history. From thinking beyond the violence. Redefining life outside of violence.  

[00:47:00] I think that connection to each other is incredibly important, and that’s the role of the media. Historically, if you want to know what's happening in your village, listen to the village storyteller. The village storyteller is the journalist, the artist, the creative, the thinker, right? The person with perspective and an ear to the ground are able to tell us who we are and what we are thinking about, collectively.  

[00:47:31] As I think about connection to each other and our societies, I think about connection to the land, to the waters. I think about the crucial role of a healthy media ecosystem. The importance of a strong journalistic practice and protecting journalists, particularly in this moment.  

[00:47:57] I will just say one thing, we can talk about in many ways this moment without tensioning artificial intelligence, right? With artificial intelligence I think the joury is still out on whether we think it’s going to help us or how it wont. And again I don't think this is a binary conversation . We will see how our jobs will adapt, our thinking will adapt, our discoursing will adapt, the way that we consume media.  

[00:48:25] I think that thinking of traditional media honestly is no longer useful for us, because I think the world that we live in is a world where artificial intelligence creates articles that you read in the newspaper, right? [LAUGHTER] I laugh, because it is terribly terrifying when machines generate information.  

[00:48:56] So, where is the hope? I think it's alongside the doom, right? If we think too much about the doom it’s hard, its paralyzing. In my thinking and my engagement with my people across the country over the last 10 to 15 years, I've come to understand Canadians have found ways to protect each other, protect the water and movements in Saskatchewan. Beautiful instances of political engagement and organizing beyond the digital space.  

[00:49:36] Francine Pelletier: I will present my question to you. We all lead strong teams for journalism. We do not read journals like we use to end like we are still doing. We are just focused on social media. Facebook. We have a lack of credibility for the traditional medium and of the fundamental rules of really working with the communities. How can we do it?  

[00:50:15] Colette Brin: I think that journalist is not only the traditional media, we have emergent media doing remarkable work. We don't speak of it with traditional media but it is also important for traditional media, this section is becoming more biased and we have to listen to them, have to meet them. To speak about the traditional meetings. For them, I try to get them to see the wisdom in this and I try to spread it -- wiseness and I try to get it to spread to others. I think you know it better, my suit, they know TikTok better than me, I asked what I should know, what I should learn. Differences more in a historic way and economic way. It's really complicated to see us in the context of love for Carrie of the journalism work -- context of the precarity of the journalism work and we can see that they are losing their richness. I think we really have to meet the public. We have international events, like the festival of [...] that is an important context. We can listen to this change, these people. There are things you do not like in journalism, should not criticize it. You should try to better it, to have an novation and some trials to try to understand. I think it is really complicated for the context, for the financial context of the media. I think it is really important to renew our ecosystem. It won't be solved in two weeks or month. What we described was something that was really important, the capacity for struggling people, the conflict, allowing us to be able to construct themselves to rise. I think we can all work on that. We have an important Society of resilience that Canada is a country and the Indigenous people are an example with indicators of resilience. Yes, we have hope. This is certain.

[00:53:30] Francine Pelletier: We have 5 minutes left for your questions, online or in the room. I think someone is going around with a microphone, yes? Please identify yourself. I can't see very well. Yes, you have a question?  

[00:54:13] Audience member: Is that better? Yeah. On the topic of fact checking and disinformation, we see a lot of advisories on posts, podcasts and other media that are supposedly spreading misinformation, as well as third party websites that compile articles and kind of rate their validity. Do you think that this is effective for stifling misinformation? How can we prevent it by the user consumes content at higher speeds like TikTok reels and YouTube shorts?  

[00:54:40] Colette Brin: Speed is the enemy, not our friend. Fact checking was developed, even prior to the pandemic, during the start of the fake news social panic, almost. There has been a lot of development that existed before. Especially in the U.S. around elections and other things. Fact checking is still incredibly useful, but it is the kind of task that is so huge, it's impossible to fact check at the speed where disinformation by its own nature, you can produce it more quickly.  

[00:55:23] The only thing we can do, is let people know you have to be skeptical of what you see on social media. Stop and think. Where is this coming from, is it too good or crazy to be true? And these are good practices for citizens. I don’t think journalists can do the job by themselves. And we see the adverse effects of fact checking.  

[00:55:58] There are now these more dubious groups that have their own fact checking organizations and alternative facts. Fact checking is not a blanket solution. We need time and it needs to be said and we need time and multiple sources. You can’t figure out what’s going on in breaking media when there is a shooting somewhere, you won't know all the information in 30 seconds. It's impossible. We just need to learn.

[00:56:37] Omayra Issa: I'm glad you mentioned the identification around what could be true or misinformed as a news item. And that will become more relevant and important with the increase use of artificial intelligence. I was speaking in the process of a documentary I’m working on how for a lot of the social media platforms and leading thinkers around artificial intelligence, the identification part would be fundamental. Because as machine learning and generative AI pushes out information it would be important to identify this was written by a human being who called two sources to fact check or machine.  

[00:57:49] Is it enough? At least part of it, of course it's not enough, but at least part of it has to be a certain level of accountability and there has to be transparency. And in this moment of mass confusion, because of everything we talked about, [Speaking Another Language] alternative facts, it becomes more important.  

[00:58:21] I worry a lot about young people, not just because I get older and I worry about younger people, but I think they are not given the tools that we had. In university you can go into libraries to research to write your essays. Now young people are writing essays now with ChatGPT. They used to have to research. I worry that because I feel we are failing younger generations -- that said, young people are credibly smart and savvy. On TikTok, they know what's happening in the world. Like grandparents listening to the radio.

[00:59:03] Francine Pelletier: Is there another question or other questions?  

[00:59:11] Audience member: Thank you all so much for coming to speak today. It was very informative. Relating to the rise of populism we are seeing globally with different political parties, how do you find that connects to, on a side note I saw this documentary called "the social dilemma" where they discuss at one point the connection between millionaires and billionaires who essentially make large purchases to tech companies to have influence of ideas over 5 or 10 years over millions of users, right? Very much behind closed doors. We don't know what those things are. I think those influences will have significant impacts that we have never seen before, right? How do you believe that will impact the journalism field in Canada, how can we create more transparency in reporting on these issues?  

[01:00:33] Francine Pelletier: Can I ask you to be a little more -- I'm not quite getting what you mean by influences. Can you give us an example?  

[01:00:37] Audience member: Yeah, so for example, this was just a small snippet that I had learned about through this documentary. Essentially it was that now that what we see happening, whether it’s through the purchase of a product to spread a certain ideology, political, an individual with a large sum of money could pay a tech company to propagate that ideology on social media. Gradually over time, over a few years. Does that help?  

[01:01:14] Omayra Issa: I will jump in very quickly, Colette. You know, that's what I was mentioning earlier. The idea that social media has democratized access to political space when it has not. More and more people have concentrated power among capital influence in the digital space. That's what we are against, major corporations, billionaires, etc. That's what I was mentioning earlier. That's a big conversation that needs to happen. Because it goes back to democracy, fairness and equity, it goes back to citizenry. And the protection of our citizenry. It goes back to fundamental questions about how we organize our societies. With the understanding that the digital space and political space is interlinked.  

[01:02:26] Colette Brin: That's a lot of pressure. I don't know, these platforms are owned by billionaires, right? When we see what Elon Musk is tweeting every day, we see some of that influence. It's like owners of newspapers who were buying newspapers for influence, right? In some cases it’s much more clear than others. What comforts me is that I think people are not completely blind to that. When we do surveys, we see people with a negative view of the social platforms and the power that they influence in terms of money. They may not be aware of all that you are describing. And the problem with these au cult in the French sense, that there are hidden forces and it's hard to demonstrate, prove it with facts.