OTTAWA — A new study from McGill University says Conservative MPs far outpace their Liberal and NDP counterparts in online engagement, partly due to the their voices being amplified on X.
The report from McGill’s Media Ecosystem Observatory found in 2024, online posts from federal Conservative MPs garnered 61 per cent more engagement — likes, shares and comments — than those from Liberal and NDP MPs combined.
It found that engagement with Conservative politicians on X has increased 52 per cent since Elon Musk, a key ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, took over the platform previously known as Twitter in 2022.
The report looked at online posts from all members of Parliament on Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube and TikTok between January 2022 and November 2024.
"The major shift that has happened over the past year that makes that number so large is really that increase on X," said Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory.
"Right-wing voices were doing a little bit better in the early days of Musk but it's really 2024 where that amplification has really kicked in."
The report says that if the increased engagement by the Conservatives was due to the party growing in popularity, other platforms would have shown the same trend — but that wasn’t what the researchers found when they compared X to Instagram.
Bridgman said there is no good evidence to indicate that the boost to Conservative voices is being created deliberately by engineers at X. Instead, he said, it’s more that the algorithms work in a self-fulfilling cycle, or a positive feedback loop.
"Content gets amplified on that platform when it performs well. And when new content gets posted, it's going to look at its similarity with existing content that did well," he said.
"As right-wing content does better on the platform, all subsequent right-wing content is also going to do better."
There's also the outsized influence of Musk himself, whose reach on X surpasses that of everyone else, Bridgman said.
"One of the major shifts, particularly in the last year, is just Musk starting to amplify and produce very right-wing ideas on that platform … his ability to incentivize the algorithm to show additional content like that is very large," he said.
The findings are significant with a federal election call expected within days or weeks, Bridgman said, because X — despite changes under Musk — continues to be the public square for politics.
When Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland quit cabinet in December — a move that eventually led to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's resignation — she did it by posting a scathing resignation letter on X.
"There are many other venues for having that discussion, but the place where Canadian politicians are active, the place where Canadian politicians continue to campaign and to share their messaging, does still continue to be X," Bridgman said.
Musk is playing a key role in the Trump administration — just as the U.S. president has been issuing threats to annex Canada. Bridgman said that means X may be used to push messages that don't support Canada's national interests.
He said that if X is "distorted in favour of content that is promoted by Musk and Trump and others south of the border, then we have a potential issue where our major public square is primed and is available to be used to amplify content that is not necessarily in Canadians' best interest."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 11, 2024.
Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press