Motives and Methods: Key Findings in Building Resilience to Online Misinformation in Canada
MediaSmarts and the Canadian Sociology Association hosted webinar as part of Media Literacy Week.
October 28, 2025 @ 12:00 PM Eastern Time
Register for this webinar
This webinar will share key findings from MediaSmarts’ recent mixed-methods project: Motives and Methods: Building Resilience to Online Misinformation in Canada. This study explored how Canadians check and share information online and tested the effectiveness and impact of MediaSmarts’ Break the Fake program, which teaches people how to identify and mitigate online misinformation, through two phases: a quantitative survey (5000 participants) and interactive focus groups (30 participants).
Webinar attendees can expect to learn about Canadians’ responses to online misinformation, the unique needs of demographics unequally impacted by the digital divide, and evidence-based recommendations for effective interventions to address misinformation in Canada.
Speakers:
Dr. Kara Brisson-Boivin is the Director of Research for MediaSmarts. Kara is responsible for the design, implementation, and dissemination of key findings from MediaSmarts’ research as well as evaluations of MediaSmarts’ programs. She also holds an appointment as an Adjunct Research Professor in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Carleton University. Kara works with partners across academia, industry, government, and community organizations on online issues including digital wellbeing, digital equity and inclusion, misinformation, privacy, hate, and algorithms and artificial intelligence.
Khadija Baig is a Research and Evaluation Associate at MediaSmarts. She is responsible for supporting the research and evaluation process: conducting literature reviews, preparing research ethics’ applications, designing mixed-methods studies, designing and conducting internal program evaluation, conducting statistical and thematic analysis of data, writing research reports, and knowledge dissemination.
Khadija holds a Master of Computer Science (M.C.S) degree from Carleton University, Ottawa and is also a Research Associate at Carleton’s Human Oriented Research in Usable Security lab.
Vanessa Turyatunga is a Research and Evaluation Associate at MediaSmarts. She is responsible for supporting the research and evaluation process: conducting literature reviews, preparing research ethics’ applications, designing mixed-methods studies, designing and conducting internal program evaluation, conducting statistical and thematic analysis of data, writing research reports, and knowledge dissemination. Vanessa holds a master's degree in religious studies from the University of Ottawa and is currently completing her PhD in Anthropology at Carleton University, Ottawa.