Almost half of Canadians believe at least one popular coronavirus conspiracy theory or myth, including 26 per cent who believe COVID-19 is a Chinese-engineered bioweapon released from a lab, according to a new survey from Carleton University.
In an interview, Carleton University journalism professor Josh Greenberg said study authors found popular conspiracy “memes” are seeded and distributed in the “highly fragmented” information-sharing landscape of social messaging apps such as Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok. “It used to be that the media landscape had a centre, what we now call legacy news organizations,” Greenberg said. “But increasingly, we get news from not only those sources but also dubious actors.