Disruption & Technology

Ed Greenspon spoke on CBC's Power & Politics about different policy options which would help Canadian content creators and address threats to democracy posed by increasingly consolidated Internet media giants.

With the release of the PPF report "Democracy Divided", The Logic covers the threats that social media marketing tools and the highly consolidated digital media landscape creates for democracy in Canada and explains why this matters to Canadians.

In this Nieman Journalism Lab article we get an overview of the policy recommendations in the PPF report "Democracy Divided" as part of PPF's ongoing Shattered Mirror Series. The report addresses questions of disinformation and hate speech and its spread through social media marketing tools.

Democracy has been made vulnerable to attack by hate speech and disinformation on digital and social platforms. Policy must be implemented to reconcile freedom of speech and freedom of the press with these online news threats to democracy.

This report summarizes what was heard at two roundtables on how to enhance the Canada-U.S. border with tech to facilitate trade. 

At the start of 2018, PPF, with the support of our six partners, decided to dive deeper into the state of local and community news media. We set out to examine how, exactly, journalistic coverage of communities across Canada has changed over the past decade.

Digital transformation in government raises unique challenges due to its size and structure, and PPF and Amazon Web Services Institute are collaborating to recommend how government can ensure it has a digitally skilled workforce and leadership with the skills to implement transformational technologies. This project builds on the priorities that were identified by a past roundtable of senior leaders, two workshops, and will result in a report on digital skills and leadership, including a focus on equity and inclusion, by Dr. Wendy Cukier of Ryerson University. Findings will be validated at a roundtable of leaders from government and industry in early 2019.

Past Event

As Canada prepares for the 2019 federal election, government institutions, political parties, individual politicians and media are all on the radar of adversaries, ranging in sophistication, from hacktivists to foreign governments. Understanding the potential for attack and what organizations and individuals can do to thwart these threats is key to ensuring the legitimacy of Canadian elections.

This model of 'journalism as non-profit' buys time, but it isn't necessarily a long-term solution, especially not on its own. Read what PPF's President and CEO Edward Greenspon told Nieman Labs following LaPresse announcement that it was going to become a non-profit entity.

Past Event

Activists, politicians and partisans compete intensely for attention and influence online. Today, malevolent actors seem to have the upper hand. They push disinformation and hate using fake accounts, bots and algorithms designed to keep us scrolling through the latest outrage. News organizations and social media platforms struggle to deal with these media manipulators, particularly after major tragedies or during heated political campaigns like the current one in Ontario.

Immigrants who stay in Atlantic Canada have higher employment levels, higher wages and face less discrimination than immigrants to other parts of Canada, yet the region struggles to attract newcomers and has the lowest retention rates in Canada.

Are we amusing ourselves to death while darker forces of disinformation undermine our democracy? By Edward Greenspon