Dr. Carmen Celestini

I am excited to announce that I will be working with Dr. Megan Boler at the University of Toronto and Dr. Barbara Perry at the Centre on Hate, Bias, and Extremism, as a Research Consultant on their project “Promoting Social Cohesion and Resilience to Far-Right Disinformation through Adult Disinformation Literacy: A Systematic Review and Pilot Assessment of Gaps and Needs.” This is an amazing preliminary project to assess where we need to develop adult literacy on disinformation. I am super excited to work with both these academics, and to continue my connection with Dr. Perry.

I am excited to announce that I am now a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Disinformation Project, in the School of Communications at SFU. Working with Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi on the Understanding hate groups narratives and conspiracy theories in traditional and alternative social media project. This project empirically examines Canadian right-wing extremism (RWE) narratives, conspiracies, and discourses on traditional and alternative social media. The project not only examines the textual content but also the multimodal discourses such as the use of memes, hashtags, emojis, and videos which, we argue, provide important clues on the way certain hate messages are communicated. Finally, the use of a unique mixed method that involves a networked thematic examination of social media posts as well as a keyword-based and other digital approaches provide richer and more meaningful insight into the nature of Canadian RWE discourses than if only one textual analysis approach is followed.

More information on The Disinformation Project.

COVID-19-related misinformation also extends to conspiracy theories about the “new world order” and the “great reset,” involving baseless narratives about how world leaders orchestrated the pandemic and there is work underway to install a totalitarian world government.

Carmen Celestini, who has been monitoring social media platforms and posts as part of Simon Fraser University’s Disinformation Project, says the conspiracy theories are linked to supporters of and candidates from the People’s Party of Canada, as well as the wider anti-vaccination, anti-lockdown movement.

Read the full article on The National Post.

Despite the plethora of information about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, a small, but vocal minority of Canadians continue to push conspiracy theories. If someone you know buys into these unfounded theories, it can be difficult to approach the topic of vaccination in conversation.

Carmen Celestini from Ontario Tech’s Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism says you should avoid getting into a debate.

Read the full article on Durham Radio News.

In this webinar I talk about the current Canadian Armed Forces hateful conduct policies and what we are developing through our project at the Centre on Hate, Bias, and Extremism. As the policy is currently more punitive in nature, we are recommending a policy that is more cultural in nature to ensure that our military personnel can learn how to recognize, combat, and be aware of hateful conduct and extremism through every step of their career within the military.

Dr. Carmen Celestini, an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo, said racism was heavily entrenched in the pandemic, due to misinformation and conspiracy theories (mainly online) about the origins of the COVID-19 virus and its spread into society.

“People, when they’re afraid or they have a sense of injustice or, a sense of loss of freedom, they tend to turn to conspiracy theories or ideas of something outside of themselves being in control,” said Celestini, who is also a post-doctoral fellow at The Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism.

Watch the full report by Emerald Bensadounon on Global News.

For my research on conspiracy theories, religion, and extremism I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time on the social media platform Telegram. For a few weeks, a group named White Lives Matter (WLM) had been planning rallies and protests in the major cities in the United States and in Toronto, Canada. . . . The administrators or leaders were posting numerous comments about keeping the chat focused on the protests and excluding racial commentary or extremist opinions. There was a twofold rationale for these requests: a) media were monitoring the group chat and they wanted the focus to be on the protests and not providing any other information; and b) they wanted to appeal to the “normies” in the anti-lock down groups to join them. Normies is a term that QAnon adherents and anti-lock down supporters use to describe themselves.

Read the full article on H-Nationalism.

In this in this episode of Shane Hewitt’s podcast, Shift, we talk about how individuals can be attracted to conspiracy theories. Looking specifically at the rise of conspiracy adherence throughout the COVID lock downs, Shane and I discuss the most prevalent conspiracies such as QAnon and The Great Reset, and how these theories help to “explain” what is occurring within the contemporary political upheavals.

Listen to this episode of Shift. My segment starts at 28:54.

For this special report by Global News, I was interviewed by Stewart Bell for my perspective on how family members can interact with individuals who have become adherents to conspiracy theories during the pandemic. Interwoven with tales of family turmoil and chaos I explain why conspiracy theories have become so prominent during the pandemic and their role in understanding the fears many people face during such turbulent times.

Watch the full report by Stewart Bell on Global News.