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Media9 outlets ran this5 min read

Blair Visscher's thesis links Meta news ban to wildfire misinformation rise

Master's research finds conspiracy content on Facebook surged after Canadian news was removed from the platform

AI-assisted coverage comparison, editor-supervised · How this was made

Published
Blair Visscher's thesis links Meta news ban to wildfire misinformation rise

What this story says

  • Blair Visscher studied Facebook discussions during three wildfires for her master's thesis at UBC Okanagan.
  • Her research found conspiracy narratives increased after Meta removed Canadian news from its platforms in August 2023.
  • Visscher traced growing distrust in official information to the COVID-19 pandemic and Facebook's algorithms.
  • The Bush Creek East wildfire in 2023 saw a notable rise in misinformation compared to earlier fires.

Who covered it

Left 100%(8)Centre 0%(0)Right 0%(0)

Percentages are shares of the 8 outlets carrying a published leaning rating. 1 of the 9 outlets we know ran this story carry no rating and are not counted in them. Coverage measured .

Trust

62/100

Craft

51/100

Hype

20/100

9 sources · methodology

Thin on the right so far

None of the 8 outlets with a published leaning rating that ran this story are rated right.

This story is still being watched, so it is a count and not yet a finding. Coverage keeps arriving for hours after an event, and a side that has published nothing this morning may publish by tonight. If it is still true when we stop checking, we will say so plainly.

Blair Visscher, a Vernon resident and master's student at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, studied how misinformation spread on Facebook during wildfire emergencies in Canada. Her research focused on three events: the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, the 2021 White Rock Lake wildfire, and the 2023 Bush Creek East wildfire in the Central Okanagan.

The Bush Creek East wildfire began on 12 July 2023 and was not classified as being held until late September, covering 45,600 hectares. On 2 August 2023, Meta began removing Canadian news content from Facebook and Instagram in response to the Online News Act, a federal policy aimed at requiring tech companies to compensate Canadian news outlets for their content.

Visscher told the Sicamous Eagle Valley News that her hypothesis was that the Meta news ban created an information vacuum. She said this vacuum allowed conspiracy narratives to grow, particularly during emergencies when accurate information was critical. Visscher noted that distrust in government and expert sources had already been rising since the COVID-19 pandemic.

For her thesis, Visscher analysed Facebook discussions around each wildfire. She found that the proportion of conspiratorial content increased over time. The White Rock Lake wildfire in 2021 saw a smaller share of conspiracy narratives, while the Bush Creek East wildfire in 2023 had a significantly larger share. Visscher attributed this rise to both the Meta news ban and the platform's algorithms, which she said prioritise divisive and engaging content.

What the coverage left out

No centre- or right-rated outlet carried this story. The omission is a finding: the reports below are all from left-rated or unrated outlets.

Tags:#WildfireMisinformation#MetaNewsBan#FacebookAlgorithms#BritishColumbia#MediaAndEmergencyResponse

Still developing. We have re-checked which outlets are covering this 4 times, most recently on 12 Aug 2026, 03:45, and will add the sides that appear.

How each side covered it

Our own reading of the reporting listed below, written from the outlets’ articles rather than quoted from them. The reasoning is set out on our methodology page.

Left

8 rated outlets

  • The left-rated outlets that carried the story led on Visscher's findings about the growth of misinformation after Meta removed Canadian news from its platforms. The Sicamous Eagle Valley News and Penticton Western News, which published full reports, quoted Visscher directly on how the news ban created an information vacuum that conspiracy theories filled.
  • Both full reports described how Visscher's research traced the roots of social distrust to the COVID-19 pandemic. They also highlighted her observation that Facebook's algorithms do not promote official information, leaving users to believe it does not exist if they do not see it. The Sicamous Eagle Valley News quoted Visscher saying, "If you aren’t seeing official information, that’s likely just because your algorithm is not showing it to you."
  • The digests from the left-rated outlets summarised Visscher's research similarly. They noted that her thesis examined the rise of conspiracy narratives during wildfires and linked this to Meta's decision to block Canadian news. None of the digests quoted Visscher directly, but all mentioned the connection between the news ban and the spread of misinformation.

Centre

0 rated outlets

No outlet rated centre has run this story so far. We are still checking, and will say plainly if that does not change.

Right

0 rated outlets

No outlet rated right has run this story so far. We are still checking, and will say plainly if that does not change.

Read it at the source

9 outlets, grouped by the leaning a published rating gives them. Every headline links to the original; an underlined outlet name opens our profile of that publisher.

Left

8

Centre

0

No outlet in this group ran the story.

Right

0

No outlet in this group ran the story.

Not rated

1

Questions about this coverage

How did the left and right cover Blair Visscher's thesis links Meta news ban to wildfire misinformation…?
Of the 8 outlets on this story carrying a published leaning rating, 100% are rated left, 0% are rated centre, 0% are rated right. Those percentages are shares of the rated outlets, not of every outlet that ran it, which was 9. The sections above set out what each side emphasised, in its own terms.
Is Blair Visscher's thesis links Meta news ban to wildfire misinformation… left or right?
Too few of the outlets on this story carry a published leaning rating to say. 8 of them do, and this site does not characterise a field under 12: at that size one newsroom filing moves the share by ten points. The percentages above are the count as it stands.
Is the coverage of Blair Visscher's thesis links Meta news ban to wildfire misinformation… biased?
Blair Visscher's thesis links Meta news ban to wildfire misinformation rise is one event reported by 9 outlets, and this page does not rate the story as biased or unbiased. What it publishes is the spread: which outlets ran it, where named rating organisations place each of them on the spectrum, and what each side chose to lead with. A leaning rating describes an outlet's record over time, not this article, and the two should not be run together.
Which side is not reporting Blair Visscher's thesis links Meta news ban to wildfire misinformation…?
When we first saw this story, outlets rated right had barely covered it. Coverage accretes for hours after an event, so that is where to look rather than a verdict — the split above is the current count, and it is the one to read.
Which outlets covered Blair Visscher's thesis links Meta news ban to wildfire misinformation…?
9 that we know of, every one of them listed further up this page with a link to its own report and to what we hold on the publisher. Nothing here is a summary of somebody else's summary: the outlets are named so the original reporting can be read.
What did Blair Visscher's thesis find about misinformation during wildfires?
Visscher's research found that misinformation and conspiracy narratives on Facebook increased significantly after Meta removed Canadian news from its platforms in August 2023. Her thesis linked this rise to the platform's algorithms and growing distrust in official sources since the COVID-19 pandemic.
How did Meta's news ban affect information during the Bush Creek East wildfire?
Meta's news ban removed Canadian news from Facebook and Instagram on 2 August 2023, during the Bush Creek East wildfire. Visscher's thesis found that this created an information vacuum, allowing conspiracy theories and misinformation to spread more widely on the platform.
Which wildfires did Blair Visscher study for her thesis?
Visscher studied three wildfires: the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, the 2021 White Rock Lake wildfire, and the 2023 Bush Creek East wildfire. She analysed Facebook discussions around each event to track the growth of conspiracy narratives over time.

How did this read?

About the coverage, not about the story. We do not ask whether you agree with what happened — we have no honest use for that answer.

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