EDMONTON—With questions still swirling around the case of two B.C. men wanted for murder, the digital discourse has been blowing in all directions, fanning the flames of confusion in the process.

From Reddit, the self-styled “front page of the internet,” to darker corners such as 4Chan, which hosts forums where users can post anonymously, online communities have been speculating over the suspects’ motive and bouncing around beliefs and theories from the fringe — most with few if any facts offered to support them.

“So now anytime anything bad happens the people involved are far right,” one Reddit user wrote. “I can’t believe people are falling for this s—.”

On 4Chan, the two suspects are figured for “incels,” or involuntary celibates — men who feel frustrated by their inability to find romantic relationships or sex — and “race traitors” in the same thread, having been connected to the deaths of three white adults in northern British Columbia.

Cpl. Chris Manseau, spokesperson for the B.C. RCMP, said police have received at least one tip about possible connections the pair had to alt-right groups, but investigators have not been able to confirm it. Manseau said investigators are likely to be doing "a full social media profile" of the two young men.

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After peering into the rabbit hole, Irfan Chaudhry, a hate-crimes researcher and criminology lecturer at MacEwan University in Edmonton, recognized the rants and raves as a symptoms of a common narrative that surfaces in corners of the internet fuelled by white supremacist and far-right sentiments.

“This is where you see the victimization card being played by some of the members that are posting on these groups,” he said. “It's this common narrative you see in these white supremacy and alt-right — or even conspiracy theory — type of channels, where they really feel that white identity is being chipped away.”

And while these thoughts and theories often fester in those domains with less notice, he added, cases such as the manhunt, which make national headlines, have a tendency to gather those voices into online echo chambers, amplify them, and allow them they seep into the public sphere.

“With evolving stories, and the reliance on social media, this is how misinformation really gets put out there,” he said. “It snowballs into this really inaccurate game of telephone.”

Especially so in online gaming communities, Chaudhry noted, of which the suspects are reported to have been members, and which he called a kind of uncharted platform where hateful views and misinformation can go overlooked.

With users having access to multiple platforms, and the ability to repost or share content between them, ideas that gain momentum in echo chambers can bounce out into wider conversations, Chaudhry said.

“Someone who’s active on Reddit, but also has a strong presence on Facebook, for example, takes that Reddit comment or screenshots and posts it on a Facebook group that’s closed, and other people now see it,” he said. “Someone sees that was posted in the Facebook group, not necessarily looking at where the information is coming from, and they post it on their main channel that’s not private and open to everyone.”

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And thus the misinformation spreads.

By allowing users to interact anonymously, explains Barbara Perry, director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism with Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, Ont., online gaming can, on some occasions, offer a space for a community’s outsiders, including those who sympathize with the far right.

“They are people who don’t feel they belong to the real world,” Perry said, speaking only in general terms rather than about the week’s specific events.

“They don’t have a place,” she said. “They can take on whatever identity they want, however tough or otherwise. It’s a really valuable place for them.”

Nazi history in particular, Perry added, give those veering for a hard right, who are also removed from its implications, a sense of direction.

“It’s harking back to a time ... of power and strength,” she said. “I think that’s where the race and gender comes in.

“It feeds into their victim mentality. That’s all part of the narrative … the loss of privilege. Now it’s them who’s lost their rights.”

When those narratives have space to unfold in places where they can go unchecked among the like minded, such as a forum thread or a closed group on a digital platform, it allows them to reaffirm their perspective, Chaudhry said.

“We will gravitate to things that we agree with, and then we will vehemently deny things that contradict our own understanding of the world,” he explained. “This is where I think journalists have an even stronger role to play — to ensure that credible information is being put out there, and nothing's being erroneously reported on before anything is verified.”

with files from Omar Mosley and Cherise Seucharan

Correction - July 25, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that misspelled Irfan Chaudhry’s surname. As well, the previous version mistakenly said Barbara Perry is with Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

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