Participants on the /pol/s monitored local police scanners and caught mention of the suspect’s name. It was on these boards that a small group of anonymous operators seeded a campaign misidentifyingan unrelated There were many threads discussing the shooting on the /pol/s throughout the day. Read more and 8chan’s “Politically Incorrect” boards (/pol/). The gender and race of the shooter was of great interest to many, specifically to far right extremists aggregating information in various forums and News of a shooting broke online and many flocked to social media for information on the breaking news. Officers were dispatched to the school, and the shooter was identified as a “white male” by police dispatch at 2:28 p.m. The first 911 call was placed at 2:22 p.m. On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz began his attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at 2:19 p.m. STAGE 1: Manipulation Campaign Planning and Origins Read more led to targeted harassmentof the individual in the photograph, who was not associated with the shooting. During the active crisis of the Parkland school shooting in February 2018, a photo misidentifying the alleged perpetrator moved from 4chan to the mainstream media when Infowars picked up the image, muddying the waters around the actual shooting.
