Fringe Politics: The Deep Web’s Impact on the 2019 Canadian Election

We investigated how political memes, language, and shared political objects (videos, photos, images, graphics, posts, etc.) from fringe websites became insinuated into mainstream political conversation on more established social media platforms and news properties in discussions of the 2019 Canadian federal election. In contrast to the popular theory of “fake news” as the product of foreign interference, our hypothesis was that much of the democratically disruptive content making its way to social media and news platforms originates on non-mainstream internet spaces such as 4chan/pol/ and Reddit. There is a distinct lack of critical scientific study in Canada about how extremist content makes its way on to mainstream platforms during election cycles; how this content is picked up by commentators on mainstream platforms; and the effect that this has on contemporary political debates and elections. This study provides insight on how marginal political actors’ dark web content intervened, or was actively co-opted by other political interests and groups, to influence the fall 2019 election. The findings will contribute to ongoing discussions about the governance and regulation of elections, political parties and candidates in the context of online media properties and platforms.