Missed messages

Now that an independent investigation has been launched into the shooting death of Don Dunphy, much of the wild speculation and accusations have died down.

The Mitchells Brook man was shot in his own home on Easter Sunday by an RNC officer after Dunphy allegedly pointed a loaded .22-calibre rifle at him.

Questions swirled about the event in the days following. Why was the officer — a member of Premier Paul Davis’s security detail — visiting Dunphy? Why was he alone? What transpired in those few minutes before the shooting?

In this space and elsewhere, the media have been quick to warn against jumping to conclusions. If the police officer truly had a loaded .22calibre rifle pointed at him, the result was tragic but inevitable. The peripheral details will come out as the investigation unfolds.

But one detail seems fairly clear already, and that is that the misreading of a tweet seemed to play some role in this terrible event. The premier has admitted the visit to Dunphy’s home was spurred by a tip from his office about an ambiguous tweet from Dunphy.

Looked at in isolation, the tweet does seem a little ominous: “won’t mention names this time, 2 prick dead MHAs might have good family members I may hurt.” It was sent to MHA Sandy Collins, musician Sherman Downey and the premier himself, as part of a thread that began with an innocuous exchange about the premier’s musical tastes.

But Twitter is a funny thing. Not nearly as widely used as Facebook, it’s a social medium that is shunned and/or misunderstood by many.

When you view a tweet from your own account, it may be from someone you’re following, or it can be a retweet from someone else you’re following. As well, it may be part of an exchange that is not entirely clear on initial perusal.

When you click on a tweet (depending on what software you’re using) it will open in a new window which shows tweets that came before and after that tweet. Even then, however, earlier and later tweets may contain their own threads that can only be discerned by clicking on them.

In other words, threads of conversations on Twitter can branch off in many directions, and you have to hunt a bit sometimes to find them.

In Dunphy’s case, the tweet in question was preceded by one that clearly made its followup much more innocuous. He refers to two deceased MHAs who had “laughed at the poor” and how God got them back before they could collect on their pensions.

The premier’s staffer, and presumably the RNC, seem to have missed this part of the thread. And this led to an encounter which, for whatever reason, turned deadly.

If any initial conclusion can be drawn from this tragedy, it’s that tone and context have become much more difficult to discern with the advent of social media. In addition to conversation threads, one has to account for sarcasm, hyperbole and a host of other factors.

It’s a lesson this province has learned the hard way.