Weaponized Memes? How the Lulz Are Used Against Us
Memes are not just funny images; they pack a lot of emotional baggage into one cultural “unit.”
Memes, the bringers of cute cat images and part of the standard Internet lexicon, are now weapons in an ideological war, where social media is the battlefield. This new phenomenon, memetic warfare, has already had consequences on political climates around the world.
Memetic warfare is a type of disinformation where the playful nature of memes is leveraged on social media to spread propaganda. Ultimately, the goal is to manipulate social media narratives. While not strictly limited to memes in the traditional sense, memetic warfare encompasses any image with text or short video that can be replicated and spread rapidly.
NATO, in 2015, released a paper called “It’s Time to Embrace Memetic Warfare,” calling memetic warfare a “guerrilla” tactic and a digital “psychological warfare.” Scary language, but it’s an accurate depiction of how memetic warfare plays out; it’s difficult to detect and alters the information landscape.
Are Memes Political? Memes are not just funny images; they pack a lot of emotional baggage into one cultural “unit.” The Department of Defense funded a study into memes as tools of mass manipulation and found them completely capable of influencing values, behavior, and perceptions. Part of what makes them so appealing to a group wanting to shape a narrative is that they are easy to make and can be shared quickly.
China employs 20,000–50,000 Internet police who surveil citizens, and around 250,000 trolls who promote pro-Beijing content. Law enforcement across the country host hundreds of TikTok accounts that post humorous pro-security videos. Many of these have gone viral and have collectively amassed about 4.8 billion views. In this case, memes are categorically used to soften the image of the military and law enforcement into less threatening institutions.
The nature of memes allows them to be much more targeted than other types of propaganda, like ads or pamphlets. Since the Internet has such niche groups, memes can be meticulously engineered. Before the 2016 US election, the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) flooded Instagram with memes to amplify internal division. They specifically targeted African American users to depress black voter turnout with memes meant to increase apathy and distrust towards the election process and the Democratic Party. The IRA targeted other political and ethnic groups too, often spreading contradictory messages.
Memes easily disguise propaganda. Their source is often unknown because of their rapid transmission and the underlying humor often camouflages political endgames. Social media platform 4chan displays this to a T. Because the site requires users to upload images, memes are the primary mode of communication. And due to a lack of oversight, 4chan is a hotspot for alt-right conspiracists and has radicalized many white supremacists. The comedic aspect goes a long way in normalizing extremist behavior and disguising manipulation. This is not without larger scale backlash. White supremacists on 4chan not so jokingly credit “The Great Meme War” across major social media sites as essential toward securing Trump’s presidency in 2016.
Can Memes Be Regulated? Not really. There are far too many memes for fact-checkers to systematically block on digital platforms. However, policy makers can continue legislating against disinformation and start taking memetic warfare seriously. Taking preventive measures is a start, like making it more difficult and expensive to create fake accounts and rethinking algorithms that encourage extremist content. Also, since propaganda preys on human psychology, media literacy on the part of users could be a huge boon. In the end, we should tackle the origins of information to preserve digital integrity, instead of constantly playing catch-up.
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