Memes: Weapons for Political Warfare
Using humor and cultural relevance, internet memes have become a staple of the digital age. Early Internet message boards adopted memes as a common method of speech, despite the fact that they were often made no sense to outsiders, which was part of the fun. Social media has made memes less of a niche phenomenon, and most social media users can understand at least the most popular meme styles. However, memes are simply thought of as cute or silly when they are actually capable of being political weapons that lead to ingrained cultural biases and disinformation.
What is a Meme?
What isn’t a meme, on the other hand, might actually be a better question to ask.
The word “meme” comes from the Greek word “mimēsis”, which refers to how art imitates life. The Smithsonian Magazine conducted an investigation on memes. According to their findings, memes can be anything from a fundamental believe in God to catchphrases or idioms to a specific genre of music.
As the publication points out, “the hoops aren’t memes; they are made of plastic, not of bits,” as the term suggests. “When this species of toy expanded globally in a wild epidemic in 1958, it was the product, the physical embodiment, of a meme, or memes: the yearning for hula hoops; the swaying, swinging, twirling skill set of hula-hooping; and the desire for hula hoops.” The hula hoop itself serves as a vehicle for memes. And each individual hula hooper is a startlingly powerful meme vehicle, as is every other human being.”
Memes spread by “leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the widest sense, can be called imitation,” according to the person who coined the word in the modern day, Richard Dawkins. They are in a race to see who can get the most out of the same limited supply of bandwidth or mental time. For the most part, they’re competing for attention.
The widely accepted definition of a meme today is anything that is shared on the internet as a joke, usually with a layer of self-deprecation, sarcasm, or irony on top of it. Memes can be made up of images, videos, or text, and they can be duplicated, reprinted, or reinterpreted by others, resulting in an altogether different rhetorical message being conveyed to the public.
Psychology of Memes
Memes are a popular cultural phenomena that are both amusing and inventive ways of expressing one’s views about a certain subject. Learning is made easier by the hardwiring of the mind, yet some information is more digestible than others due to this hardwiring. In a competitive environment where the mind can only handle a limited quantity of information, information that does not conform to our evolved cognitive structures and the implicit principles that govern how our minds function best will be less likely to be accepted than information that does conform. Memes are used to communicate ideas, and certain memes are more effective than others at doing so than others. By expressing ideas in a simple way, often through humor, memes are successful in swaying an individual’s opinion as the information becomes more digestible and enjoyable to learn about. It is no wonder why memes have become such a mainstay in pop culture. By compressing pieces of information often into a single humorous image, people are instantly more likely to interact with it and understand the stance the meme’s creator is intending to take.
Evolution of memes
Memes have existed for most of our evolutionary history, and their primary mechanism of transmission has been that of “word of mouth.” As time moved forward, they have succeeded in adhering to solid materials such as clay tablets, cave walls, and paper sheets. Our pens and printing machines, as well as magnetic tapes and optical disks, help them to last for a long time. They spread through the use of broadcast towers and digital network infrastructure. Memes may be everything from stories to recipes to talents to legends to fashion. We are copying them one by one, one by one. Alternatively, they copy themselves, according to Dawkins’ meme-centered perspective on the world.
In the modern sense, memes were an obscure form of early internet humor, finding early homes in various forums and sites like Ebaum’s World and 4chan. Early memes were based on single images and notions because of the lack of content-creation tools at the time. Some of the earliest formats in this age of memes included Top Text/Bottom Text, Rage Comics, Tumblr, Viral Videos, Vine, and at this point in time, TikTok videos.
However, to think only the format of memes has evolved would be naïve. With the amount of social influence that they carry, memes have become a tool to impact societies, from shaping language, culture, and beliefs. And over the recent years, numerous examples of memes finding their way into the political landscape, for better or for worse.
Memes in the Real World
More often than not these days, your social media posts will be bombarded with memes. Movie and television sequences and lines can be used to create memes by being taken out of context, remixed with other information, and given new meanings in a humorous and relatable way. Memes can be generated this way. It is possible for a meme to reflect feelings of humiliation that anybody can relate to, from the struggles of being a college student to embarrassing moments in one’s daily life.
The power of a meme to be immediately shared with millions of people online can help you become famous. However, in the same vain, memes can give you notoriety as well. Inappropriate behavior on the internet can have real-world repercussions, even if users believe they are anonymous. For example, in June of 2017, Harvard University canceled the admissions offers of at least 10 students for exchanging sexually explicit, racist, and disrespectful memes in a private Facebook group chat. I believe event showed that there can be an appreciation for humor, but there are also topics that should not be joked about or ridiculed.
Cultural Biases
Memes, like cultural genes, propagate and evolve through a complex process of ‘mutation’ and ‘inheritance,’ as Richard Dawkins outlined in his book The Selfish Gene. These memes trigger innate biases in a culture or civilization on the internet, sometimes substituting logical approaches to arguments.
As an avid user of Reddit, where memes are the focal point of the platform, I find myself believing certain stereotypes purely due to the frequency in which they appear in memes. Prior to viewing memes about it, I never would have thought that Russian males were linked to the love that they have for Adidas clothing, but due to the number of memes on the topic, it has transformed into a cultural belief for many. Of course, this is nothing more than a stereotype, but it is a belief held my many nonetheless.
Even though memes can convey complex ideas, foster a feeling of cultural identity, and arouse strong emotions, they can have serious drawbacks when used as a vehicle for political speech. Memes about politics have the potential to elicit a reaction from a “self-convincing audience” that is eager to participate in the discussion.
People still disagree about whether or not racist, “alt-right” memes, many of which originated on Reddit or 4Chan but have since spread across the globe, played any role in Donald Trump winning the election of 2016.
Memes and other online political comedy have also been used by authoritarian regimes, both domestically and internationally, to achieve their goals.
There are also “weaponized” memes that appear to be harmless, but have had their original meanings transformed. For example, Pepe the Frog, a sorrowful cartoon frog, became a symbol of the alt-right, a white nationalist movement in the United States, for its politically charged, racist, and anti-Semitic sentiments.
It is also possible to weaponize politically hot problems like immigration or climate change by tying them to unrelated but highly controversial situations like that of the Zika virus’s spread across the world.
It is more than just the fact that memes reduce everything to one-liners and graphics that is a hindrance to communication. They can be used to intensify hostile and discriminatory sentiments toward certain races, against a particular gender, against a particular religion, or against a particular sexual orientation, thus increasing rather than narrowing the rift that exists between individuals. All of these situations create an Us versus Them situation where individuals have to choose what side they are on and the cultures they choose to believe.
Disinformation
As memes are a tool to spread a concept to a wide audience, it only makes sense that political memes have always existed. One of the most famous is Yes We Can, a memed-slogan used by President Barack Obama during his presidency run.
Due to its’ wide reach, memes can also be used as vehicles for disinformation for the sake of political gain in the favor on one party. By packaging a false statement within a humorous meme, the narrative might become reality depending on how viral it gets. At that point, the truth would no longer matter simply due to how famous the meme is.
Memes are undoubtedly utilized by individuals with political motivations in mind. A group of supporters of a specific political party can easily create memes under the guide of humor and relentlessly defame an opposing party if done purposefully and frequently.
The fact that we see several messages regarding the same topic causes our brains to take a shortcut to determining their believability. It must be real, we reason — I’ve seen that exact assertion made on more than one occasion today.
On a study conducted by Ahmed Al-Rawi to provide insight into the discourses of fake news and memes on Instagram, the findings indicate that Instagram has evolved into a weaponized toxic platform, with the largest community of active users consisting primarily of supporters of US President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, who are primarily known for trolling liberal mainstream media, particularly CNN, while frequently aligning themselves with the far-right movement. An internet community that is far smaller, on the other hand, is attempting to troll Trump and the Republicans. Using political meme literature as a starting point, the study asserts, in theory, that Instagram has become weaponized as a result of an ongoing ‘Meme War,’ in which many members of the two main online groups troll and attack each other in order to gain power on the network.
Political memes are no longer confined to brief bursts of unfiltered personality or meticulously crafted visual statements. They’re now born in real time from the internet’s marshes and spread from the bottom up. They’ve evolved into a type of anarchic folk propaganda, with anything from passable epigrams to gleaming hate-soaked images.
How Do Memes in Politics Persist
To counteract the harmful impacts of memes might be a challenging task to accomplish. One issue is that they are rarely subjected to fact-checking. Instead of making verbal statements, they rely on a visual language to support their arguments.
In part because memes are ambiguous and necessitate the interpretation of visual grammar, it is difficult to hold their producers accountable. As an example, when someone are called out for making or sharing memes that are meant to represent white nationalism, they might either deny the content of the memes or claim that they are a joke.
Conclusion
While enjoying memes may be an innocent and entertaining way to spend some time, there are those who would utilize it for the wrong reasons. They have the power to create cultural biases and spread disinformation, so considering the ramifications and potential of memes when creating or consuming them is paramount if we want to solve such issues.
Class Reference:
Outside References:
- Gleick, James. “What Defines a Meme?” Smithsonian Magazine, 1 May 2011, www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/what-defines-a-meme-1904778/#2Akv6QO8CAbbieJF.99.
- Natanson, Hannah. “Harvard Rescinds Acceptances for At Least Ten Students for Obscene Memes | News | The Harvard Crimson.” The Crimson, 5 June 2017, www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/6/5/2021-offers-rescinded-memes.
- Pech, Richard J. “Memes and cognitive hardwiring: Why are some memes more successful than others?” European Journal of Innovation Management, vol. 6, no. 3, 2003, pp. 173–181. ProQuest, https://proxy.lib.umich.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/memes-cognitive-hardwiring-why-are-some-more/docview/211813390/se-2?accountid=14667, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14601060310486244.
- McLoughlin, Liam, and Rosalynd Southern. “By Any Memes Necessary? Small Political Acts, Incidental Exposure and Memes during the 2017 UK General Election.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, vol. 23, no. 1, Feb. 2021, pp. 60–84, doi:10.1177/1369148120930594.
- Dawkins, R., & Davis, N. (2017). The Selfish Gene (1st ed.). Macat Library. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781912281251
- Al-Rawi, Ahmed. “Political Memes and Fake News Discourses on Instagram.” Media and Communication [Online], 9.1 (2021): 276–290. Web. 12 Mar. 2022
