What is a Meme?

A meme is a virally-transmitted photograph that is embellished with text that pokes fun at a cultural symbol or social idea.

The majority of modern memes are captioned photos that are intended to be funny, often as a way to publicly ridicule human behavior. Other memes can be videos and verbal expressions. Some memes have heavier and more philosophical content, while others are designed to incite disharmony and distrust. The world of memes is a worldwide social phenomenon and memes behave like a plague of anger and hate traveling from person to person quickly through social media.

The Meme As Propaganda

Memes are a modern type of information warfare and psychological warfare involving the propagation of memes on social media through Platform Weaponization.

In the wake of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, which left 17 dead, WIRED reported that the Alliance for Securing Democracy and RoBhat Labs, data-gathering groups that monitor Twitter activity, had identified a spike in Russian trollbots hijacking online conversations to stir up controversy and spread propaganda.

Allegedly, Russian trollbots flooded Twitter with pro-gun memes, appropriating messaging from the alt-right and NRA to deliver polarizing right-wing rhetoric. Russian trollbots are a core part of Moscow’s many dezinformatsiya campaigns, in which false information is deliberately spread to manipulate public opinion. Any major tragedy or breaking news story is an opportunity to infiltrate and disseminate.

Disinformation campaigns existed before the age of the internet. As early as 1923, Russia had an office dedicated to the spread of “disinformation,” a term coined by Joseph Stalin to describe false information carefully constructed with the intention to deceive. Disinformation is a powerful political tool that has been used offline and online to impact discourse surrounding major societal issues.

Now the humble internet meme, accessible to anyone with MS Paint and an internet connection, has become the centerpiece of disinformation campaigns. Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene" to describe cultural units of information that could transfer from one person to another. In earlier times, such a transfer might include one human teaching another to hunt and gather, while today, this might mean a professor teaching their students in a classroom.

But the concept of the meme has transcended Dawkins’ initial conception and entered the virtual realm, where memes know no bounds. Internet memes are permutations of text, images and video that can proliferate rapidly online. 

Meme wars seem to favor insurgencies because, by their nature, they weaken monopolies on narrative and empower challenges to centralized authority. A government could use memes to increase disorder within a system, but if the goal is to increase stability, it's the wrong tool for the job.

Meme propaganda is different than propaganda used in the past. Historically, propaganda was used as a way to change people’s way of thinking. Memes don’t necessarily do the same. They tend to shift the focus of public discussion, They tend to change how we process information, and they tend to change our behavior even if they don't change what we actually think.”

Memes appear to function like the IEDs of information warfare. They are natural tools of an insurgency; great for blowing things up, but likely to sabotage the desired effects when handled by the larger actor in an asymmetric conflict. The fact that a widely shared meme has deliberate falsehoods is hardly surprising. Memes, especially ones with a political or social justice agenda, are often shared precisely because the falsehood is designed to generate outrage and often violence. 

Many Facebook users seem to make it their life’s work to circulate political memes in hopes of influencing how you see the world.  They are agents of chaos, champions of nothing in particular. And through the power of mass disemination, even their most twisted ideas are  gain an audience. By typing some text on an image and sharing they too have the power to incite and create havoc capable of creating mayhem.