How Are Memes Used To Spread Misinformation?
Every once in a while, society reinvents hieroglyphics again. Memes (and emoji!) are the hieroglyphics of the 21st century thus far. Memes provide a really special medium for communicating feelings, and most of this journalist’s free time is spent sending memes to friends about the trivial aspects of our daily lives, like this one about stubbing your toes.
The same attraction we have toward memes for their ability to express trivial, sometimes otherwise non-communicable moments of life, is being weaponized. By digging into the formula of what makes a meme successful, political organizations have been able to recruit and radicalize young people. Perverting this formula by adding a mix of false information and confirmation bias into the mix creates a deadly tool for quickly and efficiently spreading false information to mountains of people. So how do we recognize this tool in action?
First, we must look at what makes a meme work.
An Internet meme, by definition, is “an idea, behavior, image, or style that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms.” In order for that idea, behavior, image, or style to successfully spread, two things must be present in a meme:
Creative Reproduction of Materials: This involves the mixing of media to make a point; for example, using this screen capture from Game Of Thrones to apply to a real-life situation wherein the party making or receiving the meme may perceive themselves or others as having a similar experience as the subject of the screen-capture;
Intertextuality: creating the distillation of this experience by applying words to the picture; for example, “When your usher says ‘Enjoy the movie!’ and you say ‘You, too!’ even though they’re not going to a movie” atop the text of the above photo.
The mixing of these two elements is the only format every meme must follow. The universality of the materials being reproduced and the specificity of the intertextual interpretation creates a strong relationship to the situation being portrayed by the meme. This forms a direct line to public discourse, as people begin to look for others who share this experience.
However, this formula has been weaponized. In order to actually fight back against it, journalists must look for other tools to identify how and what they can believe about the information contained in a meme. Here are some of those tools.
Source the meme. Who made this meme? What else are they reporting, and what are their editorial standards? For example, a meme made by a Facebook group like Turning Point USA post inflammatory memes on a daily basis, very little of which make factual claims; but the few articles and memes they have posted touting “fact” have been marked by Facebook as containing misinformation about January 6th election results and COVID-19 vaccines. If the platform itself is marking the items as unreliable, it’s a safe bet they are unreliable.
Get context. This infamous meme, which circulated in early 2017, purports that former First Lady Michelle Obama was “shopping” three days after Hurricane Katrina, with an accompanying picture. A closer look into the context of this claim would find that Laura Bush was First Lady at the time Hurricane Katrina took place, so whether or not Mrs. Obama was shopping is immaterial. That, and a closer look at the photo used in this inflammatory meme, reveals the woman in the photo to be Condoleezza Rice, a Bush Administration official.
Consider the meme’s agenda. Does this meme appear to be specially crafted to inflame hatred against a person or group of people? Does this meme appear to advance the interests of one particular political group of conversation while silencing dissenting voices? Does the meme contain any actual information, or simply an emotional baseline meant to stoke the fires of unconscious prejudices? If yes, it is likely not a good source of information – emotions are not information.
Keep a checklist. Does this meme cite a source? Check. Is that source reputable? Check. Is the text on the meme a quote or otherwise verifiable information? Check. Is the photo in use with the meme something that puts the text into proper context? Check. Does the use of the two pieces together create a clearer picture of the information communicated, instead of one muddled by confirmation bias and prejudices? Check. All of these steps are useful in approaching memes with caution.
Journalists themselves are culture bearers and are responsible for passing information along in a succinct and accurate manner, so being sensitive to the mental olympics that Internet memes of the 21st century might play with them is a skill set that is increasingly important. And since misinformation and disinformation will always be created, a journalist’s role in the process is to stop it from circulating and provide alternative paths to the truth.
