The power of social media continues to be under rated, even when it impacts events has serious as presidential elections. It’s something so rapidly growing that its hard to ever feel like we have it “all figured out” and after all, it was designed to connect us and bring us closer together, how dangerous could it really be?
With this attitude, the layers of nuance that social media brings to society is commonly overlooked. However, something as funny and light hearted as memes have now been coined, politicised and legislated.
“Meme warfare is a modern type of information warfare and psychological warfare involving the propagation of memes on social media through ‘platform weaponization’.”
Wikipedia, 2020.
The biggest example of warfare would probably have to be the US presidential election in 2016 where Donald Trump supporters were able to spread memes about him across the whole of the internet (therefor influencing the campaign).
Memes posted on the internet have been seen as so powerful that they have been taken down and banned by leaders such as Vladimir Putin (see below).
My remediation:
Erin Waugh 
Hey lovely! I really like the take you’ve given this week’s remediation. Super interesting way of looking at it. I like how you’ve talked about meme warfare in terms of the Presidential election. I think it makes your topic a bit more relatable and current and I’ve tried to do something similar with mine. I would love to hear more about this and especially if you touched on more of the social media revolution side of things, could be interesting too!
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Hey! Very insightful post, social media is constantly developing. The meme phenonomum displays a culture of interpretation, moderation and fake news. The US election is a common example. Check out this article of a communication tool https://strategicsocialmedialab.com/the-power-of-memes-in-social-media-communication/
In my blog I used the ‘social dilemma’ as an example of behaviours of capatalism and manipulation. Memes can be dangerous as silly as that sounds, if there is a rapid spread of wrongful information. Nice work.
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Hey Erin!
Really clear and presis blog post 🙂
The power of social media is under rated to say the least. But, for me personally I’ve only now understood this concept now. If you haven’t watched the documentary ‘Social Dilemma’ yet, it’s an incredible film that covers all topics from meme warfare to the addiction on the phone, but most importantly highlights the fact we are being manipulated for our data. In regards to meme warfare getting out of control was in November last year. where
an undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm. The meme focus on the aviation and defence industries! Take a look 🙂
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/how-memes-are-becoming-the-new-frontier-of-information-warfare/
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