Misleading Memes: The Effects of Deceptive Visuals of the British National Party
September 18, 2023
This study investigates how visual manipulation is employed on the Facebook page of a far-right party; and whether manipulation evokes different forms of engagement from Facebook users. The study takes as a case the Facebook page of the British National Party (BNP), which has recently been censored from the social media platform. It therefore provides ...
Cyber Swarming, Memetic Warfare and Viral Insurgency: How Domestic Militants Organize on Memes to Incite Violent Insurrection and Terror Against Government and Law Enforcement
September 18, 2023
In this briefing, we document a recently formed apocalyptic militia ideology which, through the use of memes—coded inside jokes conveyed by image or text—advocates extreme violence against law enforcement and government officials. Termed the ‘boogaloo’, this ideology self-organizes across social media communities, boasts tens of thousands of users, exhibits a complex division of labor, evolves ...
Memes And Symbolic Violence: #Proudboys And The Use Of Memes For Propaganda And The Construction Of Collective Identity
September 18, 2023
As a social media platform, Instagram has a strong influence on youth culture, identity, and perceptions of the world, with the application serving not only for youth to follow accounts that are aspirational but also for entertainment and identity building through memes. Meme accounts that are explicitly conservative and that espouse white supremacist, hateful ideology ...
Writing On The Walls: Discourses On Bolivian Immigrants In Chilean Meme Humor
September 18, 2023
Internet memes have become a popular form through which northern Chileans express frustrations with their marginalization on global, national, and local levels. At the same time, many of these memes criticize Bolivian immigrants for using resources and taking jobs from “true Chileans.” The humorous nature of these texts mitigates the extremity of embedded racial and ...