Vice takes a look at how politically funded memes affected the U.S. Presidential election, and how that experience is changing future tactics in information warfare.
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. Just think back to the NYPD’s hashtag boondoggle for an example of how quickly things can go wrong when big institutions try to control messaging on the internet. That doesn’t mean research should be abandoned or memes disposed of altogether, but as the NYPD case and other examples show, the establishment isn’t really built for meme warfare.
Full article: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/meme-warfare
Audio: https://soundcloud.com/motherboard/meme-warfare
Related Links:
http://www.stratcomcoe.org/academic-journal-defence-strategic-communications-vol1
https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/this-man-helped-build-the-trump-meme-army-and-now-he-wants-t
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/alt-right-trump-washington-dc-power-milo-214629
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/palmer-luckey-alt-right
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/russia-state-sponsored-pepe
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-twitter-campaign-mynypd-backfires-article-1.1765159