“Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation” – Richard Dawkins
Memes are no doubt powerful in this day and age but why?
The use of social media for mobilisation, coordination and dissemination of memes and events allows for fast up-scaling because anyone can contribute in any capacity. Meme warfare swarms operate in an open process with fast feedback loops and develop fast long tails around successful attack vectors. They treat all content as open source, leverage anonymity to lower network transaction costs and make decisions through memetic replication.
“Memes are, in reality, the new leaflets of propaganda psyops (except way more effective).” This new propaganda is specifically tailored to social media where large political movements have leveraged social media to spread messages and memes to influence campaigns, with or without involvement from politicians themselves.
chats with chels 
Hey Chels,
The point you make that social media is so powerful because anyone can contribute in any way is very important to note to make. Many people take advantage of this and contribute poorly to the internet and this can be through memes. I spoke about the misuse of memes during Clinton’s campaign where everyone thought she was drafting women to serve. This was to manipulate the public and disadvantage her at any cost. As politics is obviously a big deal, we can see how easily these memes can be negatively associated with and the need for clarification from Clinton was necessary. I remember seeing years ago this video of Obama and being so shocked at how realistic the video was, demonstrates how we can’t always believe everything we see, and we need to research and inform ourselves of the facts within the internet.
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Hi Chels! I really like how your remediation was based on a quote rather than just the general topic, it’s really specific which makes it really effective. The video you included was a really good example, it’s crazy how realistic some propaganda can be! I also talked about memes influencing movements but mine was about anti-vaxxers rather than politics. Great blog!
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