Experts discuss their political significance, conservative organizers’ widespread adoption of them, and how they define the somewhat nebulous term. Email not displaying correctly?
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How memes can fuel political strategy
From left, PolitiFact Senior Correspondent Jon Greenberg joins “Meme Wars” authors Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss and Brian Friedberg in a discussion at United Facts of America on Sept. 28, 2022.

Memes, like jokes, are often depicted as mostly harmless and incapable of exerting political influence. But recent elections have demonstrated organizers can easily leverage them to build political movements, spread group narratives and influence voters.

On Sept. 28, PolitiFact Senior Correspondent Jon Greenberg interviewed the authors of "Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America." Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss and Brian Friedberg of the Shorenstein Center, which explores the intersection of press, politics and public policy, defined memes and discussed their political significance and conservative organizers’ widespread adoption of them.

"It’s a unit of culture passed between groups and passed between generations," said Donovan, research director at the Shorenstein Center, referring to the original definition of "meme," which was coined by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. "For us, the most important thing about memes in general is that they don’t just appear, they resonate. They inspire some kind of emotional component, which could then lead you to take action."

Donovan cited Uncle Sam and the Occupy Wall Street movement as two examples of memetic ideas. While memes can be macro images with overlaid text, Donovan said, they can also be hashtags, slogans or anything that resonates.

"What it has to be is an idea that is sticky, memorable; it has to be compact; it has to be easy to reuse," Donovan said. "How you react to it can tell someone what kind of group you’re in and not in."

Friedberg, a Shorenstein researcher, described how, when writing the book, he and his co-authors viewed the Occupy movement as a template for the right’s use of "meme warfare."

"One of the ways we looked at Occupy was how a lot of the right learned from Occupy, even as they were condemning it," Friedberg said. "This idea of how to take a decentralized movement, foster it, but also to sort of glean the best of it and have it trade up the chain in mainstream political communication."

"We concentrate a lot on Andrew Breitbart and his friendship with Steve Bannon," Donovan said, referring to the conservative Breitbart News site’s founder and the former Trump administration adviser. "They made a movie about Occupy Wall Street where they actually focused on anti-media campaigns and the kinds of media manipulation that happened during Occupy."

Donovan cited an email hoax in which Occupy organizers were tricked into believing the rock band Radiohead would be playing at the protests as an example of Breitbart and Bannon learning "that on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog." (The quote came from a famous cartoon in The New Yorker.)

"All of that organizing power that we saw in 2016 around MAGA and the alt-right, it’s no surprise to us that Bannon is undergirding that," Donovan said.

Friedberg said that much of the language and mannerisms brought into the mainstream during the Donald Trump’s make America great again, aka MAGA, movement were developed online during the Gamergate ([link removed]) harassment campaign.

"The phrase ‘social justice warrior’ became very popular around then and that language was sort of harnessed by folks who would then immediately go into the early stages of the Trump supporters," Friedberg said.

Donovan also described memes’ ability to function as a dog whistle, simultaneously garnering in-group support and recognition without attracting out-group attention.

"Memes do this thing where if you know what the meme’s about, you’re in the community, you get it. Or if you understand it and you’re against it, it makes you mad." said Donovan. "Dog whistles can be very much something if you don’t know what you’re hearing, you miss it, but if you know, it’s a wink and a nod."


Interesting fact checks
A woman shows a placard with a photo of Iranian Mahsa Amini as she attends a protest against her death, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
• Factnameh: Why do we doubt the truth of the police force’s claim about Mahsa Amini? ([link removed]) (Persian)
• Factnameh details some of the reasons it believes that Iranian woman Mahsa Amini did not die of a heart attack in police custody, like officers claim. “This narrative contradicts the narrative of Mahsa’s family and eyewitnesses.” There have also been past instances of false reporting by security agents who have tortured those they have arrested.
• Reuters Fact Check: Fabricated Global News headline that gardening is a sign of far-right extremism ([link removed]) (English)
• An image is circulating showing that Global News, a Canadian publication, published an article headlined: “Gardening, canning, and other signs of far-right extremism to watch out for.” Thousands of people reacted to the images online, but no such article exists.
• USA Today: Police debunk false claim of sex trafficking attempt in Dearborn, Michigan ([link removed]) (English)
• “An array of false or exaggerated claims about supposed human trafficking ([link removed]) and kidnapping attempts ([link removed]) have spread around the country in recent months. The latest claims a woman in Michigan narrowly avoided being taken by a sex trafficker.” Read more above.
Quick hits
(Shutterstock)
From the news:
• Lessons from a failed research project: the challenge of studying misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic ([link removed]) : A retrospective on the challenges of researching coronavirus misinformation during the pandemic, through the lens of four researchers at Busara Center, a Nairobi-based nongovernmental organization. (Krittika Gorur, Pooja Gupta, Mark Milrine and Mareike Schomerus)
• Facebook takes down Russian network impersonating European news outlets ([link removed]) : It’s always fascinating to hear about large networks of fake social media accounts working together to advance narratives. Meta just announced that it found a pro-Kremlin network hawking pro-Russia viewpoints, as well as a Chinese network attempting to undermine the U.S. midterms and Czech government. (NPR, Shannon Bond)
• How anti-science disinformation spreads poison ([link removed]) : VTDigger’s David Goodman chronicles some of the history of environmental disinformation purveyed by corporations to preserve the business of selling and distributing chemicals, like DDT. Listen to the interview with Berkeley professor Elena Conis about her book, “How to Sell Poison.” (VTDigger, David Goodman)
From/for the community:
• The International Fact-Checking Network ([link removed]) at the Poynter Institute has awarded $450,000 in grant support to organizations working to lessen the impact of false and misleading information on WhatsApp. In partnership with Meta, the Spread the Facts Grant Program ([link removed]) gives verified fact-checking organizations resources to identify, flag and reduce the spread of misinformation that threatens more than 100 billion messages each day. The grant supports 11 projects from eight countries including India, Spain, Nigeria, Georgia, Bolivia, Italy, Indonesia and Jordan. Read more about the announcement here ([link removed]) .
• For Factually subscribers who live in Florida, please join us at the Straz Center in Tampa on Tuesday, Oct. 11, for a behind-the-scenes conversation with Associated Press executive editor Julie Pace. Poynter president Neil Brown will interview Pace about a variety of topics, including AP’s mission to elevate fact-based journalism in an environment rife with mis- and disinformation. Get tickets here ([link removed]) .
• To tackle the spread of health-related misinformation and debunk common perceptions around healthcare and practices at the ground level, THIP Media ([link removed]) and Newschecker ([link removed]) — both signatories to the IFCN — announced a collaboration at the beginning of September. “Both teams will collaborate to identify and fact-check health myths and misinformation prevalent on social media.”

Thanks for reading. If you are a fact-checker and you’d like your work/projects/achievements highlighted in the next edition, send us an email at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) by Tuesday.
Corrections? Tips? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .
Seth Smalley
Reporter, IFCN
[email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

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