MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Social Sciences Department of Political Science
Memetic Warfare in the Context of Slovak Parliamentary elections
Diploma Thesis
Author: Peter Köles UČO: 450433 Supervisor: Mgr. et Mgr. Petra Mlejnková, Ph.D. Study Program: Security and Strategic Studies Matriculation year: 2018 Brno 2020
Abstrakt
Predložená diplomová práca sa venuje konceptu mematic warfare v kontexte volieb do Národenej rady Slovenskej republiky, ktoré sa konali vo Februári 2020. Práca v prvej časti ponúka ujasnenie konceptu mematic warfare, ktorý nebol v českom a slovenskom prostredí doposiaľ dostatočne zmapovaný. V druhej časti sa práca venuje obsahovej analýze memes, ktoré pridávane facebookovými stránkami Nezomri a Žobri, ktoré sú napojené na slovenský dezinformačný portál Hlavné správy. Z výsledkov analýzy je možné usúdiť, že tieto stránky v predvolebnom obdobní využívali memes, ako nástroj na ovplyvnenie cieľového publika.
Kľúčové slová: meme, memetic warfare, voľby, dezinformácie, obsahová analýza
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Abstract
This diploma thesis is focusing on analysis of the concept of mematic warfare in the context of the elections to the National Council of the Slovak Republic, which took place in February 2020. In the first part the thesis offers a clarification of the concept of memetic warfare, which has not received sufficient attention in the Slovak and Czech academic discourse. In the second part, the thesis deals with the content analysis of memes, which ware posted by the Facebook pages Nezomri and Žobri, which are connected to the Slovak disinformation portal Hlavné zprávy. Based on the results of the analysis, it can be concluded that these sites used memes in the pre-election period as a tool to influence the target audience.
Key words: meme, memetic warfare, elections, disinformation, content analysis
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Čestné prehlásenie Čestne prehlasujem, že som diplomovú prácu „Memetic Warfare in the Context of Slovak Parliamentary elections“ vypracoval samostatne a všetky zdroje a literatúru, z ktorých som čerpal pri vypracovávaní, riadne citujem a uvádzam úplný odkaz na príslušný zdroj.
Declaration of Authorship I declare that I have written the diploma thesis on “Memetic Warfare in the Context of Slovak Parliamentary elections ” independently and used only the sources listed in the bibliography and identified as references.
Brno, 08. 09. 2020 Peter Köles
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Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Mgr. et Mgr. Petra Mlejnková, Ph.D. for her all helpful advices during writing this thesis. I would also like to thank my family, mainly my wife and parents for their unconditional support throughout my studies.
5 Content
LIST OF FIGURES ...... 7 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... 8 INTRODUCTION ...... 9 1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ...... 12 1.1. MEMES AS AN EFFECTIVE WAY OF COMMUNICATION ...... 12 1.2. MEMES AND VISUAL PROPAGANDA ...... 14 1.3. MEMES AND SOCIAL MEDIA ...... 15 1.4. MEMES USED BY SLOVAK DISINFORMATION OUTLETS ...... 16 1.4.1. Disinformation as a security threat ...... 17 1.5. MEMETIC WARFARE ...... 19 1.5.1. Areas of current research in memetic warfare ...... 22 1.5.2. Key debates in contemporary study of memes ...... 24 1.6. DISINFORMATION AND INFORMATION WARFARE IN THE SLOVAK CONTEXT ...... 25 1.6.1. Public perception of disinformation ...... 25 1.6.2. Disinformation and information warfare in Slovak academic discourse ...... 27 1.6.3. Disinformation and COVID-19 pandemics ...... 28 2. CONCEPTUALIZATION ...... 30 3. METHODOLOGY ...... 33 3.1. RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND THE SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH ...... 33 3.2. METHOD AND RESEARCH STRATEGY ...... 33 3.2.1. Critical Visual Methodology ...... 34 3.2.2. Content analysis ...... 35 3.2.3. Data collection and sample selection ...... 36 3.2.4. Formulating codes and categories ...... 36 4. ANALYSIS ...... 39 4.1. LIBERALS AND LIBERALISM AS A THREAT ...... 43 4.2. ANDREJ KISKA AS A CRIMINAL ...... 46 4.3. ALOJZ HLINA UNFIT TO LEAD CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY ...... 48 4.4. MARIAN KOTLEBA AS A HERO ...... 50 4.5. POLITICIANS AS OBJECT FOR POLITICAL SATIRE ...... 52 4.6. OTHER ...... 55 5. DISCUSSION OF THE KEY FINDINGS ...... 56 5.1. WHO WAS TARGETED AND WHO WAS NOT ...... 57 5.2. MODUS OPERANDI ...... 59 5.3. OVERALL IMPACT ...... 60 6. LIMITATIONS...... 62 7. FURTHER RESEARCH ...... 64 CONCLUSION ...... 66 ATTACHMENT 1 ...... 68 LITERATURE ...... 70
6 List of figures
Figure 1 Examples of codes and categories. Source author ...... 38 Figure 2Performance of the Facebook pages in the pre-election period compared. Source Author ...... 40 Figure 3 Topics of memes posted one month before elections. Source Author ...... 41 Figure 4 Memes using visual of political party leader. Source Author ...... 42 Figure 5 Number Memes using visual of political party leaders. Source Author ...... 42 Figure 6 Number of memes in different categories. Source Author...... 43 Figure 7 Meme presenting Michal Truban as giving advice on using drugs. Source Žobri .... 44 Figure 8 Meme presenting PS/Spolu as aggressive. Source Žobri ...... 45 Figure 9 Andrej Kiska pictured as usurer. Source Žobri ...... 46 Figure 10 Member of Kiska's party holding sing Kiska is usurer. Source Žobri ...... 47 Figure 11 Meme picturing Andrej Kiska in prison with Ladislav Bašternák. Source Žobri ... 48 Figure 12 Hlina as a bad Christian. Source Nezomri ...... 49 Figure 13 Christian leaders support Kotleba. Source Žobri ...... 51 Figure 14 Meme mocking Andrej Kiska. Source Žobri ...... 52 Figure 15 Meme calling Andrej Kiska a pig ...... 53 Figure 16 Michal Truban as alien. Source Žobri ...... 54 Figure 17 Michal Truban as political amateur. Source Nezomri ...... 54 Figure 18 Slovakia is not prepared for COVID-19 pandemics. Source: Nezomr ...... 55 Figure 19 Results of Parliamentary elections in February 2020. Source Ministry of Interior . 61
7 List of abbreviations
IRA – Internet Research Agency KDH – Kresťansko demokratické hnutie (Christian democratic movement) ĽSNS – Ľudová strana Naše Slovensko (Peoples party Our Slovakia) Oľano – Obyčajný ľudia a nezávsilé osobnosti (Ordinary people and Independent personalities) PS – Progresívne Slovensko (Progressive Slovakia) PS/Spolu – koalícia PS/Spolu (Coalition PS/Spolu) SaS – Sloboda a Solidaridy (Freedom and Solidarity) Sme Rodina – Sme Rodina (We are Family) Smer-SD – Smer Sociálna Demokracia (Smer Social Democracy) SNS – Slovenská Národná strana (Slovak National Party) Spolu – Spolu (Together) SSPI – Slovenský inštitút pre bezpečnostnú politiku (Slovak Security policy Institute)
8 Introduction
Slovak parliamentary elections that took place in February 2020 have been exceptional for various reasons. Firstly, it has been the first parliamentary elections since the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancé in 2018 that shocked whole Slovakia. This act was followed by largest anti-government and anti-corruption protests since the Velvet revolution forcing then-Prime Minister Robert Fico and then-Minister of Interior Robert Kaliňák to resign on their offices. Secondly, it has been the first general elections since 2004 that party Smer -SD did not receive the largest number of votes. Thirdly and perhaps most importantly for this research, the campaign before these elections was exceptional and in the Slovak context unprecedented, because for the first time, political parties invested vast financial resources to their online campaigns that meant that social media such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube were flooded with political advertisements (Klingová et al. 2020).
Key to the success of the party Ordinary People and Independent Personalities, which won elections by a big margin was a video that was broadcasted live on Facebook. This video has been seen by more than 1.6 million users. While, some political parties have been placing their ads on the Slovak most influential disinformation outlet - Hlavné správy, thus legitimizing and financing its existence and also funding its work (Köles 2020a), other parties produced misleading videos, which shared disinformation about their political opponents. Such ran them as advertisements on social media (Živé.sk 2020). Another phenomenon that we could observe were anonymous Facebook fan pages, that were not directly connected to any political party, but have been posting political content. This was also observed in a study published by Globsec, which was monitoring Slovak information space ahead of the elections (Klingová et. al. 2020). These fan pages were used mainly a proxy for anti-campaign and while it is evident from the content which party were supporting, a direct link is almost impossible to prove.
This year's elections were specific in one more and very important aspect. It was the polarisation of the Slovak society in a way that it has never experienced before. We have been witnessing not only the classic clash between coalition and opposition supporters, but also the clash between extremism and liberalism. This clash was represented by supporters of extremist party Kotlebovci - Ľudová strana naše Slovensko (ĽSNS) and supporters of the coalition Progresívne Slovensko/Spolu občianska demokracia (PS/Spolu), which was strongly advocating for the values of liberal democracy and for the rights of the minorities. These clashes took place not
9 on the Internet and social media, but also on the streets. Citizens protests attended by politicians from PS/Spolu were organized around whole Slovakia taking place at the same time as meetings of the ĽSNS. The protests were accompanied by the disinformation spread on social media and once also resulting in open violence between supporters of the two parties on the protest in Trnava.
What is also important for this particular research is that the media environment and information space in Slovakia have changed significantly in recent years. We are witnessing the rise of so-called alternative media, which are presenting themselves as opposition to the well-established traditional mainstream media. These alternative media often disseminate disinformation and try to manipulate their audience. Despite this fact, they are gaining popularity among Slovaks and the recent opinion poll shows that more than 13 % of Slovaks at least once a week visit disinformation outlets compared to almost 28 % of Slovaks who read mainstream media at least once a week (Transparency 2020).
Even though the traditional media such as TV, radio or print newspapers are still the primary source of information for the majority of Slovaks, this is changing and the number of people who are getting their news from social media is increasing. Facebook with the 2.6 million users is the largest social media platform in Slovakia (HootSuite 2019). Therefore, communicators be it state institutions, private companies, politicians, traditional or disinformation media outlets had to adapt and adjust their messaging to the way people consume information nowadays.
Works of various scholars have shown that online memes1 can are very effective in collapsing and transferring a message. This is used by various actors in order to spread propaganda or manipulate the outcomes of the elections. This area of academic research is gaining attention of academics and but memetic warfare2 has not yet been studied in the Slovak context. Therefore, this research will be focused on studying memes published by disinformation outlets in the pre-election period.
This thesis is divided into several chapters and subchapters. The first chapter is dedicated to theoretical background of this diploma thesis. Meme theory and theory of visual propaganda form the theoretical framework of this research. Review of current state of academic research
1 Terms meme and memetics are used as synonyms. 2 Terms meme warfare, memetic warfare and mematic warfare are used synonyms.
10 of memes and memetic warfare is also included in chapter 1. In the second chapter, memes memetic warfare and disinformation are conceptualized. Chapter number three is dedicated to introducing research questions, methodology, data and sample section. Contend analysis is used in order to analyse memes posted in time period of one month before parliamentary election in February 2020. In the fourth chapter findings of the analysis are presented while chapter number five is dedicated to discussion of the results and putting them into broader context. Chapters six and seven offer suggestions for further research of memes and memetic warfare and present potential limitations of this thesis.
11 1. Theoretical background
1.1. Memes as an effective way of communication
It may seem that the memes entered into public and academic discourses sometime around the mid 2000's and that this phenomenon is connected mainly with the proliferation of Internet and social media. In fact, memes have been the subject of academic debates far earlier and way before the massive proliferation of Internet and social media users. The concept of meme was firstly introduced in 1976 by Richard Dawkins. He referred to the meme as a unit of cultural transmission (Dawkins 1976). Dawkins was inspired by Darwin’s Theory of evolution and natural section. He thought of memes as the smallest units of culture. Similarly, to the genes in biology, the purpose of the meme is to replicate itself. The process of the natural selection will ensure that only the fittest one will survive and evolve (Dawkins 1976). The classic example of a meme is a tune, such as “Happy Birthday to You,” sung by one person and heard and repeated by another (Drout 2006). Critics of using this theory often stress that meme theory is hard to conceptualize, does not fit into current media studies or that meme theory simply should not exist (Rose 1998; Schrempp 2009). However, despite this criticism this research builds on Dawkins' original theory, which has been adjusted in order to fit into the current information environment which has changed significantly since 1976.
Similarly, as it was in the case of disinformation and propaganda, development of the Internet and social media have heavily influenced our understanding of the phenomenon. Also, the understanding of the concept has changed since firstly introduced by Dawkins. When he firstly introduced the concept, memes have been transmitted mainly orally and verbally in the forms of poems, songs or gestures. In the current understanding of the concept, memes are transmitted online, through using social media.
As memes are shared among many people on the social media, they shed the context of their creation along with their authorship, thus they become the property of collective culture. Various authors prefer different theoretical approaches when it comes to research on the concept of the meme and meme warfare. Such approaches can have foundation in biology, epidemiology, cognitive psychology, information processing, online marketing (Siegel 2017;
12 Zakem, McBride, Hammerberg 2018). This research however is building on Dawkins original meme theory as well as theory of propaganda.
Memes are in this thesis viewed as units of information. They are constructed in order to be replicated and transmitted. This means that the primary reason why memes are constructed is to transmit a certain information or message. This is done by replication - either sharing the meme or altering the text accompanying the image. Every meme then undergoes the process of natural selection and only the fittest ones can evolve and thus become viral. The meme’s ability to spread and replicate is essential in this context.
Memes have a great potential to influence behaviour and opinions of their recipients. If a meme is successful it is able to quickly gain vast amounts of interactions in the form of likes, retweets or shares on social media (Veerasamy, Labuschagne 2014). Moreover, the format of the meme - visual accompanied by simple text which can be easily shared or altered is well-suited for persuasion and propaganda campaigns (Nee, De Maio 2019).
Studies have also shown that if a consumer is exposed to a significant number of memes, it can influence his/her behaviour and is more likely to believe such a message when it comes from an unsponsored source. Research by Webber (et al. 2019) had studied the impact of unsponsored user generated memes and accompanying comments on social media users. Their research was specifically focusing on vaccination. Within this study several experiments have been conducted where subjects were exposed to anti or pro vaccination memes and comments accompanying those memes on social media. While a significant number of respondents was pro-vaccination, their interaction with memes and comments affected subsequent attitudes and intentions toward vaccinating. Findings of the study clearly show that memes together with comments have a potential to influence subject’s attitudes towards pro or anti vaccination. After being exposed to pro or anti vaccination memes and comments, in both cases subjects tended to change their opinion on vaccination. The study also shows there may be differential paths to a persuasion for pro- versus anti-vaccination memes accompanied by supporting or opposing comments (Weber et.al. 2019).
13 This can be particularly dangerous when we take into consideration that most of the memes are currently shared on the social media platforms such Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
1.2. Memes and visual propaganda
Propaganda can be defined as a deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist (Jowett, O`Donnell 2006) or to put it more simply an attempt to transmit social and political values in the hope of affecting people’s thinking, emotions, and behaviour (Huang 2014). Propaganda often uses techniques employed in advertising and social media marketing. Key to a successful propaganda often lies in the ability of the propagandist to produce visually and emotionally appealing messages, that are easily understood by masses and thus affect people’s behaviour or beliefs.
Modern propaganda uses all the media available to spread its message. Moreover, propaganda includes the reinforcement of societal myths and stereotypes that are well embedded within a culture of a society and it is often difficult to recognize the message as propaganda because it can be easily considered as a way of civic activism (Manzaria, Bruck: 2014). Emotions and visuals or symbolism can be considered as one of the most important aspects of contemporary propaganda (Jowett, O`Donnell 2006; Bryder 2008; Moshirnia 2020).
Hence, for this research the theory of visual propaganda will be crucial. This theory suggests that a piece of visual carries further meaning. This is not only meaning in a cognitive or a semantic sense, but in an emotional and evaluative sense as well. Such visual messaging can have significance in i.e. political propaganda because it can produce persuasive effect for target audience (Koppang 2009). Typical example of such visual political propaganda is a poster or a pamphlet. Its primary purpose is to attract the attention of the amorphous crowd (Bryder 2008). The significance of visuals is also stressed by the research in psychology and neuroscience. Images are a superior means for driving perception and forming memories. It has been proven that the human brain is more likely to remember pictures than words. Visuals also assist with the memory of words and have the capacity to be distinctive hence more easily recalled (Moshirnia 2020). Visuals have also enhanced ability to recall emotional responses within the target audience (Ibid.). It has also been proven that the human brain processes images much faster than texts. In fact, visuals are processed 60 000 times faster than written text (Zakem,
14 McBride, Hammberg 2020). They are also effective in performing on social media which in recent years have become of battlefield for propaganda. Algorithms of social media are currently preferring content that has visual elements. This means that posts including image or video are much more likely to appear on the top of users' news feed than those without any visual. Such posts also gain more likes, shares and overall interactions. (Ibid).
Another important aspect in the theory of propaganda is message simplification which is closely connected to target audience analysis. The propagandist has to ensure that the message is going to be understood by the target audience in order to have any impact. The condition of effective learning through propaganda is built on the idea of parsimonious explanations, not elaborate arguments (Koppang 2009). This is where memes are particularly helpful because they have the ability to collapse very complex narratives into just one image. Moreover, researches have shown that memory of verbal information was enhanced when a visual was paired with words (Moshirnia 2020).
To summarize what was described above, memes and visual propaganda should go hand in hand, because they fulfil the basic criteria for the successful propaganda: 1) they are visually appealing 2) they are appealing emotionally 3) they have capability to simplify very complex message or narrative 4) they the ability to be easily shared and altered 5) they combine written text and visual leading to enhanced ability to memorize such text. Therefore, in this research memes are considered as one of the tools for propaganda transmission.
1.3. Memes and social media
Memes have become a part of our everyday life on social media. It is almost certain that when a user opens one of the most popular social media, he or she will encounter at least one meme and there is a good reason for that. Memes are an effective way to collapse narrative into a single image that does not have to be attributed to any source (Pmerleau 2020).
As it was mentioned above, the communicators have to adapt their messaging to the new information environment. According to online marketiers, memes are proven to be very effective in delivering messages to the large group of people. This statement is also supported by the fact, that one of the most successful Facebook fan page ins the Slovakia called Zomri and has nearly 300 000 followers is a satirical page, producing only memes. These memes are
15 mostly political and are regularly shared by several thousands of internet users which ensure that the messages can reach a wide audience.
This trend has been also realised by experts on political marketing and politicians themselves. Therefore, an increasing number of politicians are using memes alongside with other forms of visual communication in their campaigns (Veneti, Jackson, Lilleker 2019).
The business model of social media is built on profiting from advertisement; therefore, it is in their interests to keep users on the platform in order to display as many ads as possible. In order to ensure users, spend as much time as possible on the platform, special algorithms are designed to keep users engaged and prevent them from leaving. This algorithm offers a unique, personalized feed for every user. It takes into account users’ previous behaviour and the behaviour of his or her social group to determine what type of content will be interesting for the particular user.
This creates the so-called echo chamber effect. This means that just after one click or like on the article the social media platform will automatically start offering the user another article on similar topics (Prier 2017). That also applies, on memes, if a user has recently shared or liked a certain meme, the platform will automatically place similar content into user’s newsfeed.
1.4. Memes used by Slovak disinformation outlets
Disinformation outlets in Slovakia have also taken advantage of the potential that memes offer and started using it as a means of massaging to their audience. The largest and most influential disinformation outlet in Slovak Republic, Hlavné správy, which by number of visits can be compared to the traditional mainstream national media has established a meme section on its website. It places their content form two Facebook pages posting only memes. The first one is called Žobri and has over 4 000 followers, the second is called Nezomri with nearly 7 000 followers. These two Facebook pages present themselves as an alternative against the very popular satirical Facebook page Zomri.
16 1.4.1. Disinformation as a security threat
Although disinformation and disinformation campaigns are not a new phenomenon, there is currently much discussion among security policy experts about a security threat they pose. They are considered to be one of the elements of a hybrid warfare which is used by state and non- state actors to pursue their interests. The reason why disinformation poses a serious security threat are the changes in the and information environment mentioned earlier. The development of the Internet and the rapid growth of social media users, combined with the continuous flow of information, have caused changes in the way people receive information.
Social media platforms are the ideal tool for disseminating misinformation, because they create social bubbles. This means that users tend to associate with people with a similar worldview, which then creates a closed homophilic group, where individual members of the group are mutually reinforcing their worldviews and opinions (Prier 2017). Therefore, one no longer perceives the broader context and does not critically evaluate the arguments used in such a group. Social media have become a tool for mobilizing, disseminating various narratives, disinformation and conducting information operations. Both state and non-state actors are increasingly using social media as a tool to influence their target group's behaviour, attitudes, moods and opinions. This trend is called weaponization of social media, which means that social media are turning into a battlefield, where hostile information is attacking the target group (Biały, 2017). Social media users often do not even realize these risks which makes it even more dangerous.
We could also see this phenomenon at various elections in 2017, when disinformation websites and Facebook pages in different countries supported extreme right-wing candidates and spread disinformation about their counter-candidates. In the Netherlands it was Geert Wilders, in France it was Marine Le Pen, in Germany the Alternative for Germany.
Russian Federation is an example of a state actor who uses disinformation to a great extent for its political goals. Dissemination of disinformation and propaganda in Ukraine, Scandinavia, Baltic countries and other Central and Eastern European countries is a component of Russian hybrid warfare (Danyk, Maliarchuk, Briggs 2017; Aro 2016). Also, with the recent pandemics of COVID-19, Chinese disinformation campaigns have become more vocal. Studies show that since the outbreak of global pandemic, the People's Republic of China has intensified its activities in information space. Its operations targeted domestic as well as foreign audiences
17 with the main aim of denying responsibility for the outbreak of the pandemic as well as building an image of a strong country which was successful in tackling coronavirus and now is offering material help to other countries (MoD 2020).
When it comes to non-state actors, ISIS at its prime has been particularly effective when it comes to the online propaganda and disinformation (Prier 2017). It is also proved that a large number of disinformation presents a far-right ideology (Mustafaraj, Metaxas 2017; Banesett, Livingston 2018).
The spread of disinformation is dangerous, among other things, because a successful disinformation campaign has the potential to influence democratic processes and election results. Especially if the results are very tight, it is sufficient if only a small part of the population decides on the choice of a candidate on the basis of false or misleading information. We could witness the manipulation of election results in the case of the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, the US presidential election in 2016 and also the elections in several countries in 2017.
In addition, disinformation outlets undermine the credibility of traditional media channels. Today, it is extremely easy to create a website that looks like a serious news portal, but in fact its goal is to spread disinformation, either for profit from advertising or for political reasons. Such outlets often spread various conspiracy theories and more importantly often do not follow the basic principles of quality journalism. By presenting themselves as credible media, they undermine people’s trust in classic, serious news.
But disinformation can even have a negative impact on public health or can lead to physical harm. Disinformation promoting anti-vaccination disinformation can cause that significant amount of people to decide against vaccination. This can lead to the fact that a number of people vaccinated could go below 90 % of population, which then can lead to the loss of collective immunity within the populations. In recent months medical disinformation have been on the rise, primarily thanks to the COVID-19. Such disinformation advised not to wear masks or suggested different treatments for treating COVID-19, which were often harmful and have been debunked by WHO.
18 When it comes to COVID-19, a popular disinformation was spread that the virus is spread through 5G transmission. This resulted in some countries info setting 5G transmitters on fire and physically attacking the personnel who was then responsible for repairing the damage. In the UK more than 70 5G transmitters have been set on fire. There has even been also reported case where a woman died from COVID-19, because she was influenced by disinformation and conspiracy theories and did not seek medical assistance in time (BBC 2020).
1.5. Memetic warfare
This section will provide an overview of the current state of research regarding the concept of meme and meme warfare. Firstly, it will be focusing on key works that have influenced our current understanding of the concept of meme warfare. Secondly, three key areas of contemporary research in meme warfare will be presented. Those areas are: election interference, ISIS propaganda and right-wing propaganda. Lastly, two important debates regarding the understanding and utilization of memes and meme warfare will be presented.
As it was mentioned earlier, memes are a very powerful tool for transferring information and influencing masses and therefore it has been the subject of academic research. Work of Richard Dawkins laid the foundation of the research in this area. In his book The Selfish Gene (Dawkins 1976) he firstly introduced the term meme, which he defined as the smallest cultural unit spread through the diffusion of ideas. Memes in Dawkins’understanding resembled genes. These “genes” are also the smallest unit of cultural transmission, which are passed from generation to generation (Donowan 2019). As genes are transmitted and hosted in cells in biology, memes are transmitted and hosted by human minds in the area of culture (Coker 2008, Zolotukhin 2017). Dawkins was published his work in the time, without Internet or social media, therefore examples of the memes included melodies, catch phrases, fashion or architecture (Veerasamy, Labuschagne 2014). When developing the meme concept, Dawkins was heavily inspired by Darwin's theory of natural selection. As well as genes, memes are also driven by the process of selection the fittest ones survive and evolve (Coker 2008). Similarly, as it is in biology where biological evolution is driven by the fittest genes, cultural revolution is driven by the most successful memes (Giesea et. al. 2017).
19 Although Dawkins has been heavily criticized for biological reduction (Ibid.) and for simplifying very complex biological processes in order to compare them to cultural elements, his work laid the ground for further research. Even when our current understanding of memes has changed over the time, his work is still relevant and has a merit when applied to our current understanding of the concept.
Scholars nowadays tend to consider memes as a component of psychological operations within information warfare rather than elements of cultural evolution. However theory of natural selection can still be applied. The concept of memes has evolved since Dawkins’ work on memes. In current discourse memes are often viewed as humorous pictures or videos accompanied with short text that is shared widely on social media and can be easily altered. We can consider the fittest memes as those that have become viral on social media thus reaching and possibly influencing hundreds of thousands of users. The ability of memes to be quickly diffused online and their humoristic nature makes them a highly effective tool in winning hearts and minds of people. Effortless adaptation of style and aesthetics of the memes combined with their interpersonal aspect are key components that make them a very powerful digital weapon (Moshirnia 2020; Wegner 2020). They have become the ideal tools for online insurgency used to wage asymmetric warfare because they challenge central authority's monopoly on narratives and increase disorder within the system (Siegel 2017).
Another influential work that helped to shape academic debate about memes and meme warfare was Memetics—a Growth Industry in US Military Operations by Michael Prosser (2006). It was the first paper written by a US military official that has been elaborating on utilizing memes as a military component. Prosser has pointed out that the US military has not been paying enough attention to the concept of meme and its military implications. According to Prosser (2006) meme falls into the category of Information Operations and more specifically Psychological Operations and Strategic Communications. He identified memes as key emerging tools to win the ideological metaphysical fight and called upon US government and military officials to recognise their importance. Prosser even took examples of using memes in the private sector and applied them to the military. He even proposed the establishment of the Meme Warfare Center. This Center was designed “to advise the commander and provide the most relevant meme combat options within the ideological and nonlinear battle space” (Prosser 2006:11). Center in his proposal consists of two particular organizational units - Internal Memes Center and External Meme warfare center. The first unit dedicated to friendly
20 combatant forces, the second to enemy combat forces, non-combatant indigenous personnel, and the strategic audience (Prosser 2006). Using medical analogy, memes should be used like medicine to inoculate the enemy and generate popular support.
After publishing Prosser's paper, the US military started to pay more attention to the research memes and their utilization in combat. In fact, this has been an impulse to the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency which funded study on military memes (Gramer 2017). This study builds on the work of Prosser's finding and also considers memes as a vital part of the Psychological information and Strategic Communications (Finkelstein 2011). Contrary to the Prosser, Finkelstein's takes a more scientific approach to the study of memes. While Prosser's definition of meme “units of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation” (Prosser 2006) can be considered as vague and hard to operationalize, Finkelstein on the other hand defines meme as an information that propagates, has impact, and persists (Finkelstein 2011). By this definition, Finkelstein tries to bring memes closer to hard science as he introduces mathematical procedures to calculate impact and persistence of the meme thus to measure their effectiveness (Siegel 2017). Finkelstein also expands Prosser's idea of using the memes as a communication tool to address friendly combatant forces. He suggests using memes in the regulation process as well as to increase motivation of US soldiers.
In 2015 Jeff Giesea, a widely known social media and tech expert, published his article in NATO Stratcom CoE Journal, where he was calling on NATO to embrace the concept of meme warfare (Giessa 2015). Geissa defined meme warfare as “competition over narrative, ideas and social control in a social-media battlefield” (Giessa 2015:70) and similarly as Prosser (2006) and Finkelstein (2011) considers memetic warfare as a digital version of information and psychology operations. Giessa claims that NATO and NATO members should incorporate meme warfare into their strategic documents because it is an essential capacity in modern warfare.
Interesting approach to analysis of meme warfare was developed by Zakem, McBride and Hammerberg who define memes as a cultural resonant item easily shared or spread online (Zakem, McBride, Hammerberg 2018:10). Their construct is based on epidemiological models and is rooted in Dawkins' original concept of meme as a pseudo biological construct and as well as epidemiological models applied to the study of radicalization and terrorism. Based on this, they have identified three ways in which memes can be incorporated to influence operations:
21 1) to inoculate 2) to infect 3) to treat (Zakem, McBride, Hammerberg 2018). To use memes for inoculation means preventing or minimizing messaging of an adversary. Distributions of memes is in this case preventive. Examples of using memes to inoculate include mainly public campaigns directed against ISIS messaging on social media. To infect means to use memes as offensively. Memes are spread and they articulate positive or negative messages that are in the line with broader goals and objectives i.e. Russian interference into Brexit referendum or Russian interference into 2016 US presidential elections. By using memes to treat, meands to respond by using memes to o a message that has been spread by another actor. This can be either in the way of mocking, disproving or otherwise countering. Example of the US Embassy in Moscow to Russian disinformation about US Ambassador John Tefft (Ibid.).
This case is by various authors considered as a example of how government institutions should use memes in their messaging. Ambassador has been accused by Russian authorities of attending the opposition protest against the government. Russian used photoshopped Tefft photographs to support their claim. As a response US Embassy released a series of memes where they photoshopped Tefft to various photographs (landing on the moon, hockey match, with cats, at the wedding ect.).
1.5.1. Areas of current research in memetic warfare
Based on reviewing the literature on meme warfare, it is possible to identify three basic thematic streams of current research of memes. Most recently published research papers fall into one of the categories. Those areas are: 1) election disruption 2) ISIS propaganda 3) right wing propaganda. These categories define what is the purpose of using memes as a means for transmitting certain messages.
The category of election disruption is quite extensive and gained a lot of attention in recent years. As it was demonstrated above, memes are very effective in transmitting messages and are an ideal tool in today's information warfare toolbox, therefore are used by various actors in order to disrupt or influence democratic processes. Perhaps the most prominent example of using memes to influence elections were activities of the Internet Research Agency (IRA). Investigations have uncovered that targeted social media memes, or altered images, were one method that foreign actors used as information warfare to target Hillary Clinton's campaign
22 (Department of Justice, 2018). Number of researchers have been studying the mechanisms that the IRA had incorporated into its strategy in order to influence outcomes of late presidential elections. For example, Diresta et. al (2018) have published extensive study, where they analysed a large number of memes shared by IRA through various social media platforms and different pages and profiles belonging to IRA. They found out that Russia’s most popular pages targeted the right wing and the black community. They also adjusted their messaging to various target groups i.e. they deployed Pepe memes at pages intended for right-leaning millennials but kept them away from posts directed at older conservative Facebook (Diresta et. al 2018). What is also interesting is that not every meme was successful, while 33 of the 81 IRA Facebook pages had over 1,000 followers, dozens had none at all (Ibid.). Another study explored the extent to which negative persuasive visual memes about Clinton incorporated gender stereotypes of females and female politicians (Nee, De Maio 2019). The study showed that negative female biological gender stereotypes were prevalent in memes of Clinton, portraying her as weak or unhealthy, attributes which are incongruent with leadership ideals. Memes relating to Clinton’s character traits were also incongruent with positive traditional female characteristics of honesty and integrity (Ibid). Memes have also been used in past couple of years by various actors in order to influence the outcomes of elections in other countries as well i.e. Britain, France Germany and Sweden (Davey 2018; Zakem, McBride, Hammerberg 2018).
The second area of current research in meme warfare is focused on examining how memes have been utilized by ISIS. Researches show that ISIS was very successful in adapting to the changed information environment (Greene 2015; Zakem McBride, Hammerberg 2018). Its cyber divisions have mastered information warfare and online propaganda. They also embraced meme warfare and have incorporated it into their tactics. In fact, During the early stages of ISIS' war in Iraq and Syria, for instance, the group used memes to captivate an international audience and broadcast its message both to enemies and potential recruits (Siegel 2017).
Third area of contemporary research on memetics is their utilization by right-wing extremists and their propaganda. Similarly, as ISIS, right-wing extremists have adapted to the changed information environment and utilized memes for sharing their propaganda and for recruitment (Bump, 2019; Askott 2020). Memes help normalize extreme behaviours by using humour and thanks to their nature it is almost impossible to find the original creator and hold them accountable for dissemination of hate speech (Donovan 2019). The rising exposure to far-right memes and their rapid diffusion make violent ideologies more common thus making it difficult
23 to differentiate between serious hate speech and internet jokes (Askott 2020; Wegner 2020). Case studies of using memes by extremists include Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch attacker who called upon others to create posts and spread memes because he believed they are more effective than any manifesto and there have been efforts to transform his attack into a meme world. Platforms like 4chan or 8chan have been shortly after the attack flooded memes that labelled Tarrant the Kiwi Kebab Killer and described him as a “kebab removalist” (Askott 2020).
Pepe the Frog is a very popular character of the extreme right-wing memes. Pepe the frog was originally created as a part on online comics shared mainly on Myspace, which was widely popular mainly around 2008. However, since 2010 this character was associated with extreme right propaganda, which used the popularity of Pepe the frog to spread racism, antisemitism, and white nationalists’ propaganda. Suddenly, once popular internet jokes contained various elements of Nazi propaganda. The typical example is the flag of so called Kekistan3, that shared similarities with Nazi war flag which was used during the World War II (Pettis 2017). Pepe and Kekistan memes were shared mainly on platforms visited by white supremacists and airtight - 8chan and 4chan (Ibid). It was primarily the utilization of Pepe the Frog by alt right and white supremacists that led into broader scientific inquiry into memes as means of propaganda transmission.
1.5.2. Key debates in contemporary study of memes
To summarize this part, it is possible to identify two crucial debates among scholars studying the memes which are shaping our understanding of the concept. The first debate is about what makes memes go viral and thus potentially reach hundreds of thousands internet users. In this respect, there are two basic lines of thoughts. The first group of authors (Dawkins 1976; Coker 2008; Veerasamy, Labuschagne 2014:92-93; Zolotukhin 2017) put emphasis on the overall fitness of the meme. They are inspired by Dawkins and his comparison of memes to genes and Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Hence, they are arguing that only the fittest memes
3 A fictional country as a fake ethnic origin for those who believed in a worshipped Kek. Kek is a figure from ancient Egyptian religion, which has a frog head.
24 can survive in the competition of thousands of memes generated and shared online. Meaning that only those fittest ones can become viral. For this group of authors (Donovan 2019, Lovrik 2019; Giessa et al 2017; Wegner 2020) the fitness or message that meme caring is the key determinant of its success. The second group of scholars reject this optic as very narrow. They argue that memes are transmitted and replicated based on the social, economic and cognitive nature of the receiving host and not attributed to the meme’s inherent strength and fitness. They argue that the memetics cannot exist by themselves but have to rely on massive public participation to spread memes and obscure their original authors. In contrast with the first group they put less emphasis on the meme itself and priorities social aspects of the target audience. They basically argue that there can be a meme that will resonate with one target audience but not as much with another.
The second debate is about utilization of meme and meme warfare. There is discussion about whether governments and militaries should use meme as part of their influence operations. Again, we have two dominant views here. First group of authors (Prosser 2006; Finkelstein 2011; Giessa 2015; Zakem, McBride, Hammerberg 2018) are calling governments and militaries to embrace the concept. They consider memes as a crucial part of information warfare and psychological operations which should be used in future conflicts to win hearts and minds. They are proposing using memes for defensive as well as offensive purposes and call upon military strategists to incorporate this into strategic planning and strategic documents. The second group (Gramer 2017; Siegel 2017; Donovan 2019; Wegner 2020) is critical to possible adoption memes by governments. They argue that memes are a weapon of the internet guerillas and are used by the asymmetric opponents. Memes are effective in challenging central authority and prevailing narratives, that is why it is effectively used by terrorists, white supremacysts. Moreover, governments lack flexibility and are not capable of snap reactions which are necessary for being efficient in utilizing memes.
1.6. Disinformation and information warfare in the Slovak context
1.6.1. Public perception of disinformation
In the past couple of years, there has been extensive debate among Slovak expert security on the topic of hybrid threat and particularly disinformation. Terms such disinformation, information warfare or hybrid threats have become buzz words among expert and also non
25 expert communities used mostly in association with Russian operations in Central and Eastern Europe.
According to data provided by Eurobarometer 87 % of Slovaks declared that disinformation is a threat for the security of the Slovak republic (Eurobarometer 2018). This could indicate that the Slovak public is aware of the harmful effect of disinformation campaigns on the society. However, on the other hand is it important to note that, the questions in the survey were formulated in a very vague manner and the document lacks a clear conceptualization and operationalization of the term disinformation. Term disinformation is very ambiguous, therefore different respondents can imagine different phenomena under this term. It can range from mistakes in reporting through biased reporting or clickbait to the false stories. Therefore, these data might be somehow distorted.
Another opinion poll that has unleashed heated debate among scientists and experts was the opinion poll conducted among schoolteachers, its core aim was to find out which media outlets do teachers recommend to their students. The results were shocking, when Hlavné správy, the most visited disinformation outlet came up third as 57 % of teachers would recommend this outlet to their students as a reliable source of information. Zem a Vek, the conspiracy theory magazine came up fifth with 53 % of teachers recommending it and leaving behind the traditional mainstream media such as Sme or Dennik N (Živé.sk 2019). These results are alarming and as it was mentioned unleashed debate among experts. However, one of the possible explanations may be that most of the traditional media have paid subscription while disinformation outlets have not, therefore are accessible for the large number of internet users. Another factor that we have to take into account is also that Hlavné Správy means in Slovak language main news and many respondents could be simply confused. Nevertheless, this opinion poll demonstrates the problem with the vulnerability of Slovaks to disinformation outlets. There is a survey published by Transparency International Slovakia (Transparency 2020) which suggests that 13 % of adult Slovaks visit at least one disinformation outlet once a week, while 27,6 % of adult Slovaks visit traditional media at least once in a week. This survey provides also interesting insights into the demographics of the consumers of disinformation outlines. Based on this research, nearly 60 % of consumers of disinformation platforms are male and most of the consumers support far right political party ĽSNS (Ibid).
26 Even though all these polls offer some important data insights into the consumers of disinformation or the overall media landscape in Slovakia, they do not offer an in-depth explanation of the paregmenon.
1.6.2. Disinformation and information warfare in Slovak academic discourse
In the Slovak republic, Globsec is an organization that has been studying this phenomenon systematically. It has been examining the resistance of Slovak society to disinformation within their annual publications called Globsec Trends. Their reports show that Slovak society has been regularly rated as the most vulnerable to the effects of disinformation among the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (Milo, Kilingová, Hajdu 2017; Milo, Kilingová, Hajdu 2016). The findings also show that young people and people of pre-retirement age are most likely to believe in disinformation. The problem with these researches, however, is that they do not deal exclusively with disinformation, but focus on a wide range of phenomena from NATO and EU membership, through civilization, the popularity of world politicians, and so on. Recently, Globsec published a report, with the conclusions of monitoring Slovak disinformation outlets as well as mainstream media five months before the elections. Their results show that key target of the attacks coming from the problematic sources was liberalism; the most popular theme on open Facebook groups sharing problematic content was the warning against potential election interference; the rise in support for the far-right extremist ĽSNS in the polls and elections was also evident on the internet, ĽSNS was the most-mentioned party on the most-viral posts by both standard and problematic sources within the five months of monitoring (Klingová et. al. 2020).
Stratpol, another Slovak think tank, has in 2017 published a report called the Disinformation resilience index, which was primarily focused on Russian propaganda. The report shows that pro-Russian disinformation campaigns seek to exploit a shared communist past, the conservatism of Slovak society, the common Slavic ethnic background or the country’s economic dependence on Russian gas and oil to spread their narratives in Slovakia (Jevčák, Kandrík 2017). The study also identified most vulnerable groups within Slovak society, which are those Slovaks who feel strong nostalgia for their communist past; young people aged under 25 or socio-economically weaker people of 45+ years of age (Ibid.)
27 In 2018, Framework analysis was conducted in order to analyse Facebook pages of some of the most prominent Slovak disinformation outlets. The analysis included Zem a Vek, Hlavné správy, and Slobodný vysielač. Among other things, the aim of the study was to find out which topics raise the greatest interest of their audience and whether these topics are the same across all three pages. The analysis showed that foreign policy issues are the most popular on all pages. From domestic issues, it was mainly the criticism of the President of the Slovak Republic Andrej Kiska. Although the topics overlapped in some cases, there was not a single topic that would appear on all three pages (Köles 2017).
Also many NGOs or activists are exposing and debunking disinformation online. In the past couple of years several projects and platforms have been established. To name a few, Slovak Security Policy Institute established a website called Antipropaganda.sk, which is dedicated to exposing disinformation; the project Demagog.sk which is fact-checking statements of politicians in TV debates; or project Konspiragtori.sk which has created online database base of disinformation outlets which can be used by businesses in order to prevent placing their online ads on problematic websites.
1.6.3. Disinformation and COVID-19 pandemics
Slovakia as well as the rest of the world has been stricken by the pandemics of the new coronavirus and similarly it has been hit by the wave of infodemics. experts use this term to describe disinformation spread regarding the COVID-19 (Milo 2020). That disinformation has been promoting false information about the origins of the virus, symptoms and false cures for the coronavirus. The Disinformation Infospace Security Initiative has identified over 50 different narratives (DISI 2020). These narratives have been similar to those spread in the rest of the European countries and included 5G disinformation, Bill Gates conspiracies or downplaying the seriousness of the pandemics. Such narratives were shared by both disinformation outlets and also Slovak politicians representing the right-wing party ĽSNS.
Since the outbreak of the pandemics, Chinese Embassy has intensified its communication towards the Slovak public. China's embassy used its social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter to change the narrative concerning the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan. The messaging of the Embassy denied responsibility of People's Republic of China for the outbreak
28 of COVID-19 in Wuhan, claiming that there are no wet markets with wild animals in China or putting the blame for the origin of the virus on the US (German Sirotnikova 2020).
Several government institutions have also reacted to this infodemic. To name two examples, the Police force has been very active in debunking disinformation and hoaxes that were virally spread on Slovak social media, many of which were alarming with the aim of causing panic. The Ministry of Defence published a report on disinformation regarding the COVID-19, where China and Russia were named as the two main countries spreading disinformation related to COVID-19 (MoD 2020).
29 2. Conceptualization
As it was presented in the previous chapters, the concept of meme can be considered very fluid with many debates surrounding the concept and its definition. At the early stages of the meme research, definition stressed the cultural element. They have been defined as pieces of culture i.e. folk songs, poems, fairy tales, gestures and architecture, which have been passed on by repetition (Dawkins 1976; Drout 2006). Similarly, to the Darwin’s theory of natural selection only those fittest have survived and were passed on from generations to generations.
However, digitalization and information revolution have changed our understanding of the concept. Suddenly, there has been an influx of meme definitions which put emphasis on different elements and aspects of memes and are often very wide thus making it hard to operationalize the concept. Such definitions include i.e. memes as units of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation (Prosser 2006); memes as replicating information patterns and ways to do things, learned elements of culture, beliefs or ideas (Henson 2006) or meme as a culturally resonant item easily shared or spread online (Zakem, McBride, Hammerberg 2018). Finkelstein (2011:13-14) in his Compendium on research in memetics has summarized the key features of most of the definitions. These features include: • A self-reproducing and propagating information structure analogous to a gene in biology. • Unit of cultural transmission (or a unit of imitation) that is a replicator that propagates. • Ideas that program for their own retransmission or propagation. • Actively contagious ideas or thoughts. • Shared elements of a culture learned through imitation from others. • Information patterns infecting human minds. • Any information that is copied from person to person or between books, computers, or other storage devices. • A (cognitive) information-structure able to replicate using human hosts and to influence their behaviour to promote replication. • Cultural information units that are the smallest elements that replicate themselves with reliability and fecundity. • A unit of cultural information as it is represented in the brain.
30 • A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human mind. and altering their behaviour, causing them to propagate the pattern. • The smallest idea that can copy itself while remaining self-contained and intact – essentially sets of instructions that can be followed to produce behaviour.
According to Finkelstein, none of those definitions of a meme is sufficient to allow a meme to be clearly recognized, measured, or provide the basis for scientific research. Therefore, he formulated his own definition, where he defined meme as an information which propagates, persists, and has impact (Finkelstein 2011). Even though he provided detailed criteria for measuring propagation, persistence and impact, his definition is problematic because it is very difficult to apply those criteria in the reality of today's world and current trends in social media. Nee and De Maio (2019) have provided a concise definition of meme in their study of memes Hillary Clinton incorporating gender stereotypes ahead of 2016 US presidential elections. They define memes as the online spread of jokes, rumours, videos and pictures which often contain user generated derivatives, mashups and Photoshopped images. Memes are considered as drivers of political activism and online political participation. However, their understanding of the concept is very wide, similar to the approach presented by Zakem, McBride and Hammerberg (2018) according to whom even hashtags and social media campaigns are considered as memes.
For the purpose of this research memes are defined as visual images combined with short text that serves as a tagline, that are (1) emotionally appealing and can be (2) easily altered for the sake of further distribution. They are (3) shared on the Internet most often through social media. This definition is used because it is narrow, which excludes other time types of visual content i.e. videos, hashtags. Focusing only on one type of visual content makes analysis of memes easier. Also, this understanding of the concept is in line with the common understanding of the memes in Slovak Republic, where the research is being realised. Memes are viewed as a means for collapsing and transferring information. They are ideal tools for visual propaganda distribution. Memes are emotionally appealing, often use humour or satyr and can be easily altered, which increases their ability to reach a significant number of internet users. A successful meme or to put in Dawkins's words the fittest, is the one that becomes viral.
It is very often very hard to determine whether or not something becomes viral. Merriam - Webster (2020) dictionary defines viral as something that is quickly and widely spread or
31 popularized especially by means of social media. When a post becomes viral it means that is widely shared across social media. However, it is extremely difficult to set exact number of shares, retweets or other interactions which a viral post has to have in order to be marked as viral. It is because those criteria can vary across countries, platforms, target audiences ect. A useful indicator if a certain post is viral or not is to compare it to the performance of other posts posted by the same source. This feature is called overperforming posts and it is offered by most social media analysis tools. Those posts which perform significantly better (have higher engagement, reach, number of shares) can be considered as viral.
By the term memetic warfare, it is referred to deliberate and systematic production and spread of memes in order to influence the target audience. Similarly, to propaganda, memes are in this case produced in order to manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviour to achieve a response that results into the desired intent of those who spread them. Memes in this case are tailored to the specific target audience. Memetic warfare is often used to achieve certain goals of those who spread and create memes, most typically political, economic. As Prosser (2006), Finkelstein (2011) or Giessa (2015) this thesis also considers memetic warfare along with psychological operations as one part of the broader concept of information operations. Memetic warfare is fought on the Internet mainly on social media and the ability of different actors to utilize this concept will bring advantage in the future of information warfare. Currently, memetic warfare favours asymmetric actors who have the necessary flexibility and quick reaction time which is necessary in order to be successful in memetic warfare. It is also important to stress that not every meme should be considered as the one a part of memetic warfare. It is that deliberate and systematic production and spread which differentiates memetic warfare form simple internet jokes.
This research studies memes produced and shared by disinformation outlets. Disinformation is defined as all forms of false, inaccurate, or misleading information designed, presented and promoted to intentionally cause public harm or for profit (European Commission 2018:4) Intention is very crucial in the definition of a disinformation. It is the intention that separates disinformation and misinformation. Misinformation on the other hand is inaccurate or a misleading information shared by the individuals, who are not aware of this fact and misinformation are not disseminated with the purpose to cause public harm or to gain profit (Gelfert 2018).
32 3. Methodology
3.1. Research questions and the scope of the research
Disinformation campaigns are used by both, hostile state and nonstate actors in order to pursue their interests. The previous chapters have demonstrated that disinformation as part of the new hybrid threats pose a serious security threat to the state security and in some cases can influence the outcomes of democratic processes such as elections. Also, we have been witnessing changes in the information environment in recent years resulting in new ways of communication, which is increasingly taking place on the social media, which became the battlefield of the narratives.
The new digital age also brought a new means of delivering messages to the audience. One of them is memes or memetics. It has been proven that if the audience is exposed to the memes it can result in behavioural changes. This phenomenon is called memetic warfare, which is still relatively new and for some scientists considered a fringe concept. Nevertheless, this research will be building on this concept.
The aim of this research is to analyse memes published on Facebook fan pages clearly associated with the most influential disinformation outlets in the Slovak Republic. The main research question is: How analysed outlets engaged in memetic warfare ahead of Slovak parliamentary elections?
In order to help answer this question, a set of following questions has been formulated: • Was messaging on Facebook in some way systematic? • What were the main topics and narratives these Facebook pages were promoting in the period before Slovak Parliamentary elections in February 2020? • Did memes posted by these Facebook pages endorse any particular political party or specific Politian?
3.2. Method and research strategy
This chapter will provide an overview of methodology and research strategies used to answer research questions that have been formulated. Firstly, critical visual methodology will be introduced, then contend analysis using critical visual methodology will be described. Later in
33 this chapter I will describe the data collection process as well as formulation of codes and categories.
In terms of research design, this research can be described as qualitative content analysis. Qualitative research is an inductive form of scientific methods. It seeks to describe the peculiarities of a phenomenon and is oriented to exploration. Therefore, my goal will not be to create a theory that can be universally applied, but rather describe and modus operandi of Facebook pages connected to disinformation outlets and posting memes in a selected time period. In terms of genre, this thesis is a case study. It will be descriptive case study.
3.2.1. Critical Visual Methodology
Critical visual methodology was chosen to be used for data analysis in this research. These methods were traditionally used mainly by scientists in anthropology or human geography. However, recently they have been used across the whole spectrum of social sciences including political merking, propaganda, etc. (Rose 2016; Veneti, Jackson, Lilleker 2019). Critical visual methods builds on theory of visual culture, which such as meme theory put emphasis on visuals as a means of transferring knowledge or information. It is important not to focus only on the image itself but also search for deeper context i.e. Is it visualising any social phenomenon? How is this image looked upon by its audience? How is an image circulated?
Visual research methods use already existing images, images produced by researchers or images produced by people that are being researched (Rose 2016). In this case I will be focusing on images that already exist. Rose (2016:22-23) argues that is necessary to approach critically to analysis and interpretation of images and therefore has formulated three criteria for a critical visual methodology: 1. Take images seriously: meaning that it is necessary to look very carefully at visual images, and it is necessary to do so because they are not entirely reducible to their context. 2. Think about the social conditions and effects of images and their modes of distribution: it is important to acknowledge that cultural practices that create and circulate images both depend on and produce social inclusions and exclusions.
34 3. Consider researcher's own way of looking at images: ways of looking at images are historically, geographically, culturally and socially specific.
She also argues that interpretations of visual images are based on four sites that images are made of. Those include (1) site of production; (2) site of image itself (3) site of circulation and finally (4) the site of audiences (Rose 2016:24-25). Since memes are the unit of analysis in this thesis, I will be focusing on the site of image itself. This site focuses on the overall meaning that is constituted by image.
3.2.2. Content analysis
Content analysis is be the method used in order to analyse data. It is a method of analysing visual images that was originally developed in order to interpret written and spoken texts. In social sciences it has been traditionally used to analyse documents or transcribed interviews, however, recently have been also frequently used to do analyse visual (Rose 2016). It is a research method used to identify patterns in selected data. This research method is methodologically explicit meaning it is based on a number of rules that must be rigorously followed in order to achieve valid and replicable results. These steps include selecting the sample, coding and analysis of the final categories.
Content analysis can be very useful in critical visual methodology. It enables researchers to focus on the site of the image itself as described above. It can also reveal empirical results that might otherwise be overwhelmed by large data. It can be basically described counting the frequency of certain visual elements among selected data sets and then analysing those frequencies (Rose 2016). Other advantages of content analysis include its transparency, replicability and also its high flexibility. When applying this method, the four steps process suggested by Rose (2016) are followed: 1. Data collection 2. Formulating codes and categories 3. Process of coding and categorization 4. Analysing the results
35 3.2.3. Data collection and sample selection
Facebook was selected as a social media platform on which data will be collected. The reason for that is that Facebook is the most popular social media platform in Slovakia with the highest number of users - 2,6 million active users (HootSuite 2019). For this study I chose to collect data from two Facebook fan pages - Nezomri and Žobri. They were included into study because their posts include almost exclusively memes and perhaps more importantly, they are connected to one of the most influential Slovak disinformation outlets Hlavné správy. This connection is manifested by the fact that Hlavné správy on have established meme section meme section, where memes from Nezomri and Žobri are linked even though that there are many Facebook fan pages in Slovakia that are dedicated to posting memes i.e. Zomri, Emefka, Na pláž etc.
As it was mentioned the aim of this thesis is to analyse messaging before the elections. Therefore, I have decided to include every meme posted by pages Žobri and Nezomri in a period within one month before elections (from 29th January until 29th of February) into the data set. I believe that such time frame is sufficient in order to extract data that are both representative and significant. In order for memes to be included into data sets, it has to fulfil criteria defined before. Thus, images without text or funny videos were not included. In the case that the meme was posted on both Facebook pages, it will be included to the data set only once in order to avoid duplicity in data.
The final data set yielded 80 memes posted in the period of one month before the elections. Out of those, 16 were posted by the page Nezomri and 64 posted by Žobri.
3.2.4. Formulating codes and categories
In this research memes have been the unit of the analysis. Therefore, in the process of coding every meme in data was coded. Codes were subsequently grouped into brother categories - narratives. Coding was done on an inductive basis, meaning that codes were developed. This means that firstly it was to necessary to familiarise with data in order to identify similarities and patterns in memes. After that, codes were formulated. These condes were not objective categories, but rather conceptual and interpretive.
36 Final categories were formulated in order to fulfil three basic criteria: to be (1) exhaustive - every meme is covered by the category (2) exclusive - categories must not overlap (3) enlightening - they must be analytically interesting and coherent.
Memes are complex visual means of transferring information online. They are composed of two parts - image itself and accompanying text, therefore it is necessary to take this into account in the process of coding. The codes in this research were assigned by taking account the relation between text and image.
After assigning every meme a code, codes have been grouped into larger categories. In order to establish a category, at least three codes must be grouped together, otherwise the meme would fall into a category labeled other. After the coding these categories have been identified: (1) Liberals and Liberalism as a threat (2) Andrej Kiska as a criminal (3) Kotleba as a hero (4) Alojz Hlina unfit to lead Christian democratic party (5) Politicians as object for political satire (6) other. Examples of codes and memes falling into each of the categories are described in figure 1, for the complete codebook, see Attachment 1.
37 Category Examples of Examples of memes Codes
Liberals and Liberalism as a aggressive We will be throwing rocks on supporters of ĽSNS threat
support drug use PS supports decriminalization of drugs
attack traditional Traditional family has never existed and it is only family construct of hybrid warfare
Andrej Kiska as a criminal prison Welcome to the prison where you belong
fraud When you change one fraud for the other
usurer Andrej Kiska is usurer
Kotleba as a hero ordinary citizen Kotleba drives cheap Hyundai car whereas other politicians drive luxurious cars
strong physically Koleba would beat up liberals in just 3 minutes
Christians vote for I will probably vote for Kotleba, founder of KDH Kotleba shocked
Alojz Hlina unfit to lead bad Christian Leader of the Christian democrats does not Christian democratic party remember the Ten Commandments
speaks vulgar Now you understand why I am nervous and call language everybody a sicko
supports LGBT LGBT is hope for Slovakia
Politicians as objects of satire mocking Michal Truban looks like alien
ad hominem Kiska is a pig
political amateurism I take a bow before your amateurism
Other COVID-19 Slovakia is not prepared for the pandemics
Freedom of speech There is no freedom speech currently is Slovakia
Figure 1 Examples of codes and categories. Source author
38 4. Analysis
This chapter will provide an overview of the narratives that have been presented by disinformation meme pages. Those narratives copy the six categories identified in the data selection process and subsequent coding. Firstly, a brief overview of the performance of both Facebook pages will be presented. Then each narrative will be presented.
Both pages have been chosen for this study because they are connected to the largest Slovak disinformation outlet Hlavné správy. Hlavné Správy is the most influential Slovak disinformation outlet, which also catches up with the serious media in terms of website traffic. It is estimated that it has 90-100,000 unique visitors daily and are read monthly by more than 700,000 individuals (Struhárik 2019). However, Hlavné spravy does not follow the rules of journalistic ethics. This outlet regularly takes stories and news from Russian propaganda outlets such as Sputnik or RT. In the past couple of years fact checkers have debunked several disinformation spread by Hlavné správy i.e. Ukrainians were taking organs from war victims for transplantation or that the Bible must be removed from public libraries in the United States, but the Qur'an not or many other cases and many others (Köles 2020b). They have been also funded by criminal Marian Kočner who is facing currently a trial where he is accused of ordering the murder of Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak.
Hlavné správy recently established a meme section within their website and memes are also embedded on the main landing page. It is not producing own memes but rather promoting memes published by Facebook fan pages. These pages are almost exclusively Žobri and Nezomri and even though they belong to the category of smaller Slovak Facebook pages, they have potential to reach 700,000 individuals per month thanks to promotion by Hlavné správy.
Facebook pages Nezomri and Žobri present themselves as a conservatie alternative to one of the most popular satirical Facebook fan pages Zomri because it is considered to be popular mainly among liberals and it is one of the largest Slovak Facebook pages. Zomri is often described by disinformation media as a liberal project in order to verbally attack conservative voters and conservative politicians.
Page Nezomri was established in April 2019, it is administered by two admins from Slovakia and currently has 8 109 followers. Page Žobri with 4 365 was established in August 2020 and it is also administered by two admins from Slovakia. Both of these pages present themselves as satirical and comic.
39 According to data obtained from social media monitoring tool Crowtange, Nezomri as well as Žobri increased their activity one month before the elections. Data shows that while form 1st July 2019 until 31st January page Nezomri posted on average 0,35 and Žobri 1,35 post a day, in the period of one month before the elections was the average 0,61 in the case of Nezomri and 2,77 in the case ZoŽobribri (see figure 2). This means that both Facebook pages have increased their activity in the month preceding the Slovak parliamentary elections by posting more frequently. Page Žobri was more active in posting and in the analysed time frame posted 64 memes whereas page Nezomri posted only 16 memes. However this is in line with the behaviour of the pages in the past, when according to data Nezomri has traditionally posted less frequently than Žobri.
Facebook page Time interval Average posts per day
July 2019 – December 2019 0,35
Nezomri 29th January 2020– 29th 0,61 February 2020
July 2019 – December 2019 1,35 Žobri
29th January 2020 – 29th 2,77 February 2020
July 2019 – December 2019 0,89 Total (Nezomri + Žobri) 29th January 2020 – 29th 1,69 February 2020
Figure 2Performance of the Facebook pages in the pre-election period compared. Source Author
When it comes to content and messaging of both Facebook pages, this was heavily focused on politics. In the period of one month before the election 73 memes out of 80 of memes were dedicated to politics which is 91 % (see figure 3). Memes focused exclusively on Slovak politics. As it was mentioned, memes have proved to be effective in collapsing and simplifying complex information and transmitting it to the target audience. This was also the case of memes created and posted by pages Nezomri and Žobri. In this process of simplification, pages often
40 used leaders of certain political parties in order to refer to parties as such. In fact, almost 70 % of memes used a visual of a political party leader (see figure 4). Pictures of Andrej Kiska, leader of the party Za ľudí were used in the most (25) cases followed by the leader of PS/Spolu Michal Truban (15 cases), pictures of Alojz Hlina (KDH), Marian Kotleba (ĽSNS), Andrej Danko (SNS), and Béla Bugár (Most Híd), and Igor Matovič (Oľano), however their pictures have been used significantly less (for detailed numbers see figure 5).
Every party leader and their respective parties with the only exception of Marian Kotleba and ĽSNS were referred to by the memes with negative sentiment. These memes were either making fun of them or presenting them as a security threat. According to data I have been able to identify five dominant narratives that have been presented by memes. They can be defined as (1) Liberals and Liberalism as a threat (2) Andrej Kiska as a criminal (3) Kotleba as a hero (4) Alojz Hlina unfit to lead Christian democratic party (5) Politicians as object for political satire. Out of those narratives, the last one has been present in 38 % of memes in the analysed sample followed by narrative presenting liberals and liberalism as a security threat, for more details see figures 6.
TOPICS OF MEMES POSTED ONE MONTH BEFORE ELECTIONS
9%
91% Non-politics Politics
Figure 3 Topics of memes posted one month before elections. Source Author
41 MEMES USING VISUAL OF POLITICAL PARTY LEADER
Political leader Other
31%
69%
Figure 4 Memes using visual of political party leader. Source Author
NUMBER MEMES USING VISUAL OF POLITICAL PARTY LEADERS 25 22
20
15 15
10
4 4 4 4 5 3
0 Andrej Kiska Michal Marian Alojz Hlina Andrej Danko Béla Bugar Igor Matovič Truban Kotleba Figure 5 Number Memes using visual of political party leaders. Source Author
42
NUMBER OF MEMES IN DIFFRENT CATEGORIES
35 30 30 25 20 18 15 12 9 10 7 4 5 0 Liberals and Andrej Kiska as a Alojz Hlina unfit Marian Kotleba as Politicians as Other Liberalism as a criminal lead Christian a hero obejcts of satire threat democratic party Figure 6 Number of memes in different categories. Source Author.
4.1. Liberals and Liberalism as a threat
One of the main topics of this year's elections in Slovakia was a cultural clash between conservatives and liberals. This has certainly influenced memes posted by both Facebook pages. As it was mentioned above, these Facebook pages present themselves as an alternative to the Zomri Facebook page considered to be popular among liberals. Therefore, it is not a surprise that Žobri and Nezomri spread a narrative that presented liberal values and liberalism as a threat to Slovakia and Slovak society. This narrative was directed mainly against the coalition of political parties PS/Spolu. Political party Spolu is more of a centre right of a political spectrum with conservative views while Progresívne Slovensko is a centrist liberal party. However, PS/Spolu as a whole coalition was labelled as a liberal in this narrative.
Overall this narrative about liberals and liberalism was the second most frequent narrative produced by Žobri and Nezormi. In fact, 22 % of memes in the analysed data set was promoting this narrative.
Liberal politicians as well as liberalism as a concept was presented as something that is unnatural for Slovaks and Slovak Republic, therefore should be feared and their success in the elections could threaten the future of Slovak society as a whole. According to data, it was possible able to identify certain features that have been assigned to the liberals by this narrative.
43 Firstly, liberals were portrayed as a group of people that are against traditional conservative values that are deeply rooted within Slovak society. They are promoting LGBT ideology and support same sex marries which are in contrast with Christian values that Slovakia is built upon. In fact, memes were describing liberals as those who believe that the traditional family has never existed, and it is just a construct of hybrid war.
Another feature assigned to liberals was that they support drug use and their leader Michal Truban is a drug addict. This claim was based upon leaked video from the past, where Michal Truban held a lecture for high school students. On the video Truban was talking about his success in business and admitting to smoking marihuana. Subsequently, he admitted to experimenting with LSD when he was young. PS/Spolu was then presented as a party with a drug addict as a leader, which when in power will legalise drugs in Slovakia.
Figure 7 Meme presenting Michal Truban as giving advice on using drugs. Source Žobri
44 Memes within this narrative have assigned other features to liberals as well. They were pictured as aggressive and trying to intimidate and harm supporters of the extreme right party of Marian Kotleba, ĽSNS. This was based on two factors. Firstly in, it was the campaign claim of PS/Spolu “Poďme do nich!” which could be translated into English as “Let's go and get them”. However, the primary reason, why liberals were portrayed as aggressive and intimidating was because they have been attending protests against extremis around whole Slovakia which were held in the close proximity of meeting of ĽSNS with their supporters. One of these protests even escalated and supporters of both parties have engaged in violent clashes. Supporters of PS/Spolu were accused of throwing rocks on the stage with representatives of ĽSNS. After these events, memes describing liberals as aggressive have proliferated, some even connected this with the drug issues of Michal Truban.
Figure 8 Meme presenting PS/Spolu as aggressive. Source Žobri
PS/Spolu, liberals and liberalism as such were presented with very negative sentiment and there was not any meme with positive sentiment towards PS/Spolu or liberalism. Also, they were supposed to have control over mainstream media who shared their propaganda. The primary emotion with which memes operated in this narrative was fear - liberals were presented as those who should be feared by Slovaks.
45 4.2. Andrej Kiska as a criminal
Another dominant narrative focused on the former Slovak President and leader of the party Za ľudí Andrej Kiska. The narrative was building a very negative image of Kiska. He was characterised as a criminal and amoral person, who cannot be trusted, and that Andrej Kiska was running in elections in order to take control of the Ministry of Interior to cover his crimes. This narrative was the third most popular presented by memes in pre pre-election period with 15 % of memes of the data set spreading this narrative.
Memes pictured Kiska as a fraud, thief, imposter or usurer. Memes were building on narratives that were spread also in the past and were heavily influenced by rhetoric of political party Smer - Social Democracy. Andrej Kiska established companies Quatroand Triangel. These companies offered loans or leasing, before entering the politics, he sold those companies and started a charity called Dobrý anjel. In the campaign before presidential elections in 2014, his political opponent, then-prime minister, Robert Fico accused Kiska of being a usurer. Fico claimed that Kiska was exploiting poor citizens by offering loans with very high interest rates. Memes describing Kiska as a usurer have been heavily pushing this narrative.
Figure 9 Andrej Kiska pictured as usurer. Source Žobri
46
Figure 10 Member of Kiska's party holding sing Kiska is usurer. Source Žobri
Andrej Kiska was not described only as a usurer. He was also described as a tax criminal. This was also a narrative that has been repeating since his presidency. Andrej Kiska had problems with Slovak Tax Authorities because of the mistakes in his tax declarations from the campaign. Since then Kiska has been called a thief and fraud by his opponents.
During his presidency, Andrej Kiska also faced a civil trial. He was on trial because of the purchase of land near his hometown. The case was that Kiska bought land near Poprad, however as it was later proved this land was stolen from the original owner. The court eventually ruled that the former president was unaware that he was buying stolen land but had to return the property to the original owner. This topic was not reflected by the memes, until about two weeks before elections. The breaking point came on 13th February when a series of three videos was sent to all Slovak media from an anonymous source (Ta3 2020). All three videos were dealing with this land. In the first video, former head of organized crime group Milan Reichel claimed that Kiska knew that these lands were stolen before he bought them. Other two videos captured Andrej Kiska by hidden camera discussing the case with local businessman Miroslav Šluliga. It seems that all of those three videos have been altered or orchestrated in order to show that Andrej Kiska knew about the stolen land and that he is a criminal.
47 After these videos have been leaked to the media, this has become a dominant theme of the memes. They associated Kiska with criminals and were suggesting that Andrej Kiska should end up in prison.
Figure 11 Meme picturing Andrej Kiska in prison with Ladislav Bašternák. Source Žobri
Also, memes promoting the whole narrative of Andrej Kiska as a criminal have become more frequent after publishing series of the videos. The central emotion used by memes was anger in this case. Similarly, as it was in the case of the narrative on liberals and liberalism, both pages reacted quickly to the events taking place in the media and adjusted their messaging accordingly.
4.3. Alojz Hlina unfit to lead Christian Democratic party
Alojz Hlina was another party leader that was targeted by the memes. As it was the case with Adrej Kiska, memes picturing Hlina were exclusively negative. However, this narrative should not be considered as a dominant, it is represented only by 9 % of memes in the data set. The narrative was building a picture of Hlina as someone who lacks necessary moral traits to be a leader of a Christian Democratic party and representative of traditional conservative values. The central emotion used by memes in this narrative was disgrace and contempt. This narrative
48 was based on three particular claims - Hlina is a bad Christian, Hlina is vulgar and Hlina supports liberals.
The first claim was based on the series of television debates, where Hlina was asked particular questions from the Bible i.e. to tell Ten Commandments, to tell what presents were brought to Jesus by Three kings etc. It is a fact that Hlina made factual mistakes or did not remember correct answers. This resulted into memes describing Alojz Hlina as a bad Christian because he does know the Ten Commandments, and other fundamentals of Christian faith, which makes him incompetent to led KDH, the party that should represent Christians.
Figure 12 Hlina as a bad Christian. Source Nezomri
The second claim presented Alojz Hlina as a vulgar and with a rude character which are again traits that should not belong to a good Christian. Memes again reacted to the one particular television debate, where Hlina confronted Marian Kotleba. In the debate Hlina used very strong rhetoric to confront Kotleba. He called, members of ĽSNS party sickos, criminals, perverts. Subsequently, Hlina was pictured as an emotionally unstable vulgar politician.
Lastly, Aloj Hlina was presented as too liberal to be a leader of conservative party. The reason for this was primarily the so-called non-aggression pact with liberals. At the beginning of the
49 campaign, KDH signed an agreement with the PS/Spolu coalition. This agreement stated that KDH and PS/Spolu would cooperate in the election campaign and will not attack each other and that parties will cooperate also after the elections. Another part of this agreement was also the pledge that parties would open a circular-ethical question and will not publicly criticize values and beliefs of another party. This pack was not received well on the conservative spectrum. Many conservatives criticised Hlina for signing an agreement on cooperation with liberals. Subsequently, memes have been picturing Hlina as too liberal, thus not the right person to lead conservative party. He has also been presented as someone who supports LGBT communities which is unacceptable for a conservative politician.
4.4. Marian Kotleba as a hero
Marian Kotleba, the leader of extreme right party ĽSNS was the only politician that has been referred to with positive sentiment. However, only 6 % of analysed memes fall into this category, which means it is not a significant narrative presented by neither Žobri or Nezomri. Kotleba was presented as an archetype of conservative politician, often in contrast to Alojz Hlina who as mentioned above, was presented as too liberal. Kotleba in this narrative was a true conservative politician representing traditional conservative values, that is strong and decisive while he and his supporters were attacked by other political parties, mainly liberals.
This picture was particularly emphasised by the meme, capturing Ján Čarnogurský, founder and former leader of KHD, also Ján Figeľ another former leader of KDH and Stanislav Zvolenský the President of the Conference of Bishops. The meme included text: I will probably vote for Kotleba. The meaning og the meme was deeper. It suggested that Hlina does not have support of catholic elites nor former leaders of his own party.
50
Figure 13 Christian leaders support Kotleba. Source Žobri
Kotleba was also pictured as an ordinary citizen, who is in strong contrast with other politicians who are rich and do not understand problems ordinary poor Slovak. This was heavily demonstrated by meme comparing cars of leaders of other political party leaders. In this comparison, Kotleba was presented as the one with cheap Hyundai, while other leaders drive expensive cars.
Marian Kotleba was also presented as someone who is strong physically and is feared by his political opponents. This is connected to the situation when just a few days before elections where during the last session of the parliament, Members of Parliament for PS/Spolu were blocking the speaker's stand for two days as a protest against the government. It was reported that Kotleba asked the Speaker of the Parliament to turn off cameras in the room for 3 minutes and he and his colleagues will set liberals to order. After this, Kotleba was presented as a physically strong and decisive leader.
51
4.5. Politicians as object for political satire
Narrative that has been most frequent in the pre-election time can be called politicians as objects of satire. Satire can be described as sharp, aggressive teasing or ruthless mocking, it contains unrealistic elements and often uses hyperbole to express certain statements.
As many as 38 % of memes spread this narrative. Memes that have been included into this category have been making fun of various politicians, mocking their appearance or behaviour and often included ad hominem attacks. Politicians and political parties have been described exclusively in negative ways. Memes within this narrative ware targeting various leaders of political parties i.e. Andrej Kiska, Michal Truban, Miroslav Beblavý, Andrej Danko, etc. However, most of them almost 45 % of memes within these narratives were dedicated to Andrej Kiska. In the case of Andrej Kiska, memes were mocking the campaign slogan of his party Za ľudí as well as his appearance. In the case of Andrej Kiska, there were also memes attacking him and calling him a pig. It was a reference to the Slovak film released at that time, about corrupt politicians abusing their power.
Figure 14 Meme mocking Andrej Kiska. Source Žobri
52
Figure 15 Meme calling Andrej Kiska a pig
Michal Truban was after Andrej Kiska the second most referenced politician by memes within this narrative. Memes were suggesting that his face looks like an alien. Truban was also described as politically inexperienced and incompetent leader. Memes were not only targeting Michal Truban specifically, but they have targeted coalition PS/Spolu as such. Memes mocked campaign colours and outfits of the representatives and called them Smurfs or describing them as people with low IQ.
53
Figure 16 Michal Truban as alien. Source Žobri
Figure 17 Michal Truban as political amateur. Source Nezomri
As it was the case with other narratives, this one was also shaped by the events occurring during the campaign. This was most visible when polling data showed decries of support of parties PS/Spolu, Za ľudí and KDH. After polls were released, the main topic of memes was political
54 amateurism and memes were making fun of the decreasing trends in the support of these political parties.
The main emotion used by memes in this narrative was humour. However, it described politicians negatively as incompetent, criminals who just argue among themselves and who are losing support. Thus, it will be dangerous if these people would be responsible for ruling the country.
4.6. Other
In the process of data analysis, a special category has been formed for memes that did not fit into any of previously mentioned categories but appeared with insufficient frequency to form a category of its own. Memes that would fall into this category in most cases did not mention political parties and politics as such with the only one exception of a meme picturing Andrej Danko the leader of SNS. Memes in this category mentioned in two cases the new coronavirus. Elections were held in February when the pandemics in Europe was only at its beginning and there have not been any confirmed cases in Slovakia. Meme suggested that Slovakia is either unprepared or used a stereotype that Slovaks drink a lot of alcohol which kills viruses and therefore there are not any cases in Slovakia. Memes in this category also mocked Greta Tunberg or criticised the media and freedom of speech in Slovak Republic.
Figure 18 Slovakia is not prepared for COVID-19 pandemics. Source: Nezomr
55 5. Discussion of the key findings
This chapter will present and discuss the key findings of this research. Firstly, it will be done with regards to research questions formulated at the beginning of this research. In the second part of the chapter I will include my interpretation of data and some interesting findings.
The primary aim of this research was to prove whether or not Facebook pages Žobri and Nezomri have engaged in memetic warfare in ahead of Slovak parliamentary elections that were held in February 2020. According to the data, it is possible to state that these pages used memetic warfare. The concept of memetic warfare was in this research defined as deliberate and systematic production and spread of memes in order to influence the target audience.
It has been proved that both Facebook pages have intensified the frequency of their messaging in the crucial and often decisive period before the elections. It may seem natural that the media and the whole information environment is dominated by politics in such a time. However, it has also been proved that as much as 91 % of the memes were about Slovak politics, which means that the Nezomri and Žobri were focusing specifically on the elections. What was also proved is that memes were spread systemically and deliberately in order to influence followers of both pages and also the readers of disinformation outlet Hlavné správy. It was proved that memes were spread in order to form certain narratives, most of which have presented political leaders and their parties with negative sentiment. These narratives were: Politicians as objects for political satire presented by 38 % of memes, Andrej Kiska as a criminal presented by 15 % of memes, Liberals and Liberalism as a threat presented by 22 % of memes, Kotleba as a hero presented by 5 % of memes and Alojz Hlina unfit to lead Christian democratic party presented by 9 % of memes.
It is worth to mention that narratives identified in this research do not entirely copy narratives identified by the research of Globsec (Klingová et. al. 2020), which has been monitoring problematic facebook pages and open facebook groups between October 2019 and March 2020. However, there is one overlapping narrative, which is presenting liberalism as a threat to Slovak society. Other most discussed topics based on this study included: mainstream media cannot be trusted; discussion about proposal banning public opinion polls on voting preferences 50 days ahead of elections; oligarchs and influential financial groups trying to influence Slovak politics; narrative suggesting some kind of interference into the electoral processes by foreign powers
56 or NGOs (Klingová et. al. 2020). This suggests that the cultural issues and a clash between conservatives and liberals dominated this year's elections and disinformation outlets be it through articles or memes supporting conservatives. Disinformation outlets have been systematically building a narrative that liberalism is something that is unnatural and that liberal politicians threaten traditional values and traditional family.
The only politician who was presented in the positive sense was Marian Kotleba but cannot be said that Facebook pages ware promoting Kotleba or his party ĽSNS because this supportive narrative was represented only by 5 % of memes which in is not significant. However, it is possible to say that Žobri and Nezomri ware waging a memetic warfare against parties Za ľudí and PS/Spolu because those were the parties and their leaders which majority of memes presented in a negative way.
Memes as well as propaganda or political marketing use emotion in order to appeal to the target audience. This was also the case of the memes posted by Žobri and Nezomri. Humor fear and anger was used by the majority of memes.
5.1. Who was targeted and who was not
As it was mentioned, memes posted by Žobri and Nezomri did not endorse any particular party, with the exception of ĽSNS. However this support was insignificant. What has been proved is that both pages were doing anti-campaign, meaning creating a negative picture of certain politicians and political parties. This anti-campaign was targeting parties Za ľudí, PS/Spolu and KDH and their leaders. The most targeted politician was Andrej Kiska, 22 % of the memes were using his picture. This included memes within the narrative describing Kiska as a criminal and fraud as well as memes mocking him and making fun of them. Kiska was also the most frequent object of political satire.
However, it seems that massaging and targets of memetic warfare have changed over the analysed period of time. The noticeable change came on the 14th February 2020. Until that date the narrative about liberals and liberalism was by far the most dominant. Moreover, the leader of PS/Spolu was the most popular object of political satire with only a couple of memes targeting Kiska and the narrative about Kiska as a criminal was not presented at all. This
57 changed on the 14th February which was the day that the first form of the series of compromising videos about Andrej Kiska was released to the public. Since this day, Andrej Kiska has been the primary target of memes until the end of the campaign. It was the first day when a narrative picturing Kiska as a criminal was presented, even though that case was a couple of years old.
Alojz Hlina was another politician that was targeted by memes posted on Žobri and Nezomri although not to such extent as Andrej Kiska or Michal Truban. Alojz Hlina was pictured as too liberal to lead conservative party and he was often compared to Marian Kotleba who on the other hand was presented as an archetype of conservative politicians. When it comes to other politicians, memes marginally mentioned also Andrej Danko and Béla Bugár and memes briefly referred also to the parties Sme rodina and SaS.
What is interesting is that none of the memes posted one month before elections mentioned or referred to Smer - SD or any of its leaders. Smer - SD is a political party that has won elections in 2016 therefore it had the largest representation in the National Council and nominated the Prime Minister. It was de facto the strongest party before this year's elections and therefore it is surprising that not a single meme mentioned this party as such nor Prime Minister Peter Pellgrini or leader of the party Robert Fico. Smer was also the only party represented in the National Council or in government that was not targeted by memes. In fact, the messaging and camping narratives of Smer - SD ware similar to the narratives presented by Žobri and Nezomri. The party has been criticised for conducting a very polarising campaign video ads mocking and attacking the political opponents. These videos were directed against the leaders of then- opposition parties PS/Spolu, Za ľudí, SaS, KDH, Oľano, Sme rodina. Politicians that have been targeted the most are Andrej Kiska and Michal Truban, similarly as it was in the case of Žobri and Nezomri. However the messaging was slightly different. Smer - SD presented Michal Truban and Andrej Kiska as representatives of irresponsible change that would come should they be successful and took over the executive powers. They have been presented as those who are criminals and who stand against traditional conservative values. Especially Andrej Kiska, however, was presented as someone who supports mandatory quotas on migration and that his government would allow the influx of migrants which would pose a security threat for Slovakia. Smer - SD used a securitization of migration also in the campaign in 2016 elections.
58 Moreover, there are some suggestions that compromising videos of Andrej Kiska that had shifted the focus of analysed Facebook pages were released by Smer - SD. All this suggests that even though Facebook pages Žobri and Nezomri have not once mentioned party Smer - SD their messaging and narratives were in line with narratives presented by Smer during the campaign.
5.2. Modus operandi
This research can also offer insight on how pages Žobri and Nezomri operate. It is possible to say that those pages are very flexible in their messaging and reacted quickly on the events taking place during the campaign. Facebook pages adjusted their messaging along the campaign and also produced memes that were reacting to the events taking place during the campaign i.e. violent encounters of supporters PS/Spolu, television debates or videos regarding Andrej Kiska.
Memes were in this case used as a means for simplification of a certain message, which was in the majority connected with Slovak politics. Memes collapsed and simplified certain narrative or message into just one image that is visually appealing. Memes were often using the picture of a political leader in order to spread a message or narrative. Andrej Kiska was a politician whose picture was used the most. This is not surprising since one of the narratives was exclusively focused on Andrej Kiska and he has been also the object of mocking and ad hominem attacks. Visual of Michal Truban was also used frequently but in this case many memes used his picture when referring to PS/Spolu as such. This means that his identity was personified with the party. Emotion appeal is one of the basic characteristic features that propaganda and memes have in common. In this case memes were certainly appealing to emotions among which humour was the most dominant. Humour was used primarily when mocking and making fun of politicians. Other emotions included anger and fear.
It is possible to identify manipulative techniques used by memes. They are labelling and fear appeal. When it comes to labelling Andrej Kiska has been consistently labelled as a criminal as well as Micha Truban has been labelled as incompetent and drug addict. Fear appeal could be mainly seen in the narrative about liberals and liberalism as a threat. Liberals were presented as
59 those who will be threaten traditional Slovak values and will introduce same sex marriages and allow homosexuals to adopt children.
5.3. Overall impact
Although it may seem that memetic warfare had an impact on the behaviour of voters and those parties that were presented negatively were not successful, it is hard to prove causal relation between voter’s behaviour and effects of memetic warfare. There are many different variables i.e. personal sympathies; political program; opinion of others etc. that have impact on voter’s behaviour. This research could not identify, isolate and examine how they affect voter’s behaviour in order to prove causal relation, nor had this research ambition to do so. Nevertheless, there is correlation between parties that were targeted by memetic warfare and parties that had been not successful in elections. Yet this research has not confirmed causal relation between negative meme and low preferences of targeted political parties, and it had not ambition to do so. Memes presenting negative narratives about Andrej Kiska, KDH or Michal Truban could have influenced certain target groups, but according to this research it cannot be confirmed that this effect was decisive nor significant.
One of the ultimate goals of meme warfare is to influence the target audience which in this case were followers of Žobri and Nezomri and readers of disinformation outlet Hlavné správy. In this case it can be assumed that memetic warfare was used in order to influence behaviour of voters ahead of parliamentary elections held in February 2020. Memes have been presenting political parties Za ľudí, PS/Spolu and KDH with negative sentiment. It is a fact that neither of these three parties have been successful in recent elections. KDH with 4,65 % of votes and PS/Spolu with 6,96 % of votes did not receive enough votes to meet the necessary quorum4 required in order to be represented in the National Council. Even though that Kiska's party Za ľudí with 5, 77 % of votes is represented in the National Council, it is the party with the lowest number of MP's and opinion polls have suggested better results.
4 The quorum in Slovakia is set to 5 % for a political party and 7 % for a coalition of political parties. PS/Spolu were running as a coalition, therefore needed a minimum of 7 % of votes in order to be represented in the Parliament.
60
POLITICAL PARTY % OF VOTES RECEIVED IN ELECTIONS OĽANO 25,02 SMER - SOCIÁLNA DEMOKRACIA 18,29 SME RODINA 8,24 KOTLEBOVCI - ĽUDOVÁ STRANA NAŠE SLOVENSKO 7,97 KOALÍCIA PROGRESÍVNE SLOVENSKO A SPOLU - OBČIANSKA 6,96 DEMOKRACIA SLOBODA A SOLIDARITA 6,22 ZA ĽUDÍ 5,77 KRESŤANSKODEMOKRATICKÉ HNUTIE 4,65 MAGYAR KÖZÖSSÉGI ÖSSZEFOGÁS - MAĎARSKÁ KOMUNITNÁ 3,90 SPOLUPATRIČNOSŤ SLOVENSKÁ NÁRODNÁ STRANA 3,16 DOBRÁ VOĽBA 3,06 VLASŤ 2,93 MOST - HÍD 2,05 SOCIALISTI.SK 0,55 MÁME TOHO DOSŤ ! 0,32 SLOVENSKÁ ĽUDOVÁ STRANA ANDREJA HLINKU 0,28 DEMOKRATICKÁ STRANA 0,14 SOLIDARITA - HNUTIE PRACUJÚCEJ CHUDOBY 0,11 STAROSTOVIA A NEZÁVISLÍ KANDIDÁTI 0,07 SLOVENSKÉ HNUTIE OBRODY 0,06 HLAS ĽUDU 0,06 PRÁCA SLOVENSKÉHO NÁRODA 0,04 99 % - OBČIANSKY HLAS 0,03 SLOVENSKÁ LIGA 0,02 Figure 19 Results of Parliamentary elections in February 2020. Source Ministry of Interior
61 6. Limitations
Through the process of data selections and data analysis rigorous procedures were followed, nonetheless this work suffers from certain limitations. However, these have not affected overall validity and reliability of the research. I see three main limitations that this research is suffering from.
Firstly, it is a definition problem. This is something that has been a common problem of many papers and works in social sciences. As it has been demonstrated in chapter summarizing the literature review, the concept of memes is to the large extent fluid and the has not reached consensus among unified definition of memes. Existing definitions include various aspects from cultural elements like folk songs or poems though images to hashtags or videos. For this research I chose a definition that is as narrow as possible and only images were included into the final data set. This was done in order to ease the process of data analysis and also this definition is based on how memes are understood in Slovak context.
The second limitation concerns the method used in the process of data analysis. Content analysis is often criticised for being very subjective and reductive. Isolating extracts from written texts can lead to disregarding context, nuance and it is ambiguous. Content analysis especially when done by only one researcher involves some level of subjective personal interpretation, which can affect validity and reliability of overall results and conclusions. This was mitigated by the fact that memes were the primary unit of the analysis and the text was analysed in relation to the accompanying visual, therefore it ensured that context which is crucial in the case of memes was taken into account.
The third and perhaps the most significant limitation is difficulty of coding memes. In this case the analysis was not based on coding transcripts of texts as it is the case with the majority of researches using content analysis. As it was mentioned, memes have been analysed as complex units taking into account relation between visual and accompanying text. Memes in many cases build upon existing differences and patterns within the society. This was also the case in this research and memes often made references to actual events occurring during the campaign or used existing perceptions of Slovak society. These references were often indirect. Therefore, the process of data analysis requires a researcher who is familiar with these social patterns and
62 understands the local context. It may seem that this approach is rather overly subjective however the fact is that it is necessary for in-depth analysis.
63 7. Further research
The literature review has shown that there has been a proliferation of papers written on the topic of memetic warfare, be it by the military or government officials or academics. These works have been focusing on studying the concept as and its integration with information and psychological warfare or on examining the ways how different actors utilized meme and memetic warfare in their influence operations.
Even though information warfare and disinformation outlets has been in centre of attention of various Slovak academics i.e. Čížik 2015, and think tanks i.e. Globsec, Slovak Security Policy Institute or Stratpol. However, no attention has been paid to the concept of memetic warfare. Hence this thesis can be considered as the first step towards closer examination of the concept of memetic warfare in Slovak context.
Due to limited capacities this research could not offer a comprehensive view of memetic warfare in Slovakia. Therefore, further research is required. When it comes to using memes in order to influence outcomes of elections, it would be beneficial to conduct an analysis comparing messaging of Žobri and Nezomri before, during and after the election campaign and even compare results to other meme Facebook pages that are not associated with disinformation outlets. It would be also useful to study memetic warfare across different social media platforms. Instagram is gaining more and more popularity therefore it would be useful to study whether or not manipulative techniques, and narrative varies across the platform.
When it comes to election manipulation, it would be worth examining how memes affect voters' behaviour. However, such experiments would demand vast analytical capacities and would be methodologically challenging.
Memes are not only used by disinformation outlets. It has been proved that right wing extremists use memes in order to disseminate their ideology. Memes with Pepe the Frog had become a symbol of right-wing narrative. In Slovakia, online database blbec.online5 lists
5 Online database administered by Slovak fact-checkers, which monitors facebook pages with problematic content, meaning that those pages often share disinformation, hate speech, conspiracy theories etc.
64 several Facebook pages with right wing affinity that frequently use memes with Pepe the Frog in their messaging. Messaging of Facebook pages was not yet systematically studied.
65 Conclusion
This research is focusing on a concept that has raised a lot of attention in recent years. It was firstly introduced by Richard Dawkins in 1976. However, the understanding of memes and memetic warfare has changed dramatically with the rise of Internet and Social media, similarly as concepts such as information war or propaganda. Memes have been defined by Dawkins' as the smallest units of cultural information and similarly to genes in biology their ultimate purpose is to replicate this information. Dawkins was influenced by Darwin's Theory of Evolution and process of natural selections. He claimed that similarly to genes, only the fittest and strongest memes can survive and continue passing the cultural information. This concept is still valid, although it has been adjusted to fit into changed information environment. Memes in this research are considered a unit of information, and they usually take the form of visuals accompanied with short text. Their purpose is to transform information and mems are capable of collapsing complex messages into just one simple piece of content. Modern memes are spread via the Internet and especially social media. The strongest memes are those, which became viral and thus reach a significant amount of internet users.
Based on literature review and the number of papers published in recent years, it can be said that memes and memetic warfare are concepts that are heavily discussed among the expert community. The key disputes include debate what determines the overall success of the meme - the fitness of meme or socio-economic determinants of the host or debate on whether or not actors such as militaries and governments can utilize memes and memetic warfare. Current research in memes and memetic warfare can be then broken into three thematic categories - memes used to manipulate elections, memes to disseminate ISIS propaganda or memes used to disseminate right wing propaganda.
The primary goal of this research was to find out whether or not Facebook pages Žobri and Nezomri engaged in memetic warfare before Slovak parliamentary elections. Pages Žobri and Nezomri have been selected because they post exclusively memes and they are connected to the largest disinformation outlet in Slovakia - Hlavné správy. Results of this research have shown that these pages engaged memetic warfare. In the crucial period of one month before elections, both pages increased the frequency of their messaging and large majority - 91 % of all posts were concerned with Slovak politics. Both pages have also systematically built certain narratives in this crucial period. Based on content analysis of memes, five different narratives
66 have been identified: (1) Liberals and Liberalism as a threat (2) Andrej Kiska as a criminal (3) Kotleba as a hero (4) Alojz Hlina unfit to lead Christian democratic party (5) Politicians as object for political satire.
These narratives were not endorsing any particular political party but rather building a negative image of politicians, mostly Andrej Kiska, Michal Truban, Andrej Hlina and their political parties. Marian Kotleba was the only politician who has been mentioned with positive sentiment, however this narrative was only marginal. However, what is interesting is the fact that not a single meme was directly referring to the strongest political party at that time - Smer - SD. In fact, memes were presenting narratives that were in accordance with narratives presented by political party Smer - SD.
It is the fact, parties which have most attacked by memetic warfare - Za ľudí, PS/Spolu and KDH, were not successful in the parliamentary elections. Out of those parties, only Za ľudí is represented in the parliament and government, however based opinion polls before elections better results were estimated. Even though there is correlation between negative narratives presented memes posted on Žobri and Nezomri and the relatively low results of parties that were targeted the most, it is not possible to determine to what extent did memes influence behavior of voters.
This research has proved that memes are powerful tools for transmitting a message and an particularly ideal tool to transmit visual propaganda. Visual combined with text leads to enhanced ability to memorize messages. Therefore, memetic warfare has been used by various actors in attempts to manipulate or influence their target audience. With the increasing number of Internet and social media users, its significance will most likely increase in upcoming years.
67 Attachment 1
Category Codes Memes
Liberals and aggressive We will be Liberalism as a threat throwing rocks on supporters of ĽSNS
support drug PS supports use decriminalization of drugs
attack Traditional traditional family family has never existed and it is only construct of hybrid warfare
LGBTI is unnatural Miss, you have a prostate cancer
corrupted We have to check her business
Disrespectful to Jesus would come as a liberal Christian values
parasitize on Holocaust That joy when you can parasite on suffering of others
Andrej Kiska as a criminal prison Welcome to the prison where you belong
fraud When you change one fraud for the other
usurer Andrej Kiska is usurer
Kotleba as a ordinary Kotleba hero citizen drives cheap Hyundai car whereas other politicians drive luxurious cars
strong Koleba would physically beat up liberals in just 3 minutes
Christians I will vote for Kotleba probably vote for Kotleba, founder of KDH shocked
Alojz Hlina bad Christian Leader of unfit to lead Christian the Christian democrats does not remember the democratic party Ten Commandments
speaks Now you vulgar language understand why I am nervous and call everybody a sicko
supports LGBT LGBT is hope for Slovakia
Mentally ill Hlina is patient
Politicians as objects of mocking Michal satire Truban looks like alien
68 ad hominem Kiska is a pig
political I take a bow amateurism before your amateurism
Other COVID-19 Slovakia is not prepared for the pandemics Freedom of There is no speech freedom speech currently is Slovakia
Greta Tunberg Everyone will die someday, so lets not worry about climate change
Roma minority Roma people are responsible for their current situation
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