Memetic warfare has been seriously studied as an important concept with respects to information warfare by NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence. Jeff Giesea, writing in NATO’s Stratcom COE Defense Strategic Communications journal, defines memetic warfare as “competition over narrative, ideas, and social control in a social-media battlefield. One might think of it as a subset of ‘information operations’ tailored to social media. Information operations involve the collection and dissemination of information to establish a competitive advantage over an opponent”.[3][4] According to Jacob Siegel, “Memes appear to function like the IEDs of information warfare. They are natural tools of an insurgency; great for blowing things up, but likely to sabotage the desired effects when handled by the larger actor in an asymmetric conflict.”[5]
Think about how many times you get the news from memes. You never question the source because you go find an article to get more info. But that meme already influenced how you approached the subject. Whether or not the picture is real, memes are information warfare.
Just looked up “memetics” and found the “Memetic warfare” article on Wikipedia:
Think about how many times you get the news from memes. You never question the source because you go find an article to get more info. But that meme already influenced how you approached the subject. Whether or not the picture is real, memes are information warfare.