Week 8: Networked insurgencies: Social media revolutions and meme warfare

In week 8, I learned how social media and meme warfare is being used in the world to pass around some knowledge about a topic to a billion people in real-time coordination. Meme warfare is a very interesting topic as before learning about meme welfare, I never thought that memes have a hidden motive or a reason behind it. I used to think memes are just to make people laugh, but now I got to learn that memes are also used to pass messages and information around the globe.

Since the first day of the internet, it has helped a lot of people in many different ways. Today, if you encounter any injustice or harassments, just post about it on social media, and the whole world will help fight for you and make sure you get justice. the internet has become a tool to glue the world together when there’s injustice. In real life example, there have been many times when the internet was used to help spread messages and get people justice. For example the “Arab spring”. It all happened in Tunisia where a man killed himself on a street by setting himself on fire. Tunisians took to the streets and demonstrated against the corrupted government (Blakemore, 2019). And as a result, the autocratic president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia after a month of protest. The protest was being recorded and shared all over the internet which boosts up other Arab countries and the people started fighting for their rights. 

The internet has helped people to fight for their rights as all the protest movements are being recorded and shared all over the world. It has helped people to become one in difficult situations and even the powered people or government can’t do anything against so many people if they stand together.

The meme is also something that is being used a lot to pass messages around. According to (Ascott, 2020) “Meme warfare now more often refers to using memes as individual weapons of information warfare”. It is being used as a weapon so that it can spread all over the world. Today, I found that when memes are not only for laughing but it has had a hidden motive behind it. 

References:

Ascott, T. (2020, February 18). How memes are becoming the new frontier of information warfare. Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/how-memes-are-becoming-the-new-frontier-of-information-warfare/

Blakemore, E. (2019, June 14). What was the Arab Spring and what caused it to happen? Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/topics/reference/arab-spring-cause/