Mateusz Łabuz, of the University of Hamburg’s Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy, said humour makes content easier to absorb, which makes memes effective tools of influence. NATO uses the term memetic warfare and describes it as a contest over narratives and social control online.
The European Digital Media Observatory has documented examples aimed at Volodymyr Zelenskyy, including a fake Time magazine cover showing him with horns and a doctored photo of him in oversized shoes, meant to make him look like a clown.
Iran has used similar tactics. Its videos feature toy-brick figures of US President Donald Trump, in one fleeing financier Jeffrey Epstein, and in another standing on a small raft urging Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Łabuz said memes work because they sidestep careful thought. “They rely on a short, emotional message that draws on a sense of humour”, he said, triggering fast, automatic reactions rather than analysis. Repetition also makes them seem truer.
“Under the cover of a joke, extremism can become acceptable”, he said.
Measuring their real impact is difficult, he said, because researchers struggle to show whether a meme has lastingly changed anyone’s thinking. But they can deepen polarisation and reduce disputes to simple associations.
Punishing meme creators is largely impractical, Łabuz said, except where content directly incites racism, xenophobia or violence. He said regulators should target networks of fake accounts that amplify memes instead.
“If we are dealing with artificial amplification, meaning there are unverified accounts boosting interest in a given meme, then we can say we are dealing with an influence operation, and legal intervention would be justified”, he said. That could mean forcing platforms to remove inauthentic accounts.
Public resilience can also be built, he said. A society that thinks critically and understands such tactics is “much more resistant”.
Some users fight back with memes of their own. The NAFO (North Atlantic Fellas Organization) community, founded in 2022 by Pole Kamil Dyszewski, uses them to counter Russian propaganda. Ukraine and Taiwan have applied a “humour over rumour” approach. Łabuz acknowledged that such efforts can blur the line between answering information threats and state propaganda.
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Source: PAP