Abstract
The Russian disinformation campaign uses pro-Russia memes to polarize Americans, and increase support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Thus, it is critical for governments and similar stakeholders to identify pro-Russia memes, countering them with evidence-based information. Identifying broad meme themes is crucial for developing a targeted and strategic counter response. There are also a range of pro-Ukraine memes that bolster support for the Ukrainian cause. As such, we need to identify pro-Ukraine memes and aid with their dissemination to augment global support for Ukraine. We address the indicated issues through the following contributions: 1) Creation of an annotated dataset of pro-Russia (N = 70) and pro-Ukraine (N = 121) memes regarding the Ukraine conflict; 2) Identification of broad themes within the pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine meme categories. Broadly, our findings indicated that pro-Russia memes fall into thematic categories that seek to undermine specific elements of US and their allies’ policy and culture. Pro-Ukraine memes are far more diffuse thematically, highlighting admiration for Ukraine’s people and its leadership. Stakeholders may utilize our findings to develop targeted strategies to mitigate Russian influence operations - possibly reducing effects of the conflict.
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We thank the editor and reviewers for their comments. This study was funded with a grant from the The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for international and Area Studies at Yale, and Yale Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies Research Awards.
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Chen, K. et al. (2023). Categorizing Memes About the Ukraine Conflict. In: Dinh, T.N., Li, M. (eds) Computational Data and Social Networks . CSoNet 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13831. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26303-3_3
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