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Do Online Communities Spread Hate Through the Memes Users Post?

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Do Online Communities Spread Hate Through the Memes Users Post?

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For the past several decades, online communities have strategically used memes as a way to spread hateful messages to impressionable individuals who are easily swayed by the propaganda they see online. The distortion of realities for these individuals has led to mass amounts of mental health issues and a society that is disconnected from each other.

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Image from: Washington University, Olin Business School 

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Enders, A.M., Uscinski, J.E., Seelig, M.I. et al. The Relationship Between Social Media Use and Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation. Polit Behav 45, 781–804 (2023).

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-021-09734-6

Researchers have found that individuals who get their news solely from social media express more beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation. The impact social media has had on people's psyches and behaviors has been an ever-present challenge we must research more on.

The article highlights how pervasive social media can be. The algorithms of social media platforms create and spread conspiratorial content making it easier for impressionable people to come across when accessing the internet.

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Godwin, E., Davidson, B. I., Hill, T., & Joinson, A. Internet Memes as Stabilizers of Conspiracy Culture: A Cognitive Anthropological Analysis. Social Media + Society, 11(1). (2025)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051241306421

This academic article delves into how internet memes are utilized by human beings to communicate and share narratives through simple images that many can digest. These memes often sustain and solidify the cultural foundations of online communities. With there often being what researchers describe as "memetic templates", internet users create memes off of original photos/memes, thus creating a cycle of never-ending memes. The broad appeal of internet memes often lands in fringe online communities with their conspiratorial spins on images.

Engaging in forms of "participatory storytelling" by spreading conspiracy theories helps those make sense of the world around them and what they see on the news/social media. This research provides information on how digital expression is an ever-changing variable depending on the time we are living in.

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Matteo Cinelli, Gabriele Etta, Michele Avalle, Alessandro Quattrociocchi, Niccolò Di Marco, Carlo Valensise, Alessandro Galeazzi, Walter Quattrociocchi, Conspiracy theories and social media platforms, Current Opinion in Psychology, Volume 47, (2022)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X22001282

This article delves into the phenomenon of echo chambers and how fringe online communities have been at the forefront of spreading misinformation and hateful rhetoric through memes. Since internet users often acquire the information they like, filter out information they are not interested in and only join online communities with like-minded individuals, these mechanisms people are involved in can reinforce their opinions on subjects moving entire groups towards more extreme positions. The harmful consequences of spreading hateful memes on social media need to be discussed and action more by CEOs of these companies.

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QAnon, Social Media, & Information Visualization

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QAnon, Social Media, & Information Visualization

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Hannah, M. N. A Conspiracy of Data: QAnon, Social Media, and Information Visualization. Social Media + Society, 7(3). (2021)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20563051211036064

Researchers in this academic article argue that we live in an extremely visual world where despite humans being excellent at navigating visual information, we are not great at debunking bad information through literacy. Memes are utilized as a way to communicate narratives about our world, but when these memes are infiltrated by those in online QAnon groups, information warfare breaks out.

The lack of understanding our society has when it comes to data analysis and information literacy, is an increasingly worrisome phenomenon that is taking place in all corners of the internet. Complex and interactive visualizations that internet users are served daily are leading to more and more people becoming indoctrinated by harmful rhetoric leading to real-world implications.