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.
CITATION STYLE
Chen, K., Feng, A., Aanegola, R., Saha, K., Wong, A., Schwitzky, Z., … Kumar, N. (2023). Categorizing Memes About the Ukraine Conflict. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) (Vol. 13831 LNCS, pp. 27–38). Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26303-3_3
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