Using memetic markers to track propaganda and geopolitical influence on Reddit. Part 1
The recent armed conflict in Ukraine took many by surprise — a culmination of mounting geopolitical pressure among world powers locked in implicit conflict. While most military actions are conducted on Ukrainian turf, another conflict is being fought in the minds of onlookers — a battle of influence.
Originally coined by Richard Dawkins and now used mostly to refer to funny images on the Internet, memes are any units of transferable information. They are units of knowledge — a means of spreading ideas that costs less than a paper flyer. “Hey, have you seen this meme?” asks a post on Twitter. Now you have.
The idea of tracking influence through the use of memes online is not new (see Leskovec et al., 2009), however the recency of the medium makes applied memetics still a novel tool for propaganda. The recent attempts (see Forrester et al., 2019) to identify influenced discourse on social networks rely on shaky manual labelling of inauthentic users — here we attempt to extend the state of the art by using more tried and reliable methodology.
“Kiev” or “Kyiv”? The exact name of the nation’s capital city remains an open question. As sympathies towards Ukraine mount on Western social media, one can witness a shift from the previously dominant Russified spelling to a more direct transliteration.
“Kyiv”, unlike many other memes, has the benefit of being an easily trackable keyword. In particular, the word’s spelling is slowly becoming a shibboleth of one’s political allegiance. Are you still using the first spelling even at a time like this? This may say something about your personal beliefs. Have you switched to the Ukrainian one once you heard the news? That may say something, too.
Tracking online mentions of the two variants not only allows for charting virtual spheres of influence of the main sides, but also lets one see them change over time as trends unfold. The picture below is a compiled chart of mentions of the two words on Reddit, gathered using the data analysis tool SocialGrep.
The Eastern European capital, along with its alternate spelling, first appeared on Reddit’s radar in 2014, in wake of the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. Majority of the nationalist sentiment wave can be traced back to there. Since then, Kyiv has slowly been gaining traction on Western social media.
While comments on Reddit are a more certain way to track discussion, posts are undoubtedly the leaders of it. A post on Reddit typically constitutes a link. Often sharing their titles with offsite articles, those links help disseminate memetic content into the public. After all, comments tend to discuss posts —it’s only the posts that are standing on their own merit. “Kyiv” is one such instance of posts influencing comments.
Some people would call it a nefarious plot of propaganda, but at its core it is just evidence of social change — opinion leaders like news networks pick up on trends faster than Reddit populace does, and then amplify new content to the status of memes.
In 2022, the spelling has overtaken its predecessor by number of occurrences. The sudden surge of pro-Ukraine sentiment on Western social media surely does not need any introduction — the growing international conflict coming to its flashpoint has made news worldwide. That catalyst only cemented the word as a social shibboleth for the modern age.
In conclusion, this change did not come overnight. The pro-Ukrainian sympathy on Western social media has been growing for the past six years, nurtured by articles and opinion pieces. The recent explosion in polarized sentiment was only the straw that broke the camel’s back.
— Aleph
Stay tuned for Part 2, where we drill down and examine the ongoing shift in language on the level of individual subreddits.
