How Memes Are Changing Politics: From Ukraine to AI Slop

Dr Tine Munk of Nottingham Trent University joins me to explore how memes have become part of the way people encounter politics — from Ukraine’s use of humour and visual storytelling during the war to AI-generated misinformation, political satire and the rise of Count Binface.

We discuss why memes can be powerful tools for communication and political participation, how false information can become believable through repetition, and why AI-generated content is making it increasingly difficult to tell what is real. Tine also explains how humour can draw people into politics while sometimes distracting from the issues that actually affect people’s lives.

This is a bonus episode to mark the Clacton by-election. The podcast will return in September, but in the meantime you can follow my writing and other work on Substack:
https://substack.com/@rachelmelinek

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:10

I'm joined by Dr. Teen Monk from Nottingham Trent University, whose research explores political memes, online extremism, and the changing way political information spreads online.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

I was working with cybercrime and cybersecurity, so my interest came basically from my research into cyber conflict, information disorder, but also online extremism and different types of use of social media. And in that context, I start to look into political communications. So I kept seeing this kind of gap between the formal language used by institutions and politicians, but also the cultural forms which people actually online encounter politics. And also how politicians started to use memes and social media accounts for communications. And then I started to look into the actual communication when Russia uh illegally invaded Ukraine in 2022, where I could see how Ukraine and pro-Ukrainians was starting to turn the conversation into a kind of mimetic to communication, where we had humor, we had images, we saw the development of popular culture. And I also started to identify through my observation that a lot of people started to participate in the political discussion, but also in the war itself, started to challenge, for example, public, and it also started to spread in a way where I could see there was a type of international solidarity in the type of communication I saw in terms of the pro-Ukrainian memes and pro-Ukrainian communications. And we saw some of the stories about Ukrainian farmers towing Russian tanks. We saw St. Jewelin and we saw the response from the Snake Island in the beginning of the war. And at the same time, they undermined the Russian claim of military competence. And what we also saw it was the communication in itself helped to maintain them all, encourage solidarity, but it also created material that journalists and political leaders often will repeat afterwards. So what I observed and what I found really interesting was this type of very defensive memes that came out of this war. It's very interesting what happened from 2022 and onwards because we can see how it is spread to other countries, other institutions, or the politicians. But the war in Ukraine did not create political memes, but it made it Ukrainian Ukrainian officials and people, Ukrainian actors made it their strategic role in communicating directly to people, cutting out the middlemen, cutting out the journalists. So from the early days of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainians and the supporters used humor, cultural references, visual storytelling to basically interpret events as they started to unfold. On the other hand, we have seen over the years since 2016 that Donald Trump and his supporters was using quite offensive types of memes that is aggressive, that is trolleying people. They had totally different types of language. So what I'm doing at the moment, I've done since 2022, is differentiate between the offensive types of memes and the defensive types of memes. And that is the areas which I really found interesting in terms of my research. But also by observing what is ongoing, you never know what is going to go viral. You never know what is going to create or produce a reaction. So a political powerful means supplies a frame. It tells people who appears strong, who appears ridiculous, who belongs to the group, who threatened the group, and also what the event means to a larger context here. So its power basically grows through the repetition and the participation. What I see is that people do not simply receive the message, they copy it, they alter it, they help it to be spread online.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

Do memes make politics easier to understand or do they oversimplify it?

SPEAKER_01 5:07

I think those two elements, it also depends on the memes in itself, whether they are offensive memes or they are defensive memes. In terms of the defensive memes, we can see how people are engaging with it. We can see how they're creating and circulating content and how it has a level of information or calling out the falsehoods. That is positive, but we also have the other side which is quite negative, where we can see the very aggressive types of memes.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

Have you got any kind of stories around any memes related to the Ukraine conflict or any other kind of more recent memes?

SPEAKER_01 5:48

We can see at the moment, in terms of Ukraine, because I I constantly follow uh the war on in Ukraine and the memes itself, where Ukraine is striking back. So they are attacking inside Russia. So they have a similar attack, different factories like or storage places like the Wild Berry at the moment. So that is the counterpart to Amazon, you can call it like that. And and the memes about the burning buildings that is being created is really, really creative, where they're really making fun of Russia is suddenly on the receiving end where Ukraine has been attacked and civilians have been attacked for years now, and suddenly uh the game has changed. And these have been really inspiring for people who are pro-Ukrainian, and the memes are reflecting that kind of things. So when you see the mimetic warfare, it is basically a form of information warfare conducted online. We are using memes and all the tactic to achieve political, strategic, or ideological objectives. And some of them can be funny, but some of them can also be quite serious. So there have been, for example, a minor crisis in Ukraine in terms of politics at the moment, where the Minister of Defense has been uh replaced or it's going to be replaced, and people went out and protested on the street. And this has also created memes, but they're not funny, they're serious, they are being used to inform people about what is going on, what is happening. So it's cutting down the middleman, they're also cutting through the falsehoods and the manipulations that you also see online. So there's a direct communication here. And also, on the other hand, when there's attacks, for similar on Kiev from Russian size, where there's a number of people have been killed, civilians have been killed, or infrastructure has been damaged, the governmental actors really quickly come out and tell the people directly about casualties and what happened. So it's also a way of keeping people informed. So it's not just about the fun. Yes, there is a number of funny memes, and then and they are really funny in some of them. We see the symbols, we see the cat's faces, we see all the images and videos, which is a part of this internet culture, but it's also a way of communicating directly and saying this is happening without the manipulation, without any types of mystics and malinformation that can come in terms of these communications. So it is a powerful tool, but it's also a tool that can be used to basically keep the moral up among the population. And people are engaging with this communication form. So they are remixing the memes, they're changing the memes. The memes to come get the life on its own as soon as they are being received into the wild.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

What recent AI-generated misinformation have you encountered?

SPEAKER_01 8:47

What I've seen is is these soldiers who's crying to to because they don't want to go to the front. And you get this idea that oh, this is really horrible, and we have an Ukrainian soldier that don't want to fight. But it comes from from the Russian uh disinformation campaigns, but so they have been created there. But we can also see in terms of of the war against Iran, that we have seen more and more of these slops coming through where people are either present to be soldier or try to say, Oh, I lost a loved one in the war, and now I'm I'm basically asking for money. Yes, we have seen them over the years, this kind of plates for money, but suddenly you see real people, you see real uh sorrows, or you think you see people with real sorrows, but they are basically AI generated using deep fake um software. And that creates that situation where it's really, really difficult to figure out who is what is happening and what is going on. But we can see a number of of people are also tapping into it simply for economic reasons. Yeah, the AI slop thing is really interesting in so well in its itself, because the role of AI, for example, AI lovers the cost of producing poly political content. We have small teams or individuals who can generate images, animation, false voices, we can see deepfakers coming in, we can see all these different types of variations. So you can create whatever you want. The production becomes fast, the content can respond to events very immediately. But there's also the problem around the falsehoods and also the lies. We can see the volume in itself create uncertainty. We can see different types of AI are being mixed. For example, we can see authentic footages, satire, we can see manipulated clips are being included here. So suddenly it becomes very, very difficult to figure out what is actually true and what is not true. And that is a part, part of the gamification and the spectacle of mimetic warfare, where it also sometimes are being picked up from simple by popular media or journalists picking up on it. So we can have see, for example, we have a political statement that might not be true. It is being picked up and being repeated in the news. Then we have the memes that is coming on top of this and basically saying, yes, this is true because suddenly we see the spread of it. Even if it is a lie, then people start to believe that this is true because it's just everywhere. And then you get the public reaction where they start to engage with the falsehoods. And then it's really, very difficult to step back from that sphere where all the lies are being perceived as the truth. So we have a problem here where it is really, really difficult to figure out what is true, what is not true. And it also means a lot of people will step back from the political environment because they don't know what is up and down, the uncertainty is just too big. And most people will not fact-check. Some of these lies are being circulated in different echo chambers, and we have this world where trues lies are just entwined, and it can be really, really difficult to basically to fact-check, and we don't have enough media literacy to basically to verify what we are seeing online.

SPEAKER_03 12:47

I do try and fact-check. I use sites like Full Fact and things like this to have a look to see what's being said about certain things. But are there ways that people can fact-check differently? And also when looking at a meme, is there a way to tell that it's potentially false?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Sometimes you can see it in terms of AI, but AI is getting bitter and bitter. So now we also see, for simple, false soldier is crying about going to the front, or we can see false soldier is trying to fundraise online, but they create this kind of life story around the slops, and and these images and small videos look really real. You need to be able to look at some of the the way that they are other six hands, or is it something about the mouth that is not right? There's some small indicators that you can look at. But if you're just scrolling down on your social media side and your reels or wherever you encounter them, it can be quite difficult to differentiate it. But we need to start thinking about the things we are seeing online, who is sending this around, what might be the reason for it, and start to question these things that we are seeing. Is it just one argument in one meme or one video? Or are there other areas that it's backing up? Well, you go to news sites and see if the story has been published by by traditional news outlets, and also try to think about so why do I see this? Why is this coming up in my feed? Because it is linked to the attention economy and the way social media and the algorithm are pushing different types of information to the top of your wheels or your feet. So you also need to think about your own behavior because it's linked to what you also are seeing online. But some of the images or videos we see are really, really clearly AI, where others can be really difficult to figure out. So it is a huge industry, and there's a lot of money involved in it for people who are trying to deceive people, other people online with these uh slops. So, yes, it can be quite difficult, but we need to be better, we need to challenge some of the things we are seeing before we start to circulate them online, before we like them, before we send it to our friends. And also to be better to say, oops, I made a mistake here, and then tell your friends that this was not real. Because we don't see many of these video images with a label on saying this is AI. You'll see sometimes it will come up or be in a text under the image.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

On the more positive side, I'm interested in how humour is using memes to sort of highlight things in politics. I'm thinking of the the recent by-election at Clacton and basically Count Binface. So could you talk a little bit about Count Binface and then in general about how memes are used to highlight issues?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yes. So that is that is different from from the memes I've seen, for example, from both Ukraine but also the US-Israeli war against Iran, which also have a number of memes, particularly videos. But in terms of Calm Binfe, so this is more local, this is national as well, in the sense because it's a local by-election called by Nigel Farad to step down from his uh MP role in the parliament. And that has suddenly grabbed the attention from people in the whole country and also beyond the country, so from an international point of view, it has been reported in a number of outlets outside the the UK. So, parody accounts, people standing up, parody candidate like Count Bainfist is definitely not new. So the prison has produced them for decades. So, for example, one of the known is Screaming Lord Search, who stood in in the 1963 step of upon Avon by election, uh, before basically founding the official monster raving looning party. So his campaign makes absurd promises with very sharp political satire. And it will a way of reminding the voters that election campaign often contained unrealistic promises and is quite of a theatrical performance. So we can see that has spread over the years. So a number of by-elections, either to to the parliament or by-election or elections to local council, have these satirical candidates like Lord Barney or Elmo. So Elmo from Seesome Street, the character from there, has been a part of the UK election several times, Mr. Fishfinger, and now we can see binface who are basically standing in this by-election in Clarkton. So the obvious reaction is to laugh a bit when you see a man with a large silver bin for a head. He hardly looks like a conventional parliamentary candidate. But it basically also had a long and surprisingly important place in the British democracy. And he basically he belongs to that tradition. Although his campaign online shows how political communication is changing in the digital age, which I found is really important here. So the we have all these different candidates, and we have that long history. But what I see as something different in this campaign is the way people are engaging with him, his campaign online, but also take it beyond the character itself. Because yes, Winface has a NX account or account online, but people start to create memes in his name, supporting his campaign, calling out Nigel Farraz. And Nigel Farraz has for a long time presented himself as this outsider taking on the political establishment. But suddenly we have a candidate who have turned it all upside down. So Nigel Farraz is now seen as the establishment in this by-election, where Camp Binface, on the other hand, starts the conversation and the campaign has shifted to be him representing the people and explosing some of the issues around these elections where the candidates are promising whatever they like and they're not caught up. They don't need to follow up on their promises when they have been elected into the parliament or into the local council. But it goes beyond entertainment. Humor is not the destination, it's basically the starting point. It attracts the attention and it encourages people to engage. It also lowers the barriers to political participation. So once people are engaged in this, the conversation often moves well beyond the joke in itself, which I found really, really positive because there has been a reluctance to be engaged in politics. There's been this gap between basically the establishment and the people. And it's really, really refreshing to see how people are engaging and how they are actually creating the memes and also calling out all these issues that there are in terms of political campaigns.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

So I think it's kind of interesting that England has more of a history, maybe, of joke candidates than most countries. But I actually have been looking up, there are joke candidates from around the world, and I found out yesterday that one of them actually got in in Denmark.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Yes. So it's Jacob Augorb. So that's I can't remember the name now, but he was a parody candidate. He went for the election in his own name. So it was not like he was creating a character or putting a bin on his head. He he isn't an entertainer, and he was elected, and he went to the parliament and he took it quite seriously. And I think that is also what we will see if Tom Binface is being voted into the parliament. The person behind it will then have to basically do the stuff coming in and actually do what he's voted into. So that is the interesting part of it that you can't just disappear. You have responsibilities. And there's also one of the issues that is related here. Yes, it is funny, but who are you voting in and why are you voting this in? Is it a protest vote that you are going for, then you don't know what that person stands for, whether that person will work in your interest in the local environment. I think the person behind count in this will, but there are responsibilities. So if you voted into the parliament, you need to to do the parliamentary work. And what I also noticed was it yesterday I saw on on X that there were small memes with him in his own name. So going from just being the person that was a little bit fun and ha ha ha with a bin on the head, he suddenly unbinned himself and started to to create memes in his own name.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

I think that is interesting.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

I haven't actually seen the memes in his own name so I have to look that one up yeah I there was just yesterday there was a small sentence under his name saying also known as Count Binface. So it becomes a little bit more serious. It moves into a new phrase here. So he has entered the electoral politics Lord Pockethead at the beginning standing against Theresa May in 2017 but then there was a dispute about the character and then it led him to create counting phase in 2018. So he had been standing against Boris Johnson. He's standing in the London Murr election in 2021 and 2024 I think and he also was standing in the 26th Megosphere by-election but he didn't get the same attention as he gets now when he's standing up against Nigel Farage which I found quite interesting. But Harvey has been in involved in political satire for a very very long time so so he's not new and I'm pretty sure if he's voted in he will take it serious as well.

SPEAKER_03 24:02

Why do you think Calvin Face is kind of attracting public attention?

SPEAKER_01 24:08

I think it is kind of the absurdity of having this by-election that Knight and Sarrat steps back. He is a member of the parliament and he stepped back because of different reasons but there was a lot of scrutiny about money about donations so he stepped back from that room he resigned and at the same time said he wanted to call a by-election and then let the people decide so he had created that narrative around himself for a long time that he was the representative of the people and he has been to Clarkton he has been their representative but the problem is has he been doing anything for Clarkton? Has he done anything for the local environment has he been to the place has he uphold that communication that is a part of the constituency that you also are representing the voters that you have and that is also one of the things he has promised a lot of things and now it's catching up with him. He is a part he is a member of the parliament he is a member of the establishment he can no longer claim that he represents the people he's a man of the people he's fighting against the establishment because he's part of it now. And that is what he has built his identity around he has built identity around being the outsider who challenged West Minister. But here he's a sitting politician who resigned he has triggered an election and then asking the voters to return him to parliament so the memes and the whole campaign has exposed that contradiction. So we have basically a politician who masters the political spectacle now finds himself challenged through the same method of humor symbolism and the very simplified storytelling and yes we have an absurd parody candidate here but they basically are challenging what we have seen in a number of elections where people are promising a lot of things which they're not held accountable for afterwards. But the campaign also raised a larger question what does all this online engagement mean beyond the fund? Creating and sharing memes require really little commitment and online visibility does not automatically translate into votes. But if you look at the visibility of Count Binface and the attention he gets and how he has been able to shift the debate and the discussions in his direction he gets all the media attention from news outlets in the UK and beyond where Nigel Farraz is actually two steps behind. So he sets the agenda at the moment and I found that is really really interesting that we have people now who do not need to have a party headquarter or any professional campaigns or any large budget. Onto that new political story that Bin Faye represents takes hold online so a lot of people are engaged in this and they're producing political messages.

SPEAKER_03 27:43

They are basically challenging the establishment and they invite others into the conversation it's been a long time since I've seen so many people engaged and discussing a by-election campaign that is a local election but on a national scale do you think that politicians they don't really sort of appreciate how important humor, satire and online culture is in terms of politics and things like elections?

SPEAKER_01 28:15

I think it's a very difficult question because politics and democracy and running a country or challenge the people in power is serious business. I see it's something very serious that it's something we should take into account but what we see is that politicians politics are being turned into a joke but they're doing it themselves they are using the same mechanism as people are doing to draw attention to to different areas we can see how for simple in terms of of count is that absurd policies are becoming a part of the whole agenda that he is making fun of manifesto promises he has this outsider position he has a lot of media appeal and he is using that and the people around him is using that but other politicians are doing the same some are doing it in a very negative sense as we can see for simple Donald Trump has done since 2016 but he's definitely doing it on his social to social account now where he also or his team around him are generating a lot of AI images position him as a superhero or as Jesus or other different roles and and using humor in in that context and that undermine to a certain extent the political message. On the other hand you also have for simply in terms of the by-election in Clarkson suddenly you get people in involved in the campaign who otherwise wouldn't have been it. So it is a kind of a double-edged sword it can either be too much or too little or it can have a totally different effect that it promotes falsehoods and lies rather than to promote humor or satire or irony or the fun about popular culture or the politicians or the politics involved. I suppose it's as you said it's like a double-edged sword meme so used well as says in the sort of Calbin face example that she engaged people in politics and get people talking but then they have a sort of negative side of course memes can help people understand politics because it provides a starting point rather than to have a complete explanation and it tracks people in it's very easy to get an overview when you see a meme that's often an image or a text or a combination of both or you see some of the small videos. People don't really read as much anymore so when you see these memes and you only see them you instantly got drawn into it. And we can also see just to what you also mentioned before was politicians often treat the memes as a campaign product that the communication team can commission and they can prove they can distribute. So it's very seldom is the it's actually candidate who is circulating in the team around the person. We can see how the online culture adopting to these so the successful memes usually grow through participation and the change as soon as you let them free you lose the control over the memes so the users in themselves adopt them and sometimes they can turn them against the original creators so a joke can feel very spontaneous when it's created by the original user and then it can be seen false when it's for copied by a political institution. Politicians also confuse visibility with trust a provocative image might generate a number of views but they can also weaken the credibility of the account that they're posted on for example champs of the White House has posted some images that turns against them in relation to the conflict with Denmark and Greenland they posted an image with Donald Trump walking on some ice together with a pink wing towards a Greenlandic flag that really backfired first of all people made fun of it because there's no pink being in Greenland but also the idea that that Greenland was already a part of the US so that actually backfired and people was reacting really strongly created counter memes towards that was and it was sent from a the White House it was sent from an official account so we also need to think about how how we are are using memes and and what kind of memes will we expect to be sent from an official account from politicians from serious politicians? So I think the whole count bin phase meme campaign also highlights all these things making fun of how politicians are using memes and how they are promising a lot of things that they can't keep afterward can confusing or misleading political content online make people feel overwhelmed and disengaged from politics yes I think there is there's issues surrounding for similar the AI slops and the AI generated images that people withdraw from being engaged. They see all these kind of images they get a little bit confused. The uncertainties also make the people not engaging or disengaging with politics a little bit like I don't understand what is going on so I don't want to get involved. So we have all these kind of arguments and we can see the spectacle the entertainment that comes into it I can take Donald Trump as an example again. He's constantly in the media he draws all these headlines he talks to journalists on Air Force One he turns up he makes all these statements on true social we can see the people around him is doing the same we can see the White House as a public institution is also creating memes that is not true and circulate them. So what should people believe now it circumvent the normal traditional diplomatic channels and make it really confusing for people to figure out what is happening. Some people will just refrain from being involved in it just step back and don't look into it because this goes over the head other people believe some of the memes that is being circulated for some of the manipulative memes and then it's very difficult to change their minds around it afterwards when they have this fixed idea that this is the truth and this is not the truth. So we have all these challenges in terms of of using mimetic warfare whether it is defensive or offensive types of memes but we can see that memes now forms a part of the infrastructure in which people basically encounter politics. So they connect war, diplomacy elections and everyday popular culture in the same digital environment which is problematic especially when we have the AI and when we have all the problems related to it. So we can also see how people are moved from being consumers of information on social media to become participants. And humor is an access it just makes it more interesting and it also invites to discussion but it can hide the manipulation or the suffering for some when we are encountering war or crisis. Do you have anything else you'd like to add I think in terms of build base I really find that really really interesting is the way he simplifies that really complex election and it's suddenly a contest between these recognizable characters. The media might focus on the costume and the absurd promises but not really paying attention to Clarkton's local concerns. So we overlook the constituency so we overlook what is actually happening because we also focus on this parody character. So in terms of the in terms of the local environment the elliptic should actually be about serious questions in terms of deprivation housing health employment public services and representation but what we see now is a national media spectacle that use Clapton as a state local people are living with the consequences. So that creates an important tension so the satire can draw attention to neglected political questions but they can also draw attention away from it. So the effect depends on whether journalists and the campaigners and the audience uses the humor as an entrance or they treat it as a whole story. So I think there's a lot of elements that is missing in the coverage of the election here. And if I was living in that local environment I would be a little bit concerned about first of all what uh Farage represents he's already been elected for two years. Has he done what he promised to do but also what about Count Bainfist what does he actually do? What will he do? We promised a lot of things that is reasonable, easy to fulfill but what will he do about these things? The deprivation, the housing, the health the employment all these things that matter for people, the living expenses and living in a particular environment we don't hear enough about that and this is what I've basically concerned about in terms of the campaign that something is missing. We are treating it as a joke yes it is a joke it is funny but what about the underlying issues what about the local environment in itself