An Empathetic Approach to Disinformative Communities

The next speaker in this fast-paced final AoIR 2022 session is Maximilian Schlüter, who is also interested in disinformative communities. He notes that a specific understanding of disinformation has emerged that does not necessarily capture all forms and formats of disinformation – today, disinformation is far more widespread and mundane than previously imagined.

Maximilian’s focus is particularly on white male supremacist communities, and here on ‘Reject Modernity, Embrace Masculinity’ (RMEM) memes and how they are circulated and remixed: are we asking the right questions and telling the right stories as we study such forms of disinformation, and does this approach serve to condemn and counteract inhumane and harmful disinformation practices.

Current perspectives for conceptualising and addressing disinformation tend to be built on frames of fact-checking and media literacy, essentialising disinformation to questions of ultimate truth and/or framing communities of disinformation as lacking the required critical literacy to see through such disinformation. But such frames do not account for the sense-making practices that the members of disinformation communities actually employ. An empathetic, feminist approach would instead see these communities as smart and digital literate, but as (rightly or wrongly) feeling oppressed, disenfranchised, and desperate and therefore susceptible to disinformation.

RMEM memes, then, are a YouTube-specific category of memes that takes a particular masculinise reading of contemporary society, through existential and esoteric readings, ideology and religion, and subjectivity and embodiment. This draws on imagery from entertainment, professional sports, body building, and other key sources, and also centres around key figures like the late bodybuilder Zyzz as well as the cartoon character of the ‘doomer’ as the representation of the repressed male.

The empathetic approach to this content that is employed here must ultimately ask whom to be empathetic towards; the underlying goal is to understand what crisis the RMEM members are trying to solve.