Memes, a resilient weapon against terrorism

The functionality of these lies in their ability to generate and strengthen a feeling of resilience, satirizing and ridiculing the terrorist actors. Using the humorous nature of memes makes it possible to lessen or diminish the harmful effects of terrorism so that societies are not subjugated to the fear sought by terrorists.

When someone thinks of memes, it seems almost immediate to associate them with images, text, video, or other funny elements that are viralized through the Internet. However, while this would not be entirely wrong, it would leave a large part of the phenomenon out in the open¹. The origin of the term meme dates back to the 1970s, when the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins published his work "The Selfish Gene". For Dawkins the meme is a type of cultural information because unlike the genetic information contained in DNA, it is processed by the brain and can be adopted and modified by the person through a cognitive process. In this sense memes base their survival on the hosts to which they manage to transmit themselves, thus jumping from one brain to another through a process of imitation².

There is no doubt that memes are associated with humour, and although the adoption of the terminology is attributed to Dawkins, humour is not a new phenomenon that has nevertheless seen social networks as the ideal medium for its propagation and exposure. In order for a meme to achieve its objective, which is none other than its propagation, it has to have a series of characteristics that make it susceptible to be shared by as many people as possible. In this line, Shiffman determined that those characteristics are conciseness, humour and sense of inclusion³.

Not everything that goes viral can be called a meme, for something to be considered a meme not only must it be shared massively but it must be replicated and transformed because memes mutate to survive, so it is both likely and necessary for users to change and transmit them so the chances of replication are infinite. Another of the most defining features of memes is their ephemeral nature, and while it is true that there are memes that have managed to remain active since their origin, most of them end up disappearing within weeks or months of their appearance⁵.

The meme, understood as such, has the cognitive capacity to substitute very complex thoughts and transform them into simpler ones, increasing the possibility of successful transmission⁶. As Blackmore said, "memes have become the tool with which we think"⁷.  Once it is determined that the meme goes far beyond humour one might ask what other uses, apart from those intrinsic to the meme itself, might be associated with it by taking advantage of the spread of ideas, opinions and behaviours that memetics offers. This is where the use of memes as a military instrument comes into play, with the vast majority of memes circulating on the internet being designed by teams specialised in psychological warfare⁸. This use can range from pacifying conflicts to introducing new modes of thinking into populations in a subliminal way.

However, in view of the advantages and usefulness that memes can provide through their correct use, it would be necessary to determine whether they can be used for other purposes, such as helping to strengthen resilience in the face of serious, traumatic events and, more specifically, in the face of terrorism.

Resilience can be understood as the ability of human beings to face and adapt to adverse situations, the SAR defines it as "the ability of a living being to adapt to a disruptive agent or an adverse state or situation". Around this idea it could be determined that resilient people adapt to complications and carry out a series of measures to overcome them and return to a state of normality⁹.  One of the main characteristics of resilient people is their sense of humour, which means that learning to laugh at serious situations or ones that cause us some kind of upset can be positive in terms of coping with the problem. In this sense, and following the line of what was said before, memes could be that method with which to acquire and strengthen our resilience because it can be trained.

In recent years there has been a change of paradigm in terrorists' methodology for carrying out their attacks, as we have witnessed in the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, Nice, London, Westminster, etc., changing the traditional use of weapons or explosives for everyday objects. This change is not only motivated by the greater ease of obtaining the means through which to commit the attacks, but is also intended to aggravate the state of terror that terrorism already provokes in society owing to the fact that everyone is susceptible to being the victim of an attack at any time and in any place, where everything becomes a potential threat¹⁰.

Here resilience plays a key role as a characteristic that must be enhanced and strengthened because the terrorist threat is persistent and global in scope. Fostering resilience is a determining factor in the face of terrorism because it allows counter-narratives to be generated that confront the fallacies on which the terrorist argument is based¹¹.

A terrorist attack is one of the most stressful situations a person can be exposed to, causing a collective psychosis that has consequences at an individual level as well. Some of the most frequent psychological aspects that occur in the general population are the following: worsening of anxiety and depression problems in people who, before the attack, suffered from these problems, nightmares, invasive thoughts and images in relation to the attack, avoidance of crowded places and areas and the establishment of fears and false beliefs about people from the culture to which the attacks are related¹².

This is where memes can greatly help to achieve the desired effects, and that is that humour is a differential factor when it comes to overcoming problems because the joke helps us to release tension and laughter is a powerful formula for fighting anxiety and stress, these being the main signs of the psychological consequences of terrorism¹³.  In any case, we should not underestimate the danger and damage that terrorism causes. Nor would it be a question of denying the problem, but rather of addressing it with a different positive attitude by attempting to unmask even the laughable side of the tragedy such as the terrorists' "justifications" for carrying out the attack, so that fear does not take over people's lives and they can regain control¹⁴.

Moreover, the production of memes about terrorism has the opposite effect to that pursued by terrorist groups. Ridicule and characterization prevents the feeling of fear they seek to instill in society. Resilience strengthened by the use of memes does not seek complete avoidance of reality or to reduce negative feelings about terrorism to zero, but rather to learn to cope with and overcome them.

Memes have the capacity to reverse the negativity that terrorism causes, thus avoiding that societies with a higher risk factor to become victims of terrorism are not forced to live in a state of continuous alert.

Humour is a fruitful tool for achieving a feeling of collective resilience. Humour should therefore not be understood as a mere mockery of events of such magnitude but rather as a liberating catharsis¹⁵. Memes are therefore a good weapon with which to fight against terrorist arguments and ideologies, dismantling them and showing their true reality. Any tool that is used correctly is very useful for the purposes it pursues. However, it is very important to stress that, as in other areas of life, not everything is valid in memes, and absolute respect should be shown to all victims of terrorism so that they do not find in them a source of revictimisation.

"If you let fear get the better of you, you will never leave your home again. If you are afraid, the terrorists have won”.

Jairo Sánchez Gómez

Criminólogo y Analista de Terrorismo Internacional

1. Díaz, V. (21 January 2016). Memes are not what you (probably) think. Trade. Retrieved from (http://www.elcomercio.com/afull/memes-cultura-biologia-humor-teoria.html).
2.   Dawkins, R. (1991). The selfish gene. The biological basis of our behaviour. Barcelona, Spain. Salvat. p. 260.
3.   Shifman, L. (2014): Memes in Digital Culture. The MIT Press, Boston, Massachusetts.
4.   Ribeiro de Jesús, A, M. (20 January 2020). Send me memes: memetics and culture as discourse. Elemmental. Retrieved from (https://elemmental.com/2020/01/20/mandame-memes-la-memetica-y-la-cultura-como-discurso/).
5.   Ibid.
6.   Baños, P. (15 November 2020).  Memes, much more than a diversion. Otra-reading.  Retrieved from (https://otralectura.com/2020/11/15/los-memes-mucho-mas-que-una-diversion/).
7.   Blackmore, Susan J. The Meme Machine. Oxford University Press. 1999. pp. 7 and 15.
8.   Baños, P. (15 November 2020).  The memes, much more than a diversion. Otra-reading.  Retrieved from (https://otralectura.com/2020/11/15/los-memes-mucho-mas-que-una-diversion/).
9.   What is resilience and how can we work with it? (September 6, 2019). SEFHOR. Retrieved from (https://sefhor.com/resiliencia-superar-adversidades/).
10.   Schlegel, L. (9 August 2019). Psychological resilience: The next frontier for counter-terrorism. European Eye on Radicalization. Retrieved from (https://eeradicalization.com/es/resiliencia-psicologica-la-proxima-frontera-para-el-antiterrorismo/).
11.   National Counter-Terrorism Strategy. (2019). Catalogue of Publications of the General State Administration. Retrieved from https://www.dsn.gob.es/sites/dsn/files/Estrategia%20contra%20Terrorismo_SP.pdf.pdf 
12.   Psychological consequences of terrorist attacks on the general population. (2015). PsychoSabadell. Retrieved from (https://psicosabadell.com/473/).
13.   Resilience and sense of humour. (9 March 2017). Psychoassistance. Recovered from (https://psicoasistencia.com/resiliencia-y-sentido-del-humor/).
14.   Ibid.
15.   Campos, N. (n.d.). On the Limits of Humor. Faga. Retrieved from (http://fagaweb.org/blog/sobre-los-limites-del-humor/).