Thread by @USATODAY

USA TODAY reviewed thousands of Internet memes ranging from the Jan. 6 hearings to conspiracy theories concerning 5G and Jewish space lasers.

Here’s how such memes have played a key role in almost every disinformation campaign of the digital age. usatoday.com/in-depth/news/…

Internet memes started humbly and innocently. Using characters and cartoons to express emotion like anger, sadness and joy, users found that a simple image could convey a thousand words.

By the late-2000s, instant meme generator websites offered people with zero photo editing skills an easy way to create memes.

Hashtags materialized and attached themselves to individual stories that coalesced into movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo and #FreeBritney.

Things grew darker during the runup to the 2016 presidential election when Russian agents used memes to sow discord among American voters and tip the scales in favor of Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Trump’s campaign, too, used memes to rally supporters and attack opponents in a way no other candidate had done. For some, Trump is the human embodiment of meme warfare, a president who was literally memed into the Oval Office.

The Kekistan flag — which made appearances at the Jan. 6 riot and other alt-right events — began an inside joke among online gamers. It later evolved into a symbol of the white nationalist movement through the spread of memes.

A well-crafted meme works like a virus; it tricks participants into passing it on. By tapping into human nature, memes can spread through an online community and infect every member, carrying its message through each “like” and “share.”

Equally important are the platforms on which these memes spread.

Algorithms are designed to increase user engagement, which is profitable for social media companies, but they also send people down rabbit holes of disinformation.

Everyone has a responsibility to educate themselves and become more media literate, said Aniano of the Anti Defamation League.

But equally important is for social media companies to more actively crack down on the spread of disinformation.

For more on this topic, join our Twitter Spaces conversation today at 4 p.m. ET. Taraneh Azar will be talking further with experts Nina Jankowicz and Joan Donovan about memes, disinformation and what you can do when sharing information online.

twitter.com/i/spaces/1mnxe…