Tim Weninger, the Frank M. Freimann Associate Professor of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, studies how coordinated social media campaigns have been used to incite violence, sow discord and threaten the integrity of democratic elections in Indonesia; to spread Chinese propaganda; and in the lead up to the Russia-Ukraine war and the recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Research shows that in the lead-up to hostilities, there is an increase in dehumanizing political imagery that is remixed — cropped, altered or turned into individualized content — and reshared by the general population to evoke an emotional response.
“That is the bigger issue here,” Weninger said. “To gain support for either side you have to dehumanize the other. That’s what we’re seeing now — and we saw it with Russia and Ukraine. People are angry, they’re passionate, and we’re seeing denigration and dehumanization on both sides.”
“When it comes to peace, the first thing you have to do is share a common language. How do you translate that into the digital ecosystem is something that needs to be understood,” Weninger said. “I’m afraid we don’t understand how to do that quite yet.”