Hacking Culture Not Code: How American Racism Fuels Russia's Century-Long Memetic Disinformation Campaign

Abstract

This study develops upon recent scholarship about the Russian government's digital influence campaign to cultivate Black Americans during the 2016 election by rooting their efforts within a century-long strategy to exploit racial inequality to discredit and damage American democracy. Guided by Shifman’s (2013) construct of memetics, we employed a novel methodology that combined journalistic fact-checking and critical, qualitative analysis to study 164 Facebook advertisements targeted at Black Americans. These advertisements closely resembled Soviet-era propaganda and new disinformation strategies facilitated by the affordances of Facebook. Our findings reveal the advertisements exploited Facebook's interactive design and used an insider's voice to share real news about racial inequality, celebrate Black culture, and coordinate civic action. This study's methodological approach provides a meaningful framework for understanding how actors hack and deploy cultural knowledge to spread disinformation through social media platforms.