Sean McMinn

Opinion | How Hong Kong protest memes can spread hatred, racism and patent falsehoods

Memes work by oversimplification and appeal to raw emotion, they are provocative, incapable of complexities and, in Hong Kong’s case, serve to fan the fires that divide. Meme sharers should think twice

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Memes containing slurs such as “Chinazi” are divisive and need to stop. The danger is that memes can provoke such fears and divisions that people start to act based on riled-up emotion rather than fact. Photo: AP

Sean McMinn

Published: 10:30am, 18 Oct 2019Updated: 10:37am, 18 Oct 2019

It is deeply troubling how quickly hatred, racism and prejudice can spread online. Many memes circulating on Facebook, LIHKG or Reddit, for example, dangerously promote racist or biased behaviour in Hong Kong, adding misinformation to a very complex political and social issue.

Authors and sharers of these memes appear not to care about the complexity of Hong Kong’s situation. They only want to vilify the police, protesters, the government or China (take your pick). Of course, it is easy to vilify when you simplify groups of people or actions through memes.

Memes, most often designed to appeal to people’s emotions, risk spreading misinformed hatred and racism. It is difficult for an informed argument to be expressed well through simple, visual memes. In fact, simplifying an opinion into memes embedded with emotive images and words does not say much at all.

Who likes to see images of scared children surrounded by agitated, angry police? Most people do not. But stop a moment. How do we know we are not simply reacting emotionally to an image?

It is a safe bet that memes of children being attacked by police will evoke strong emotions because this is far removed from most people’s expectations of police officers. The problem with such memes is that they oversimplify.

Look at recent memes accusing the MTR Corporation of public misinformation over its vandalised stations, which people were quick to share to express their outrage, without thinking about how such memes are designed. As far as I can see, many of the videos prove nothing.