Summary: <p>A new book, “<a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/10/excerpt-from-meme-wars-by-joan-donovan-emily-dreyfuss-brian-friedberg/">Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America</a>,” explains how the “Stop the Steal” movement started online and resulted in the January 6 insurrection, using examples from Gamergate, the Occupy Wall Street movement and Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency to develop its playbook.</p> <p>"Meme wars are about the struggle or battle over the definition of a situation or the definition of what it means to be on one side of an issue," book co-author <a href="https://twitter.com/BostonJoan?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Dr. Joan Donovan</a> told The Takeaway. Donovan is the research director of the <a href="https://shorensteincenter.org">Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy</a> at the Harvard Kennedy School. </p> <p>"In a lot of ways, [meme wars] are an insurgent attack on the mainstream in some way. And in that sense, the idea is to bring fringe outsider ideas into the realm of the powerful," added co-author <a href="https://twitter.com/EmilyDreyfuss?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Emily Dreyfuss</a>, Senior Managing Editor of the Shorenstein Center's Technology and Social Change Research Project project. </p> <p>Dreyfuss and Donovan co-authored <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/09/you-dont-know-which-side-is-playing-you-the-authors-of-meme-wars-have-some-advice-for-journalists/">"Meme Wars"</a> with Brian Friedberg, Senior Researcher on the Technology and Social Change Research Project.</p> <p> </p>
