In the immediate aftermath of the April terrorist attack in the Pahalgam region of Jammu and Kashmir, and anger in India towards Pakistan at harbouring terrorists, diplomatic rhetoric escalated and media outlets erupted with outrage and calls for immediate military action.
The online space also mirrored this sentiment, with the discourse largely dominated by outrage, and patriotic sloganeering. As anger poured out online in India, Pakistan’s digital communities were quick to respond – not with statements, but with memes. These messages were filled with dark, sardonic and occasionally brutal humour to mock India’s exaggerated media reactions, question its moral authority, and in turn, slowly shift the narrative by mixing a form of politics and humour.
What could once be dismissed as trivial internet banter, slowly transformed into soft power in motion. In an era where wars are fought as much with symbols as with bullets, memes have become tools of influence, contestation, and digital diplomacy.
Memes as soft power
The concept of memes as a digital soft power tool is not a new one. Memes recontextualise global events and conflicts into lived experiences and humanise the people behind them. Memes fit neatly into the definition of soft power, as coined by the late scholar Joseph Nye. Soft power, according to Nye, rests on the ability to shape the preferences and perceptions of others through culture, values, and ideology. In today’s digital age, this influence of shaping perceptions flows freely through bite-sized viral content.
What begins as satirical commentary can easily spiral into nationalistic chest-thumping.
Memes, in this particular conflict, have been effectively used as vessels of cultural identity and political positioning. And they’re especially potent in times of crisis because they bypass rational debate, and directly appeal to “emotions like fear, support, or outrage”. This emotional resonance allows them to meaningfully shape political discourse and mobilise support through shared group identities and ideologies. A meme can thus ridicule authority, challenge propaganda and/or flip the moral narrative. And they travel across borders and political lines.
This was illustrated by Pakistan’s immediate online response after the Pahalgam attacks. While Indians poured their anger online with calls to attack Pakistan, on the other side of the border, Pakistanis, most choosing not to be disrespectful to the victims of the attacks themselves, crafted memes that mocked India’s media, parodied its hypernationalism, and even trolled themselves, causing the conflict to be reframed through satire. The result, apart from the comic relief, was a shifting of the narrative, one that painted Pakistan as cool-headed and composed, while India appeared reactionary and militaristic. This inversion of moral authority, almost entirely enabled through humour, became a potent form of digital diplomacy.
Internet humour circumventing the state
This approach has also fundamentally altered who gets to wield soft power. It no longer belongs to the state apparatus. Anyone with access to a smartphone and the internet can engage in what amounts to digital diplomacy. This extends beyond memes to digital interaction in general.
Earlier this year, many TikTok “refugees” concerned at the mooted ban in the United States flooded to Chinese social media app RedNote (Xiaohongshu), a move which opened up an avenue for interaction between Americans and Chinese. This allowed for exchanges and understanding amid previous ignorance. As such, this digital proximity paved the way for cross-cultural exchanges, breaking political stereotypes and myths. While it was done under the veil of internet humour and satire, these interactions also reflect a deeper truth – the mechanisms of geopolitical power are shifting, and are now experienced and contested not just through traditional hard power or elite diplomacy, but via the seemingly trivial mechanisms of internet humour.
Meme culture and information disorders
However, while the state might not be central in some of these interactions, it does not disappear. As much as memes provide an avenue through which muscular strands of nationalism can be subverted and ridiculed, they can also be used to perform and amplify nationalism, too. In the context of India and Pakistan, this dynamic is already visible. What begins as satirical commentary can easily spiral into nationalistic chest-thumping, Islamophobic stereotyping, or Hinduphobic provocation. Memes, in this way, mirror the fragmentation and polarisation of political discourse, where both humour and hatred have the potential to proliferate.
Furthermore, while digital technologies (and by extension memes) have the ability to facilitate and transform soft power, they also enable engagements with sharp power. Memes are also powerful instruments of information disorder. The potential for memes to “undermine establish discourses”, making them vulnerable to exploitation by malicious actors (state-based or otherwise), particularly during times of conflict. Memes have been weaponised to spread anything from radical ideologies to health disinformation.
In relation to conflicts more specifically, research on Russian disinformation campaigns reveal that Russia utilises pro-Russia memes to “polarise Americans” in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This shows the potential for bad actors to mask their intentions under the guise of authenticity through Internet humour and meme culture.
There are profound implications to this expansion of the geopolitical battlefield into the digital sphere and out of the hands of the state machinery. Memes and short, viral satirical videos can now be strategic, used to assert power, and challenge and reframe narratives. It is an evolution of political communication, and in this evolution, lies both opportunity and danger.
