A Meme's Role in Information Disorder Campaigns: Designing an Experiment that Draws Correlations Between Age, Education Level and Gender, and Participant Willingness to Interact with False Information

The use of social media has been growing every year since its inception. With that, individuals, organizations, businesses, and nations have created clever ways to spread messages to large audiences; however, in the last decade, those same entities have begun utilizing social media to spread false narratives that fit their agenda. Using Tweets and memes, non-state and state actors have successfully influenced elections, incited riots, and increased membership. Current academic research does not describe who is most susceptible to this new type of information disorder. For that reason, the experiment detailed in this thesis was designed to aid information environment researchers in identifying groups that are most susceptible to information disorder; when conducted, it will reveal correlations between the acceptance and propagation of false information spread through Tweets and memes and the age group, gender, and education level of those most likely to interact with the false information. Once complete, defensive and offensive measures can be put in place by individuals, organizations, businesses, and nations to defend or attack the most at-risk groups.