The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen an intensification in the use of social media by governmental actors in cyber warfare. Wartime communication via memes has been a successful strategy used not only by independent accounts such as @uamemesforces, but also-for the first time in a full-scale interstate war-by official Ukrainian government accounts such as @Ukraine and @DefenceU. We study this prominent example of memetic warfare through the lens of its narratives, and find them to be a key component of success: tweets with a 'victim' narrative garner twice as many retweets. However, malevolent narratives focusing on the enemy resonate more than those about heroism or victims with countries providing more assistance to Ukraine. Our findings present a nuanced examination of Ukraine's influence operations and of the worldwide response to it, thus contributing new insights into the evolution of socio-technical systems in times of war.

翻译：2022年俄罗斯入侵乌克兰期间，政府行为体在网络战中加强了社交媒体的使用。通过模因进行的战时传播已成为一项成功策略，不仅被@uamemesforces等独立账户采用，而且——这是在一场全面国家间战争中的首次——还被@Ukraine和@DefenceU等乌克兰官方政府账户使用。我们通过其叙事视角研究这一突出的模因战案例，发现叙事是成功的关键组成部分：带有“受害者”叙事的推文获得的转发量是其他推文的两倍。然而，聚焦于敌人的恶意叙事比关于英雄主义或受害者的叙事更能引起向乌克兰提供更多援助的国家的共鸣。我们的研究结果对乌克兰的影响行动及全球对此的反应进行了细致入微的审视，从而为社会技术系统在战争时期的演变提供了新见解。