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愈发频繁地利用社交媒体。通过模因进行战时沟通已成为一项成功策略——不仅被@uamemesforces等独立账号采用，更是首次在全面国家间战争中被@Ukraine和@DefenceU等乌克兰政府官方账号运用。我们通过叙事视角研究这一模因战争的典型案例，发现叙事是成功的关键要素：带有"受害者"叙事标签的推文转发量达两倍之多。然而，相比英雄主义或受害者叙事，聚焦敌方恶意叙事在向乌克兰提供更多援助的国家中更能引发共鸣。我们的研究对乌克兰影响力行动及全球响应进行了细致剖析，从而为战时社会技术系统的演化提供了新见解。