‘Unleash the hounds!’: NAFO’s memetic war narrative on the Russo-Ukrainian conflict

Abstract

Since the Web 2.0 revolution, war and war communication are no longer under the control of states. Rather, the new media ecology entails the possibility that internet users get involved in the info politics of any armed conflict around the world. This article explores the North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO) as an expression of this emerging mode of participatory warfare that traverses the virtual battlefield of information warfare and the real-life battlefield of military warfare. It argues that NAFO acts as a cross-border war actor that exerts hypermemetic agency through strategic storytelling. To this end, it adapts the strategic narrative approach to the relational agency of hypermemetics. The example of NAFO shows how joint hypermemetic practice can have strategic effects in winning the information war against Russia for Ukraine.