ABSTRACT
Foreign disinformation activities aimed at the United States involve using social media to mimic domestic political discourse that exacerbates societal division and polarisation. As part of the U.S. response, officials have urged citizens to increase their “personal vigilance” and avoid engaging with social media content of dubious provenance. However, asking citizens to recognise and avoid disinformation does not adequately address the complex allure of identity affirming messages. Mimetic and rhetorical theory offer resources for critiquing the personal vigilance approach, as well as demonstrating how social media facilitates communicative processes of imitation and adaptation. In this view, the rhetorical process of identification can transmogrify disinformation’s deceptive intent and deleterious consequences. Mimetic and rhetorical theory subsequently challenge the U.S. counter-disinformation consensus. Combined, they indicate that an effective personal vigilance approach requires extraordinary citizen self-awareness regarding vulnerabilities that arise from unwarranted confidence in their ability to resist the pleasures of imitation.
