This sentence -- not to mention the rare pepe collection at the end -- made me pause a bit and wonder if the paper isn't a particularly elaborate chan troll. Clearly "rare pepe" is a chan in-joke.
But I still can't believe that there is a research paper out there where there is a section which describes the researcher's "collection" of rare pepe memes with visual aide samples.
But yeah, I agree it's ridiculous how the Clinton campaign took the bait and now apparently a cartoon frog is a "hate symbol".