Memes as vehicles for New Right ideology (original) (raw)
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Virality and Morphogensis of Right Wing Internet Populism, 2018
By means of two case studies, this paper examines how multimodals like the Internet meme can serve as a vehicle for ideological content, placing specific emphasis on its constitutive attribute: the re- and decontextualization. The first case study analyzes the appropriation of the Pepe the Frog meme by the Alt-Right in the US to provide linguistic categories to classify multimodal attributes of Internet memes as: • multimodals: via form, content and macro-proposition • semantic: as extension or constriction of meaning, or ultimately a conceptual shift (including a fundamental alteration of meaning) In the second case study, the previously developed categories are applied and evaluated to memes created by the New Right in Germany.
Social Media + Society
This study focuses on the role of Internet memes in the communication of two far-right groups in Finland. The material consists of 426 memes posted by Finland First and the Soldiers of Odin between the years 2015 and 2017 on Facebook. Multimodal discourse analysis was applied to understand the contents, forms, and rhetorical functions communicated via the Internet memes. The analysis shows that the contents of the memes revolve around six themes: history, humor, mythology, symbols, news and mottos. By using Internet memes, the groups aim to construe a heroic imagined past, to lend legitimacy to the nationalist cause, to arouse moral anger and hate toward refugees, and to encourage the movements’ followers to fight. We argue that, for the extreme groups, Internet memes are tools to crystallize their arguments in an easily shareable and concise form, which makes the memes useful tools in persuasion and mobilization, as well as attracting new audiences.
Do You Want Meme War?" Understanding the Visual Memes of the German Far Right
Edition Politik, 2018
Far-right groups use internet memes to mobilize supporters, to employ troll factory tactics and to disseminate hate messages to a wider public. Drawing on methodological tools from visual culture studies, we analyze memes by the German online network Reconquista Germanica (RG), asking: What visual language, narratives and strategies do far-right memes employ to appeal a broad spectrum of potential supporters? We observe that RG's memes use ironic ambiguity, »hipsterish« aesthetics or references to popular culture to contemporize their ideological roots and to appeal multiple audiences and not-yet politicized users, while circumventing censorship. Although, at first sight, memes appear to be harmless instances of everyday visual culture, they still manage to convey neo-Nazi symbolism and key ideological narratives of hate and bigotry. Therefore, we argue for taking the calculated ambivalence of visual memes seriously instead of reducing them to a merely illustrative role.
"Do You Want Meme War?" Understanding the Visual Memes of the German Far Right (2019)
2019
Far-right groups use internet memes to mobilize supporters, to employ troll tactics and to disseminate hate messages to a wider public. Drawing on methodological tools from visual culture studies, we analyze memes by the German online network Reconquista Germanica, asking: What visual language, narratives and strategies do far-right memes employ to appeal a broad spectrum of potential supporters? We observe that RG´s memes use ironic ambiguity, ‘hipsterish’ aesthetics or references to popular culture to contemporize their ideological roots and to appeal multiple audiences and not-yet politicized users, while circumventing censorship. Although, at first sight, memes appear to be harmless instances of everyday visual culture, they still manage to convey neo-Nazi symbolism and key ideological narratives of hate and bigotry. Therefore, we argue for taking the calculated ambivalence of visual memes seriously instead of reducing them to a merely illustrative role.
The rapid emergence of the participatory internet culture produced new, rarely seen before ways of commenting on political and social issues. While the role of the internet memes is, of course, not strictly limited to that of social commentary, and, in fact, is rarely thought to be so, modern political internet memes at times enter even the mainstream political discussion. User-generated internet memes also often appear in mainstream media. The United States presidential elections were even branded ‘the meme election’ by some political commentators, underlying the importance of the internet memes as a means of political commentary during these elections. At the same time the research on political internet memes remains limited. The internet memes are a product of a modern internet culture. Because of that it is important to discuss the concept of internet culture, its position as a part of culture in general, its key characteristics and its evolution from the supposedly less participatory culture of the early days of the World Wide Web to a more participatory period of Web 2.0. This latter era is characterized by the presence of certain technologies which are also discussed in chapter 1. These technologies allowed more participation and content creation by users, thus effectively being crucial to both creation and dissemination of internet memes. At the same time the visual structure of internet memes is not new. ‘Image macros’ - the most popular type of internet memes represents an image which usually repeats from meme to meme with superimposed text. As such, in order to grasp the meaning of political internet memes, it might be useful to turn to semiotics. I discuss Roland Barthes’ collection of essays Image-Music-Text due to it being particular useful to discussion of images with text. Later I have also analyzed the case study of Rushka Kvadratnyi Vatnik using semiotics to test my hypothesis of political internet memes serving as examples of political caricature and means of reaction to propaganda. Discussion of political internet memes is impossible without the general introduction to the concept of internet memes. In chapter 2 I discuss briefly the history of the concept, the reasons why people choose to produce internet memes, the role of affinity spaces in meme production, and what makes internet meme successful with a particular attention to the role of humor in political internet memes. In that chapter I also discuss the previous research on political internet memes which remains very limited. I also make a particular distinction between internet memes originally created as a form of social or political commentary and internet memes which were originally created for other purposes but may be used as a form of social or political commentary. As a case study I have chosen the case of the internet meme Rushka Kvadratnyi Vatnik which became very popular in the Russian-speaking segment of the internet as form of criticism of Russian jingoist patriotism. I also discuss how certain manifestations of this internet meme are used as a form of a political caricature and as a means of reaction to the official Russian propaganda using semiotic analysis. The source materials I have used throughout the paper are mainly academic research papers on the subject of the Internet, internet culture, and internet memes. I have also used Roland Barthes’ and Umberto Eco’s writings in the sphere of semiotics. Writings on the interrelation of humor, propaganda and politics were also important. Finally, I have used news from reliable mass media to illustrate my points – such sources were mostly used as a means of illustrating the coverage of certain events in the mainstream media.
Television & New Media
This article is based on a case study of the online media practices of the militant neo-Nazi organization the Nordic Resistance Movement, currently the biggest and most active extreme-right actor in Scandinavia. I trace a recent turn to humor, irony, and ambiguity in their online communication and the increasing adaptation of stylistic strategies and visual aesthetics of the Alt-Right inspired by online communities such as 4chan, 8chan, Reddit, and Imgur. Drawing on a visual content analysis of memes ( N = 634) created and circulated by the organization, the analysis explores the place of humor, irony, and ambiguity across these cultural expressions of neo-Nazism and how ideas, symbols, and layers of meaning travel back and forth between neo-Nazi and Alt-right groups within Sweden today.
Weaponizing Memes: The journalistic mediation of visual politicization
Digital Journalism, 2021
This article develops the concept of 'mimetic weaponization' for theory-building. Memes recurrently serve as identificatory markers of affiliation across social media platforms, with ensuing controversies potentially proving newsworthy. Our elaboration of weaponization refers to the purposeful deployment of memetic imagery to disrupt, undermine, attack, resist or reappropriate discursive positions pertaining to public affairs issues in the news. For alt-right memetic conflicts, impetuses range from 'sharing a joke' to promoting 'alternative facts,' rebuking 'political correctness' or 'wokeness,' defending preferred framings of 'free speech,' or signalling cynicism, distrust or dissent with 'mainstream' media, amongst other drivers. Of particular import, we argue, is the politics of othering at stake, including in the wider journalistic mediation of a meme's public significance. Rendering problematic this contested process, this article focuses on Pepe the Frog as an exemplar, showing how and why variations of this mimetic cartoon have been selectively mobilized to help normalize-ostensibly through humour, parody or satire-rules of inclusion and exclusion consistent with hate-led agendas. Digital journalism, we conclude, must improve its capacity to identify and critique mimetic weaponization so as to avoid complicity in perpetuating visceral forms of prejudice and discrimination so often presented as 'just a bit of fun.'
TEXTUALITY OF INTERNET MEMES IN ENGLISH POLITICAL DISCOURSE
Науковий вісник Міжнародного гуманітарного університету. Сер.: Філологія. 2021 № 48 том 1, 2021
The article is devoted to textual peculiarities of Internet memes in English political discourse. The aim of this work is to figure out the classification of Internet memes political discourse based on their textuality. To achieve the aim there were completed the following tasks: observed the latest works devoted to Internet memes, figured out the types of memes implementation in political discourse, detected the specificity of political memes realization, and analyzed the frequency of political Internet memes usage based on their type. The author defines three key types of political Internet memes based on the levels of their textuality such as: textual (original, symbiotic, integral, fused, and phrasal), non-textual (original, fused, and pictorial), and animated (GIFs and fragmental). The practical material was purposefully selected from trendy social network such as Instagram; namely, the whole amount of material was chosen from official news agencies represented online such as BBC News, CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, The Times, Politico, and Washington Post. The author works out Internet memes based on political posts concerning the United States of America as well as the United Kingdom. The intention of memes' creation depends on the verbalization circumstances-in 2021 these factors are determined by the worldwide pandemic Covid-19, riots in the United States of America, British Royal family, lockdowns, and elections between the representative of the Republican Party the 45 th President of the United States of America-Donald Trump and the representative of the Democratic Party just-elected 46 th President of the United States of America-Joe Biden. Covid-19 is represented in a range of protective medical means such as: masks, medical gloves, and distancing, riots are verbalized through black-and-white colours. So, this selection of Internet memes targets at politicians' abilities and disabilities to override the chaos of recent days. The author concluded that textual memes have the biggest quantity of posts, non-textual memes occupy the second position, and animated memes occupy only the third position.