Cita en López, M., et al (2022) When Memes Become a Serious Business: Memetics as a Political Communication Strategy in the United States and Ecuador. In: Rocha Á., et al. (eds) Communication and Smart Technologies. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 259. Springer, Singapore. (original) (raw)
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Journalism and Media, 2022
The media convergence model presents an environment in which everyone produces information without intermediates or filters. A subsequent insight shows that users (prosumers) —gathered in networked communities—also shape messages’ flow. Social media play a substantial role. This information is loaded with public values and ideologies that shape a normative world: social media has become a fundamental platform where users interact and promote public values. Memetics facilitates this phenomenon. Memes have three main characteristics: (1) Diffuse at the micro-level but shape the macrostructure of society; (2) Are based on popular culture; (3) Travel through competition and selection. In this context, this paper examines how citizens from Ecuador and the United States reappropriate memes during a public discussion? The investigation is based on multimodal analysis and compares the most popular memes among the United States and Ecuador produced during the candidate debate (Trump vs. Biden [2020] and Lasso vs. Arauz [2021]). The findings suggest that, during a public discussion, it is common to use humor based on popular culture to question authority. Furthermore, a message becomes a meme when it evidences the gap between reality and expectations (normativity). Normativity depends on the context: Americans complain about the expectations of a debate; Ecuadorians, about discourtesy and violence.
Meme Viability: Elements of Effective Political Internet Memes
2019
The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins (1976) in his book, The Selfish Gene. According to him, memes are cultural accretion of knowledge and ideas that can be passed on to others. Gil (2016) described memes as a virally-transmitted cultural symbol or social idea. According to him, meme behaves like flu or a virus that travels from person to person quickly. Today, it travels much faster than simple speech. Memes travel instantly through the internet such as email forwards, chats and web page links. Nowadays, political memes have become increasingly prevalent, and become an effective tool for political commentaries (Pleviriti, 2014). Also, memes are highly shareable through social media and are becoming tomorrow’s campaign slogans and firewood for negative ads (Nasri, 2012). Using qualitative methods of research by conducting a thematic analysis of interview excerpts, this study has found that political memes are considered viable when these elements are present: satire, persuasi...
Social Science Research Network, 2017
Humor has been used as a tool against oppression since ages. With the advent of digital technologies, internet memes have gained prominence. Memes are mediums that communicate information through humor and satire. Today, internet memes have become a part of the political campaigning. This research paper thus analysis how internet memes have been used to communicate political satire. The study deals with the impact of internet memes on digital natives and digital migrants in India. Parameters like political engagement, influence on political views and voting behaviour are used to analyse the impact of memes. Using questionnaire as a tool for data collection, the research concludes that internet memes are used as a tool of political discourse but does not have a major impact on audience although it improves political engagement of the digital natives.Elaboration likelihood model and Agenda setting theory is used as a theoretical base for the study.
Journalism Embeds Social Media Language: The Use of Internet Memes in Political News, 2019
Social media’s omnipresence has changed how people relate to each other, to governments and media. Not by surprise, internet users have developed a new way of communicating that qualifies it as its own language. As part of this language, there are internet memes – born and raised on the web, a product of digitalization. Memes became one of the most shared content online, and not only among playful environments but also in serious ones, such as can be seen in the political scene. With its critical sense and satirical aspect, internet memes are used to question and provoke authorities, promoting citizens’ engagement and feeling of community. Journalism, in its role as society representative and source for news, started using memes in their communication with the audience, generally in their social media profiles. Most recently, memes can be seen featuring journalistic articles for covering political news, such as in Folha de S. Paulo, one of the most prominent Brazilian newspapers, that not online publishes such content online, but also on the printed press. Parallel to this, there are already digital media platforms blending journalism with memes in their core format, as in MemeNews, a Brazilian newsletter and a news outlet that covers the country’s political agenda using memes as comments to their reports. By analyzing the content of the communication vehicles mentioned above, this thesis investigates how 21st-century journalism is embedding memes, a native social media language, in the making of political news.
Journal of Content, Community and Communication Vol. 6 Year 3, June - 2017 [ISSN: 2395-7514 (Print)], 2017
Humor has been used as a tool against oppression since ages. With the advent of digital technologies, internet memes have gained prominence. Memes are mediums that communicate information through humor and satire. Today, internet memes have become a part of the political campaigning. This research paper thus analysis how internet memes have been used to communicate political satire. The study deals with the impact of internet memes on digital natives and digital migrants in India. Parameters like political engagement, influence on political views and voting behaviour are used to analyse the impact of memes. Using questionnaire as a tool for data collection, the research concludes that internet memes are used as a tool of political discourse but does not have a major impact on audience although it improves political engagement of the digital natives.Elaboration likelihood model and Agenda setting theory is used as a theoretical base for the study.
First Monday, 2019
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2018
The purpose of this article is to explore the utilization of political memes during Bolsonaro’s 2018 election campaign. I explore the role and significance of political memes and analyse key memes in circulation during the campaign. I argue that political memes had strategical importance during the campaign and were one of the most successful means in which the candidate's supporters were able to convey the image that they wanted to communicate. The study adds to the growing literature of memetic diffusion in popular and political culture.
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2018
It comes as no surprise to today’s generation that memes play an extremely important part in everyday life. Ranging from mere entertainment purposes in the form of funny images with relating text, to serious forms of message conveyance, these phenomena are something extraordinary. Therefore, the aim of this paper will be none other than to dissect and examine just what makes memes what they are – a source of both entertainment and knowledge. The methods used to achieve this will be in-depth analysis of meme archetypes, syntactic and grammatical analysis, and questions answered by third parties. This leads to the thesis statement: Memes have a major impact on the political field, especially in the current generation.
The Reception of Memes as Political Information in the Media
E3S Web of Conferences, 2018
Lately memes have been using as viral marketing for products in advertising or satire in political campaigns in Indonesia. In 2013 Richard Dawkins, the author of The Selfish Gene (1976), characterized that memes on the internet as a human creativity. The pictures in the meme are tailored to the user’s feelings and become the feeling of society. Meme cannot be said to be the ideal journalistic formula because most of them do not use the 5W + 1H journalism rule. Ironically though meme is not information that contains accuracy, relevance, and completeness of journalism, but at the same time it is in great demand even highly trusted, as they are easily accepted as information. While information that does not contain accuracy, often called hoax news. In Indonesia meme experiencing a surge in volume during the last 2014 presidential election; there are so many memes about Jokowi and Prabowo circulating on the Internet at the time, and later also many outstanding memes that contain the ima...
2019
The word 'meme' was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book ``The Selfish Gene,' as an attempt to explain the way cultural information spreads. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena within a mimic theme. Memes started on the Internet in 1996 with the first-ever viral sensation of a baby dancing on 'cha-cha-cha' (3D dancing baby). With its growing popularity, it has become a means of influencing the mindset of people who view, follow and share these memes. Memes have a potential to focus on real-world issues which when consumed by a user influences them to share it further thus leading to its large consumption. Memes can be denoted as; 'Amplification by Simplification' which basically means they have a potential to condense a complex political fact into a powerful, brief and an effective way which engages a large audience. Hence, it is becoming a powerful tool for communication. In the following paper, we attempt to understand how Internet memes are used to communicate political issues in India. For this, the method of content analysis will be used to observe the practice of memes and its role will be scrutinised to reflect whether it is creating a new paradigm shift in the political discourse. The amount of viewership and type of comments posted will also be a way to gauge the response of the audience. Also, by understanding the relationship between political memes and the Indian audience, we will be able to study whether these memes help in changing the perception of the audience if at all. Moreover, if they do, what are the factors which help the meme becomes an easy tool to affect the audience's political perceptions.