Political memes

Shifman (2014) too, in fact, addresses political memes in her book. She claims that nowadays, Internet memes play an important role in politics and vice versa. Politics is represented in memes in two ways: either in a very humorous way or in a pretty serious way. The aim of political memes is to express proper opinions and concerns and to participate at debates and

discussions on how to improve situations that could have a global influence and how the world should look like and what must be one in order to reach certain goals. In this context, Shifman (2014) brings up the term political participation. This term has changed over the years. While years ago political participation meant going to elections and becoming part of political organizations, the meaning of this term now includes digital participation as well, as new media offers creative and convenient ways for encouraging people to actively become part of political ongoing(s). A brilliant example for the importance of media in politics are the presidential elections in the US from 2008. It was the first presidential election campaign that was defined as a Web-2.0-campaign. Not only candidates, just as Barack Obama, used social media just as Facebook and YouTube for promoting themselves, but also supporters of the different parties were able to express and share their support on various ways, politically acting and participating and simultaneously motivating others to do so as well. Shifman (2014) lists three functions of internet-based political memes:

1) Memes as forms of persuasion and political advocacy 2) Memes as grassroots actions

3) Memes as forms of expression and public discourse

The elections of 2008 showed that memes have a high potential of persuasion. Moreover, they connect the personal with the political, which is helpful for both, the candidates and the supporters. The third function implies the humorous and convenient way of expressing one’s concerns. Thereby, many different opinions and identities come together and can be exchanged and used for forming a personal opinion and get various views on all kinds of political topics (Shifman, 2014).

Personal contact plays a major role in the persuasion of people regarding their attitudes and beliefs. Not only the sharing of contents by people who one looks up to can have a huge impact though, numbers and statistics can also influence a person’s quest. Spectator numbers inform others on how often and how much this specific content has been clicked or viewed and thus leaves a certain impression or arouses a certain interest. Moreover, the most popular and most viral memes and political participations are not necessarily the ones created and shared by the political candidates themselves. Supporters’ videos or other memes often get a higher number of clicks and are shared more often. This emphasizes, that also smaller groups of people, who function as agents, can have a great influence on the digital diffusion of political contents (Shifman, 2014). Mina (2019) lists “Brexit” in this context, the referendum in the United Kingdom, which decided on whether the UK remains part of the European Union or not. People

started creating cat memes that addressed this political issue and the hashtag

#CatsAgainstBrexit went viral. While some memes expressed their support for the UK exiting the EU, others criticized Brexit and made satirical statements about the referendum, comparing the “Britons’ desire to exit the EU to cats’ desire to leave the house. After meowing and meowing repeatedly to leave the EU, […] they would end up just wanting to go back in.” (Mina, 2019, p. 24). Cat owners might find this comparison funnier than people who have never owned a cat, because they can relate to this situation as they most probably have experienced it several times: a cat insisting on wanting to outside but after two minutes they want to come back inside the house. Political memes can be discussed and even created at school as well though. Students, who run for student council president, could be asked to create their own memes to promote oneself in regards to the elections. The same can be done for the elections of the class representative. The students could use all techniques of meme creation, from remixing and Photoshop reactions to imitation and creation through mimicry, or they can simply create an entirely new meme. Besides, existing political memes can also be discussed in the classroom.

Memes about political situations, as, for example, Brexit or some presidential elections, can be used as a sort of scrutiny, in order to check on the students’ knowledge, as some memes, in fact, require a certain background knowledge and lacking background knowledge could exacerbate the students’ understanding of a meme. Not all students might be equally familiar with and interested in political situations. Therefore, teachers can promote the discussion of political issues through memes in order to render the issue slightly more interesting and funny by using memes that, as stated by Mina (2019), compare political events to cats’ behavior etc.

Generally, memes establish a connection between silliness and seriousness. They link something familiar, which is part of many people’s everyday life, just as owning a dog or a cat or any other pet and taking pictures of them, with something less common or quotidian, as political referendums. In doing so, a serious, less considered topic maybe integrated more easily in people’s lives and can be discussed and commented on in a funny way and what may appear to be a silly media might gain some seriousness. Internet memes aid creating space for conversation amongst the digital community and advocate the rise of creativity and social change. Because, as technology theorist Clay Shirky, who is cited by Mina (2019), explained, every smallest creative act, as silly as it may be, is still a creative act that pushes people to engage critically and creatively with media, current events or happenings, cultures, society etc.

(Mina, 2019). Shifman (2014) agrees with Clay Shirky’s statement that is cited in An Xiao Mina’s book Memes to Movements (2019), pointing out that memes, especially those on the Internet, may be not considered as serious and may be seen as something trivial, but they

actually reflect cultures and social attitudes. That way, memes can be seen as postmodern cultural artworks that depict social and cultural values and norms. For example, topics such as culinary culture can be addressed. Another meme that has been used for this thesis’ study is a meme that gives information about the stereotypical Italian and American food culture could, for example, aid the introduction to subjects such as food or raise a discussion about the cuisine of different cultures. In the classroom, the teacher has several options in regards to the implementation of such type of memes. The class can first discuss the truthfulness of the depicted clichés and as a second exercise, the topic being addressed in the meme can be further developed by letting students create memes about the cuisine from other cultures. For the creation of these memes, students can take recourse to the meme genres mentioned by Shifman (2014). The task of letting students create memes means giving them the chance to be creative.

Additionally, the creation of meme requires knowledge, meaning that students would have to inform themselves on a specific topic, such as food culture, in order to be able to spread information through their meme and transmit cultural or social values. This outlines how memes function as tools for communication as a ritual, mentioned by Shifman (2014) in section 2.3.2.

Finally, the students’ own meme can be analyzed and, if necessary, critically reflected on in the classroom. Thus, by ironically treating stereotypes and serious topics just as racist stereotypes or gender roles, memes raise awareness in regard to those topics’ existence and try to promote a critical treatment of those topics.

The understanding of a digital culture is essential and even though single memes vanish as quickly as they appear, the commonly shared contests of numerous memes contribute to a better understanding of this new form of culture. In addition to that, memes are also a crucial element that serves the definition and explanation of this new digital era. Mina (2019) declares that meme culture has become a big part of digital culture and ever since memes have become one of the most popular digital media, a whole meme community was created, which can then again be subdivided into several smaller communities. A perfect example for a subgroup would be cat owners sharing their cat memes and exchanging their experiences with their furry friends.

Besides having the power to connect people by giving them a passion and a hobby that they all share and equally praise and hence reassuring every member of this community that they are not alone, that they, as absurd as it may sound, can find comfort and be given security in this community, they also function as signals of identity. Similarly to Bini and Robutti (2019), also Mina (2019) emphasizes the fact that Memes can be remixed or reshaped more than once but the link to the original meme will always be kept up and be apparent, while still imbuing it with the personality of the new, remixed meme’s maker (Mina, 2019).