What do you meme?
The effects of memes in political discourse
It does not come as a surprise that digital cultural spaces, including Instagram, Twitter and Reddit have become subject to “meme energy”. There has been a rapid influence of memes in the past decade, relating to immense societal changes, smaller scale issues or opinions, and even the presidential election. According to Nathan Jurgenson in his short article, “Speaking in Memes”, “There is something fascinating when an event as stodgily ceremonial as the presidential campaign is run through the lulz-filter of social media” (Jurgenson). Memes’ influence in presidential elections have been apparent in the last couple of elections, dating back to the early 2010’s. Jurgenson explains how “we” as the public have developed a kind of meme literacy, a habit of intuiting in real time the potential virality of a speech act. In fact, the 2012 Presidential Election between President Obama and John McCain was commonly referred to as “The Meme Election 2012”. Popular memes burrow into mainstream-media narratives as a measure of what has captured people’s attention and can have a dramatic effect on the public’s opinion.
Similarly to a presidential debate, there is often a debate regarding the definition of a meme. According to Jurgenson, “Technically, any shared image is a meme regardless of how viral it has become” (Jurgenson). However, a meme is usually the successful one. Consider Barack Obama’s meme and the impending success, giving him the name as “the first meme president”. Campaigns can’t plan or foresee the effects of memes, but if created successfully and in a positive light, these memes can positively impact a presidential candidate. Jurgenson writes, “Memes inject some authenticity into a political process seen as problematically overperformed” (Jurgenson). This idea of allowing for satirical messages, rejects the idea of politics as being ordinary and redundant. Memes successfully cast pressing issues as a sarcastic rebuttal.
Memes regarding politics, especially during the time of the presidential election are ubiquitous. Their presence on digital cultural spaces is truly widespread, leading to false information and incorrect assumptions. It is up to the user to determine what is reliable information and to recognize the difference between memes and real news. Although these images and messages sometimes carry this connotation of not being authentic, they can be used in an appropriate manner and promote important societal issues.
