Memes and government politics intersect.

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Trends

Social movements in the past like the Occupy Wall Street movement, PPF, indignados, have used memes for campaigning, but the most notable use of memes in political discourse was during the 2016 American presidential election. Popular memes used can be divided into a few categories: having no clear political message, putting down candidates, boosting candidates. The humor employed varies from dry and more serious to absurd and halfhearted. Many formats of memes are used. Some of the most popular ones are compilations of politicians’ speeches that are edited to make them say whatever the creator wishes them to say. Other are pictures of politicians that have captions added to them. A few of these memes with Clinton, Trump, and Sanders are shown above. The captions of political memes can be supportive or mocking of the politician at hand.

Impact

Political memes disrupt the status quo of how people can get involved in politics and are now an important piece of political discourse. Easily accessible and participatory, they allow people to voice their opinions and encourage the voting population to care more about the election and vote. The visual aid of a meme is more impactful than just text in an online post, such as a Tweet, and allows the average person to better voice their opinions. Memes act as a catalyst for connective action and organizationally enabled action because they are a major type of personal action frame. There is even potential for using the number of memes shared and created among activists to measure the impact of connective action.

Instead of discussing politics, memes occasionally cause political problems themselves. A famous recent example is the Pewdiepie versus T-Series online meme battle. Pewdiepie the most subscribed to YouTuber at the time a year ago started a joking campaign to stay the largest YouTube channel. T-Series was an Indian YouTube channel quickly rising in numbers and predicted to pass Pewdiepie and become the largest channel within a few months. When Pewdiepie published a music video poking fun at T-Series, not at Indians, the Indian government was offended and censored the video because the Indians misunderstood the context of the meme campaign, which was all in good humor. As a result, memes can be so disruptive that they have the power to upset the political climate and even cause governments to make policy changes.

Moving Forward

In the next presidential election coming in 2020, candidates should take advantage of memes in their campaigns. Candidates observant of the importance of digital networking will realize that campaign staffers can help disseminate meme formats and produce memes. Candidates can also engage with the already plentiful memes about themselves in ways that can get the attention of young people who use memes the most. As an aside, I think it would be a great idea for candidates to do promotional videos reviewing memes of themselves.

Additionally, creators with influence online will have to be more diligent in staying politically correct with their memes to prevent any political conflicts that can reach the federal level of different countries.