Memes have permeated both popular and political culture. As attention spans shrink, political discourse is being distilled into short videos and images. Memes alone as a form of political discourse are detrimental to the health of our democracy.
“Memes are the people’s editorial cartoon,” Henry Jenkins, a professor of communication at the University of Southern California, told PBS in 2020.
NBC News credits “The Dean Scream,” an enthusiastic whoop that former Vermont Governor Howard Dean let out during a speech on his 2004 presidential campaign, as the first political meme. If not the first political meme, George Bush’s “Internets” gaffe in 2000 also became a meme, Dean’s viral yell was certainly an early hallmark of the effects of social media memes on politics, as it effectively ended Dean’s bid for the White House.
According to a World Day article, people are more likely to engage with political memes than with news articles because political memes are more enjoyable and digestible. The hardwiring of social media algorithms greatly contributes to the spread of politically charged memes. The documentary “The Social Dilemma” covers how engagement algorithms and content recommendation algorithms affect what consumers are exposed to online. Engagement algorithms are made specifically to show content that is most likely to get a reaction, and therefore drive engagement to the platform. The more that a user engages with politically charged content, the more likely it is to reappear in their recommendations, creating an echo chamber of the user’s beliefs and opinions.
The result of more engagement with this kind of political commentary, and the algorithms’ process is an electorate that is less engaged with the nuance of political issues. In a large-scale multilingual twitter analysis on the role of sentiment in political communication by Dimosthenis Antypas, Alun Preece, and Jose Camacho-Collados of Science Direct, results showed that negatively charged tweets are retweeted more frequently, especially in recent times, with notable differences between political parties and general population.
World leaders and politicians have used memes to shape public perception and target a specific audience. Kamala Harris’s campaign was famously synonymous with Charli XCX’s “brat” album after edits and memes of Harris dancing her songs went viral. In a show of support and encouragement for the comparison, Harris’s campaign account on X copied the “brat” album’s bright green design and typeface. This can be seen as a larger effort made by the Democratic party to appeal to a younger demographic, being that the 18 to 29 year old voter turnout is historically low, and participating in internet trends is an easy way to connect with a younger audience. However, campaigning with memes can be counterintuitive because it may make important issues seem less serious and turn off voters who want real discussions instead of viral trends. Leading up to the 2024 election, several undecided voters reportedly hesitated voting for Harris because they felt like they “didn’t know her” or had not heard enough about the policies she was running on.
It is critical that people do their own political research and are wary of political memes as viable informational resources. While memes can be an entertaining way to process current events, they should not distract from the complexity of political discussion.
Editor-in-Chief: Jordan Premmer, Chief Copy Editor: Sophia McCrackin, Managing Editor: Jordan DelFiugo, Opinion Editor: Dakota Duran, Scene Editor: Elina Graham
