Internet memes: As a new form of
political participation

1. Introduction

The term “meme” has been emerged in various spheres in a few studies, and it has been discussed with some applied research and cultural research (Hofstadter, 1985; Dawkins, 1976; Blackmore, 1999; Chesterman, 1997). As the basic unit of culture, meme plays an extremely important role in the reproduction of culture. Given this orientation, some researchers started to address and explore the relationship between meme and politics, argue that meme has a positive effect on the development of political. (Shifman, 2013, Milner, 2013). In the 21^st century, the rise of digital media has changed the information dissemination ecological, as well as the way of thinking of people. With the advance of social media and digital technology, meme theory also need to adapt the new environment and focus on the present convergence for new field. Accordingly, the new branch of meme study has come out, which is internet meme. In this Internet age, a meme’s ability to reproduce and spread is gradually expanding, thus highlighted increasingly as the dominant force in transmission media, and playing an increasingly important role in the public domain in terms of the news public opinion and political communication. What’s more, websites like Know Your Meme, 4chan, Reddit and Tumblr are meme manufactures which have helped people produce thousands of memes. The internet meme has raised the pace of social political awareness and community building in cyberspace.

Shifman (2013) defines that internet meme has three
functions in terms of political participation: as forms of persuasion or
political advocacy, as grassroots action and as modes of expression and public
discussion. This paper builds on existing knowledge in the fields of internet
meme, based on Shifman’s work and combines with other’s studies to demonstrate
that internet meme is a new form of political participation. At the same time,
this paper will illustrate it from three aspects: as a persuasion way in
election, as a resistance of people (collection action) and as a public
discourse of political issues.

Body

What is a meme?

The definition of meme
in The Oxford English Dictionary is: an element of culture that may be
considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, especially imitation. The term
“meme” was created by Dawkins in his book “The selfish Gene” in 1976, when he tried
to explain the culture evolution. He defined it as “small units of culture that
spread from person to person by copying or imitation” (Dawkins, 1989). In
addition, he analogized meme with biological gene, considered that meme also
evolved through coping(imitating), variating and selecting, like gene transmits
its genetic information to the next generation. A clear difference between
these two is that genes are the genetic factors of biology, while meme is the
derivative of culture. Besides, gene propagates through heredity, a physical
process to replicate but meme through imitating, which is a mental process. In
his work, he indicated that meme has three characters: 1) Heredity, the process
of meme’s diffusion is heredity. For example, when one religion or belief is
propagating to others, the religion as a meme is acquired by people and copied
to their mind and continuing passed along to believers. 2) Variation, the
contents of meme by imitated are not the same, they could be changed. For
instance, when people telling a story to others they will add or delete some
details, which results in variation. 3) Selection, the ability of diffusion is
varying from different memes, some are easy to spread while some are not, they
are competing when being propagating, which is like the natural selection in
biologic theory (Dawkins, 1989).

Despite some researchers
criticized that Dawkins has limited the culture in the sphere of biologic and
simplified human behavior later, it cannot be ignored that his efforts on the
research of meme, which accentuates the realization of cultural gene. Next,
Douglas Hofstadter put forwarded a new interdisciplinary subject “Memetics” in
1985. This subject is based on the perspective of Darwinian evolution to study
the content of the mind, aiming to explore the social evolution model of
cultural information transmission (Hofstadter, 1985). Since then, the meme
concept has been discussed and accepted by various of subject: phycology,
physiology, anthropology, linguistics and so on. For instance, Daniel
Dennett, an American philosophy who agreed with the concept of meme, and
applied it into his book “Consciousness Explained” and “Darwin’s Dangerous
Idea” to interpret the mechanism of spiritual evolution (Vasiliki, 2014). Furthermore,
Finland linguists and translation theorists Andrew Chesterman, combined meme
with the British philosopher Karl Popper’s idea about the schema of knowledge
evolution, established the translation theory framework of the system by a
descriptive study on the translation standard and strategies (Chesterman, 1997).
In 1999, Susan Blackmore (1999) considered meme as an independent replication
factor in her book “The Meme Machine”, suggested that whatever the form of
memetic information is, it could be regarded as meme when it can be copied by
imitate.

 Based on the previous studies, this paper
adopts Shifman’s (2013) idea and apply it to the analyze. She describes the
meme constituted with two principles: 1) looking at diffused units as
incorporating several memetic dimensions namely, several aspects that people
may imitate; 2) understanding memes not as single entities that propagate well,
but as groups of content units with common characteristics.

2.2 What is an internet meme?

Meme has been widely
accepted and applied to several subjects which has mentioned before, but it
only gets attentions of mass media researchers until 21 centuries (Davison,
2012). According to Shifman (2013), she defines an Internet meme as: 1) a group
of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or
stance; 2) that were created with awareness of each other; and 3) were
circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users. Generally,
in the digital media era, the advancement of Internet and social networks
enable people to acquire more information and accelerate the information
exchange. With the advent of web2.0 and platformlization, meme is actively
involved in the process of information dissemination, in terms of longevity,
fecundity, and copy fidelity have been enhanced through internet, which regard
as the three basic properties that help meme to spread successfully. For
longevity, it is attributed to numerous archives, which can store data
indefinitely not rely on memory. For copy fidelity, it mainly because the
digitization allows lossless information transfer compared to traditional
media. For fecundity, due to the infrastructure, it can achieve the swift
diffusion of any given message to numerous nodes. These facilitates the
creation and exchange of user-generate-consent, which emerges participation
(Shifman, 2013). Apart from this, easier access to the Internet enables people
to receive mounts of information every day, in comparison to the limited
information acquiring approaches in the past. Also, the speed of transmission
is no longer limited by the movement of individuals. Hence, it is necessary to pay
more attention on internet meme, exploring its role on constructing shared values
in contemporary digital cultures.

As Shifman (2013) claimed, the internet
meme has three properties in the web2.0: 1) A gradual propagation from
individuals to society. In other words, memes could shape the mindsets, forms
of behavior, and actions of social groups. People can easier sharing and
communicating in digital era, which facilitates the process of spreading memes
from person to society; 2) Reproduction via copying and imitation. In the
digital world, people can spread content by forwarding, linking, or copying, they
can use some software like Photoshop and application like Snapseed to imitate
and remixing instead of reproducing as well; and 3) Diffusion through
competition and selection. The internet magnifies the competition and selection
of meme. On the one hand, it allows researchers collect data and track the
process of meme evolution. On the other hand, it offers users an opportunity to
understanding and knowing the preference of choice relating to meme diffusion (Davison,
2012).

It is always mentions viral when talks
about internet memes, their differences and similarities are the major parts of
meme research. This paper does not go in further with details about this, but
indicates the mainly difference between viral and internet meme is that viral
is consisted of single units while internet meme is a collection of text.

In order to better analyzing, this paper
focus on the images form of internet memes, takes some images as example to
illustrates the idea. Based on the studies of Knobel, Lankshear (2007) and
Kuipers (2005), internet memes can be divided into two categories: recycled
images and macros images. Recycled images have a template which build by
numerous imitations and “stable” images which include original
content and are passed along with transformation or not, as presented in Figure
1 and Figure 2. Macros images usually constitute with a single image overlaid
with a white text written in capitals and express the humorous note, as
presented in Figure1.3 and Figure1.4.

2.3 Internet memes as a new form of political participation

In recent years, internet meme has
been constantly evolving into the political participation. This appeared to be
attributed to the digital media. First it offers the opportunities for people
to become the subject of expression, and then reducing the cost of political
participation, especially for the young generation who are less likely to
engaged in political activities (Anduiza, 2012). Second, public and political
events are more likely to be exaggerated than in the past with rapid spread in
the internet. Last, the so-called image politics according to Wilson (2000),
image symbols have more vitality and tension than words. Since the visual
impact has more strong effects on emotion and could save the time for reading
too much words, it is extremely easy to be used to participate in discussing
political issues, especially in sensitive areas. For this reason, the
exaggerated effects and interesting composition of meme makes its transmission
have powerful appeal, which makes the combination of both of them play the role
of two-way gain. Therefore, internet meme has built the bridge between citizens
and political, as a new way to deconstruct by the form of image with humor to
gains serious political, build a unique participate system (Hristova, 2014). This paper
classified this political participation into three sub-items in terms of
facilitates political participation according to Shifman’s work: 1) As a persuasion
way in election; 2) As a resistance of people (collection action); and 3) As a
public discourse. Following will combining cases to analyze these three
functions (Shifman, 2013).

2.2.1 As a persuasive way in election

Social media allows users to publish
their opinions or ideas so that their friends, family, and strangers can read
these posts and comments back. And it is has been demonstrated that people are
more likely to believe in their friends and family, which makes the online
ideas become more convincible (Shifman, 2013). As a consequence, internet meme
through social media could influence people for their psychological cognition,
behavior patterns and guide their recognition (Tay,
2015). As politics move to the Internet where more and
more voters get their news and information with the trend of digital
technology. The politicians and their companies start to consider taking
advantage of internet meme to create great political profile with their
personalities and campaign slogans. In this way, enabled mobilizing voters
outside of official political discourses. A few studies consider politicians
who appear “cool” in the eyes of ordinary citizens to be rare successes (Tay,
2015)

The 2008 American Presidential election
is known for being the first modern Internet campaign, Shifman (2013) chooses
the “Obama Girl” video as an example of memes as political persuasion, explains
that the video become widely popular due to it just focus on a praise of Obama
not talks about specific political issues. Here, this paper uses The Hope Meme
in 2008 American election as an example to analyze. This meme is the depiction
of Barack Obama by artist Shepard Fairey (Figure 5), it has thousands of
replications and then a vast number of users participated in creating their own
replications (Figure 6 and Figure 7). This meme portrayed Obama as the ideal
candidate and introducing a vision for the country, which triggered people’s
approval (Foster, 2014). Subsequently, Obama’s supporters enjoying creating new
versions of the Hope Meme itself to show their stance (Seiffert, 2017). With
the propagation of the hope meme, a climbing mount of people acknowledge the
appearance of Obama even they do not participate in, they can see the images in
social media through their friends or families. Moreover, Obama’s campaign
posted a LOLcat a few days before the 2012 election (Figure 8) to call on
people to vote. This meme combing with the internet culture, the lol culture
and cute cat, make people perceived as Obama is proximity to the ordinary
people. The fact is, Obama is a popular figure referred to in Internet memes,
involved discussions and supportive commentaries (Tay, 2015).

To give another example is the 2012
American election, between Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton. On April 4, a meme
containing President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton posted
on a Tumblr blog. It imagines an exchange between them, and Obama asking
“whatchu doing?”, she responds, “Running the world” (Figure 9). In this image,
Obama is lying down while reading, and seems relaxed, Clinton has a solemn
expression, and is busy with work. The post got a lot of attention and received
thousands of notes. Clinton becomes a synonym of respectability, and a
representation of female empowerment. Since then, her supporters involving into
this internet meme and imitate their own picture by change the text or content.
(Figure 10 and Figure 11). The meme became a major part of Hillary Clinton’s
positive cultural revival as a political figure, which was already seen as
particularly powerful in the 2016 presidential campaign. This has made her a
viable candidate (Tay, 2015).

These examples have illustrated the use
of internet memes as a persuasion way referred to political participation. As
an active social software, internet memes have a place in the political
expression of new media with the linking, forwarding and imitating, which
increased the exposure of political figures. In the presidential election,
candidates in the media show the image of appearance, and in the narration part
is partly deciding the success or failure of his election (Foster, 2014).
Politics in the media society is becoming more and more a performance, an act
of creating an image.

2.3.2 As a resistance of people (collection action)

Indeed, most of political memes are generally resistant to nature, and as we’ve seen, resistance itself is a critical mass mobilization. Shifman (2013) defines one function of memes is as grass-roots action with the example Occupy Wall Street online movement. The “Pepper Spray Cop” which shows a police officer spraying protesters with pepper spray. The “We are the 99%”, becomes one of the main visual markers of the on-the-ground Occupy Movement after it spread quickly online. They serve as a call to action for the protest to continue. Shifman indicates that the power of organization is declining, instead being replaced by massive, mobile social networks, which is collective action (Milner，2013). The background of the developing collective action cannot be separated from the remarkable rise of internet memes. First, the threshold is low and there is no need for technological skill to express and participate. Besides, image meme helps these protests go deeper with the visual effects. The most important thing is that internet meme allows the citizens to participate in collective action and at the same time can retain their individuality, since one of the character of meme is alter (Anduiza, 2012).

There are several studies
has worked on the Occupy Wall Street, this paper will apply the collective
action in Facebook between China mainland and Taiwan in 2016 as a case study.
This is the first internet meme and political participation refer to collective
action have been combined in public view in China. In January, Ziyu Zhou, a
member of the south Korean women’s group, was accused by the artist An Huang
about Taiwan’s independence on Weibo, leading to a wave of public opinion
against Ziyu Zhou. As the incident continued to heat up, then Ziyu Zhou issued
a video on Facebook to apologize for the previous uproar. Celebrity Gengxin Lin
forwarded the apology to video, and said “apologized too suddenly and
didn’t have time to memorize the manuscript”, which caused Taiwanese
netizens and Chinese netizens started a debate in Lin’s Facebook. A few days
after, it is said that 20 million Chinese young people have started a
collective action to Facebook of Taiwan’s three media homepage. Noncitizens
take internet meme as main expression, showed a high degree of organization, to
resist the independence of Taiwan (Tang, 2016). 

As
showed in Figure 12, Figure 13 and Figure 14, these memes are from the China
mainland, people try to use the beautiful scenes from China mainland and some
ironic words to resist the supportive of independence of Taiwan. The contents
of these meme are from traditional Chinese slogans, events with Chinese
characteristics and political propaganda themes. On the one hand, it evokes the
value recognition of people. On the other hand, they combined with familiar
things of public, which will have a greater influence on transmission. The most
important thing is, there are millions of people participate in this action,
and post millions of images on Facebook, the homepage was full of images which
is powerful and spectacular.

These internet memes
from the mass production by organizing, and hide the emotional expression in
the images, aim to use it to gain the attention occupation and presents
people’s political stance of resist. According to sharing and remixing,
transfer it into collective action, reflects the ability to participate in
narrative construction and civic organization. Therefore, memes can be used as
a tool of political participation in terms of turn the public opinion
fragmentation into collective action (Tang, 2016).

2.3.3 As a public discourse of political issues

Social media is considered to be more
effective in terms of information diffusion comparison to traditional media, it
expands the source of information and knowledge for people. People not only are
the receiver of the political information in network environment, they also are
a political message of reproducing and disseminator, which means everyone is
likely to be the news publishers, and likely to be receiving information. The advantages of digital media including openness,
virtualization, interactivity and timeliness build a great environment for the
public discourse, and helping people freely communicate and express their
opinions. Therefore, net citizens are keen on discuss politic issues through
digital media. The richness, floating and uncertainty of meme allow everyone
revolve around the image to construct the legal qualification and compete for
their statements, thus it is easy to be used to participate in discuss sensitive
political issues (Hristova, 2014). They are now been a part of our internet culture,
participating in a larger media and material ecosystem that helps shape the
political identity and political union. Meme could be a catalyst for political
discussion (Shifman, 2013). Compared to the past
people have to talk or write articles to show their political stance while now
they just can use an image. Like the Pepe the Frog, it becomes a Nazi Trump
supporter and Alt-Right symbol (Figure 15). It attracts not only people’s
attention, but also political discussions by its powerful visual impact. Some
notable examples are: The 2015 General election of United Kingdom, the image of
eating of candidate Miliband, which is different from his appearance on
newspapers, evokes a vast number of imitation of people with parody and
ridicule (Figure 16). After that, many politicians actively to follow the
trend, post out their own eating images to get attention and discussion. This
meme is similar to the Sihao Bai in 2014, the mayor of New York city. He used a
knife and fork in an undisciplined manner in an image (Figure 17), which made people
questioned his ability to govern because he has a more powerful appearance in
newspaper than this image. Back to the Occupy Wall Street case, the We
are the 99% meme. It is widely popular in Facebook and has numerous
replicators. At first, most of them are from the 99% people to support with
fixed images, annotation or remix (Figure 18). Gradually, the 1% people
participate in and post their own images with the text “tax me” or “redistribute”
(Figure 19). At the same time, they got mounted of comments along with (Milner,
2013). This meme engages in multiple discussions and arguments on Facebook.

With the propagation
characteristics of memes, public discourse is totally different than the past.
The increasing of complex hotspot issues duration, degree of attention and
transformation mechanism, a serial of crisis involved in, the more complex
issues appear at the same time including and the increase of average time of
the single issue are catalyzing the public discourse with political issues in
digital era. In another way, internet memes as a
political catharsis, it represents a strong demand of citizens for political
participation. Significantly, when people engaged in this discussion rather
than sharing or forwarding, it has more powerful since it empowers citizens to
share their opinions of political stances (Shifman, 2013).

3. Conclusion

In the era of media, the process of
political participation can be well deserved to internet meme, which from the
bottom to top, allows people to have the chance to get involved in political
activities. The three basic characters of meme including heredity, variation
and selection have been enhanced in digital media, and that is the major reason
why the internet meme could leave a great influence on political participation.
From one hand, internet meme as the persuasion way mainly reflected on the
political elections, help politicians to build positive image thus get voter’s
approval. From another hand, it allows ordinary people to resist through mastery
of dominance on the spread of images, not only can modify the content of the
meme, also can undertake production and innovation. Besides, it offers a new
way for net citizens to seek affirmation and self-expression in political communities.

The future study of internet meme could focus on the effects, like how to measure the effects of internet memes on elections or collective action. As a new way to participate in politics, internet meme has its own advantages and it is deserved to study in the future.

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