It’s obviously funny to be a meme
Viewing, sharing, & creating memes for political entertainment & observation
Keywords:
political memes, uses & gratifications, political entertainment, political observationAbstract
Memes are cultural units that transmit among online users. Appearing as jokes, memes are a popular form of expression and appear to serve a greater role in the formation and spread of public opinion, changing the way citizens engage with politics. Driven by uses and gratifications theory, this work examines users’ motivations for viewing, sharing, and creating political memes. A nationwide survey (N = 1,000) of Facebook users identified unique gratifications obtained from political meme use. Results show the uses of politically-related memes are nuanced behaviors strategically done to fulfill needs for political entertainment and observation. Specifically, individuals with high political trust, who think of themselves as being humorous, and those who frequently share or create memes used them to observe politics in action. Alternatively, those who prefer to observe humorous circumstances and frequently share and view memes, without engaging in creation, used politically-related memes for entertainment. Practical and theoretical implications regarding use of memes for engagement and effects are discussed.
References
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Bartsch, A., & Schneider, F. M. (2014). Entertainment and politics revisited: How non-escapist forms of entertainment can stimulate political interest and information seeking. Journal of Communication, 64(3), 369-396. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12095
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Boukes, M., Boomgaarden, H. G., Moorman, M., & De Vreese, C. H. (2015). At odds: Laughing and thinking? The appreciation, processing, and persuasiveness of political satire. Journal of Communication, 65(5), 721-744. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12173
Bratich, J. (2014). Occupy all the Dispositifs: Memes, media ecologies, and emergent bodies politic. Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, 11(1), 64-73. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2013.827351
Carron-Arthur, B., Cunningham, J. A., & Griffiths, K. M. (2014). Describing the distribution of engagement in an Internet support group by post frequency: A comparison of the 90-9-1 Principle and Zipf's Law. Internet Interventions, 1(4), 165-168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.invent.2014.09.003
Casler, K., Bickel, L., & Hackett, E. (2013). Separate but equal? A comparison of participants and data gathered via Amazon’s MTurk, social media, and face-to-face behavioral testing. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(6), 2156-2160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.05.009
Chao, N., Yuan, G., Li, Y., & Yao, Q. (2017). The Internet ecological perception, political trust and political efficacy of Chinese netizens. Telematics & Informatics, 34(3), 715-725. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2016.05.014
Cline, T. W., Altsech, M. B., & Kellaris, J. J. (2003). When does humor enhance or inhibit ad responses? The moderating role of the need for humor. Journal of Advertising, 32(3), 31-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2003.10639134
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Hollander, B. A. (2005). Late-night learning: Do entertainment programs increase political campaign knowledge for young viewers?. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 49(4), 402-415. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4904_3
Howley, K. (2016). ‘I Have a Drone’: Internet memes and the politics of culture. Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, 7(2), 155-175. https://doi.org/10.1386/iscc.7.2.155_1
Huntington, H. E. (2016). Pepper spray cop and the American dream: Using synecdoche and metaphor to unlock internet memes’ visual political rhetoric. Communication Studies, 67(1), 77-93. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2015.1087414
Jenkins, H. (2006). Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?: Digital cinema, media convergence and participatory culture. In M.G. Durham & D.M. Kellner (Eds). Media and cultural studies: Keyworks (pp.549-576). London: BlackWell Publishing Ltd.
Larzarsfeld, P.F. (1940). Radio and the printed page. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce.
Landreville, K. D., & LaMarre, H. L. (2011). Working through political entertainment: How negative emotion and narrative engagement encourage political discussion intent in young Americans. Communication Quarterly, 59(2), 200-220. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2011.563441
Lazarsfeld, P.F. (1940). Radio and the printer page. New York: Harper.
Lee, C. S., & Ma, L. (2012). News sharing in social media: The effect of gratifications and prior experience. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(2), 331-339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2011.10.002
Leung, L. (2009). User-generated content on the Internet: An examination of gratifications, civic engagement and psychological empowerment. New Media & Society, 11(8), 1327-1347. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809341264
Leung, L., & Wei, R. (2000). More than just talk on the move: Uses and gratifications of the cellular phone. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 77(2), 308-320. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769900007700206
Nielsen, J. (2006). The 90-9-1 rule for participation inequality in social media and online communities. Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/
Jones, J. P. (2009). Entertaining politics: Satire television and political engagement. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Katz, E., Blumler, J.G., & Gurevitch, M. (1973). Uses and gratifications research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 37(4), 509–523. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2747854
Kees, J., Berry, C., Burton, S., & Sheehan, K. (2017). An analysis of data quality: Professional panels, student subject pools, and Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Journal of Advertising, 46(1), 141-155. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2016.1269304
Kim, Y. M., & Vishak, J. (2008). Just laugh! You don’t need to remember: The effects of entertainment media on political information acquisition and information processing in political judgment. Journal of communication, 58(2), 338-360. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.00388.x
Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). Online memes, affinities, and cultural production. In M. Knobel, & C. Lankshear (Eds.), A new literacies sampler (pp. 199-227). New York: Peter Lang.
Laineste, L., & Voolaid, P. (2016). Laughing across borders: Intertextuality of internet memes. European Journal of Humor Research, 4(4), 26-49. http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2016.4.4.laineste
Lu, M., & Fan, H. (2018). I Sang, therefore I am! Uses and gratifications of self-mocking memes and the effects on psychological well-being. International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology, & Learning, 8(2), 35-50. doi: 10.4018/IJCBPL.2018040103
McQuail, D., Blumler, J. G., & Brown, J. R. (1972). The television audience: A revised perspective. In P. Marris, S. Thornham & C. Bassett (Eds). Media studies: A reader (pp. 271-284). New York: NYU Press.
Milner, R. M. (2013). Pop polyvocality: Internet memes, public participation, and the Occupy Wall Street movement. International Journal of Communication, 7, 2357-2390.
Palmgreen, P., Wenner, L. A., & Rayburn, J. D., II. (1980). Relations between gratifications sought and obtained: A study of television news. Communication Research, 7(2), 161-192. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365028000700202
Papacharissi, Z., & Rubin, A. M. (2000). Predictors of Internet use. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 44(2), 175-196. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4402_2
Peifer, J. T. & Holbert, R. L. (2016). Appreciation of pro-attitudinal versus counter-attitudinal political humor: A cognitive consistency approach to the study of political entertainment. Communication Quarterly, 64(1), 16-35. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2015.1078828
Piata, A. (2016). When metaphor becomes a joke: Metaphor journeys from political ads to internet memes. Journal of Pragmatics, 106, 39-56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2016.10.003
Perrin, A. & Anderson, M. (2019, April 10th). Share of U.S. adults using social media, including Facebook, is mostly unchanged since 2018. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-s-adults-using-social-media-including-facebook-is-mostly-unchanged-since-2018/
Rentschler, C. A., & Thrift, S. C. (2015). Doing feminism in the network: Networked laughter and the ‘Binders Full of Women’ meme. Feminist Theory, 16(3), 329-359. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700115604136
Ruggiero, T. E. (2000). Uses and gratifications theory in the 21st century. Mass Communication & Society, 3(1), 3-37. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327825MCS0301_02
Rubin, A. M. (1983). Television uses and gratifications: The interactions of viewing patterns and motivations. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 27(1), 37-51. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838158309386471
Rubin, A. M. (2009). Uses, gratifications, and media effects research. In J. Bryant & M. B. Oliver (Eds), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (pp. 165-184). New York: Routledge.
Rubin, A. M., & Step, M. M. (2000). Impact of motivation, attraction, and parasocial interaction on talk radio listening. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 44(4), 635-654. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4404_7
Salon, O. (2013, June 20). Richard Dawkins on the internet’s hijacking of the word ‘meme’. Retrieved from http://www.wired.co.uk/article/richard-dawkins-memes
Segev, E., Nissenbaum, A., Stolero, N., & Shifman, L. (2015). Families and networks of internet memes: The relationship between cohesiveness, uniqueness, and quiddity concreteness. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 20(4), 417-433. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12120
Siegel, J. (2017, January 31). Is America prepared for meme warfare?. Retrieved from https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xyvwdk/meme-warfare
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Staley, W. (2019, January 4). All the President’s memes. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/magazine/all-the-presidents-memes.html
Tenove, C. (2019, February 4). The meme-ification of politics: Politicians & their ‘lit’ memes. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/the-meme-ification-of-politics-politicians-and-their-lit-memes-110017
Valenzuela, S., Park, N., & Kee, K. F. (2009). Is there social capital in a social network site?: Facebook use and college students' life satisfaction, trust, and participation. Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, 14(4), 875-901. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01474.x
Velasquez, A., & Rojas, H. (2017). Political expression on social media: The role of communication competence and expected outcomes. Social Media & Society, 3(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117696521
Wiggins, B. E., & Bowers, G. B. (2015). Memes as genre: A structurational analysis of the memescape. New Media & Society, 17(11), 1886-1906. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814535194
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https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470479216.corpsy0836
Becker, A. B. (2011). Political humor as democratic relief? The effects of exposure to comedy and straight news on trust and efficacy. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 19(5), 235-250. https://doi.org/10.1080/15456870.2011.622191
Bartsch, A., & Schneider, F. M. (2014). Entertainment and politics revisited: How non-escapist forms of entertainment can stimulate political interest and information seeking. Journal of Communication, 64(3), 369-396. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12095
Börzsei, L. K. (2013). Makes a meme instead: A concise history of internet memes. New Media Studies Magazine, 7, 152-189. https://works.bepress.com/linda_borzsei/2/
Boukes, M., Boomgaarden, H. G., Moorman, M., & De Vreese, C. H. (2015). At odds: Laughing and thinking? The appreciation, processing, and persuasiveness of political satire. Journal of Communication, 65(5), 721-744. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12173
Bratich, J. (2014). Occupy all the Dispositifs: Memes, media ecologies, and emergent bodies politic. Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, 11(1), 64-73. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2013.827351
Carron-Arthur, B., Cunningham, J. A., & Griffiths, K. M. (2014). Describing the distribution of engagement in an Internet support group by post frequency: A comparison of the 90-9-1 Principle and Zipf's Law. Internet Interventions, 1(4), 165-168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.invent.2014.09.003
Casler, K., Bickel, L., & Hackett, E. (2013). Separate but equal? A comparison of participants and data gathered via Amazon’s MTurk, social media, and face-to-face behavioral testing. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(6), 2156-2160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.05.009
Chao, N., Yuan, G., Li, Y., & Yao, Q. (2017). The Internet ecological perception, political trust and political efficacy of Chinese netizens. Telematics & Informatics, 34(3), 715-725. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2016.05.014
Cline, T. W., Altsech, M. B., & Kellaris, J. J. (2003). When does humor enhance or inhibit ad responses? The moderating role of the need for humor. Journal of Advertising, 32(3), 31-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2003.10639134
Cline, T. W., Kellaris, J. J., & Machleit, K. A. (2011). Consumers’ need for levity in advertising communications. Journal of Marketing Communications, 17(1), 17-35. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527260903090790
Covucci, D. (2018, November 11). Donald Trump memes are making are making the Internet great again. Retrieved from: https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-memes/
Craig, S. C. (1979). Efficacy, trust, and political behavior: An attempt to resolve a lingering conceptual dilemma. American Politics Quarterly, 7(2), 225-239. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X7900700207
Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press.
Davison, P. (2012). The language of internet memes. In M. Mandiberg (Ed.). The social media reader (pp. 120-134). New York: NYU Press
Delli Carpini, M. X. (2004). Mediating Democratic Engagement: The Impact of Communications on Citizens’ Involvement in Political and Civic Life. In L.L. Kaid (Ed.), Handbook of political communication research (pp. 395-434). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Dyck, D. (2019, February 4). The meme-ification of politics: Politicians & their ‘lit’ memes. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/the-meme-ification-of-politics-politicians-and-their-lit-memes-110017
Gal, N. (2018). Internet memes. In B. Warf (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of the internet (pp. 528-530). London: SAGE.
Gearhart, S., Zhang, B., Perlmutter, D. D., & Lazić, G. (2020). Visual Intertextuality Theory: Exploring Political Communication and Visual Intertextuality through Meme Wars. In S. Josephson, J. Kelly, & K. Smith (Eds), Handbook of Visual Communication (pp. 367-379). London: Routledge.
Helliwell, J. F., & Putnam, R. D. (2004). The social context of well-being. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 359, 1435-1446. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2004.1522
Holbert, R. L., Hill, M. R., & Lee, J. (2014). The political relevance of entertainment media. In C. Reinemann (Ed.), Political Communication (pp. 427-446). Germany: De Gruyter Mouton.
Hollander, B. A. (2005). Late-night learning: Do entertainment programs increase political campaign knowledge for young viewers?. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 49(4), 402-415. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4904_3
Howley, K. (2016). ‘I Have a Drone’: Internet memes and the politics of culture. Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, 7(2), 155-175. https://doi.org/10.1386/iscc.7.2.155_1
Huntington, H. E. (2016). Pepper spray cop and the American dream: Using synecdoche and metaphor to unlock internet memes’ visual political rhetoric. Communication Studies, 67(1), 77-93. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2015.1087414
Jenkins, H. (2006). Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?: Digital cinema, media convergence and participatory culture. In M.G. Durham & D.M. Kellner (Eds). Media and cultural studies: Keyworks (pp.549-576). London: BlackWell Publishing Ltd.
Larzarsfeld, P.F. (1940). Radio and the printed page. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce.
Landreville, K. D., & LaMarre, H. L. (2011). Working through political entertainment: How negative emotion and narrative engagement encourage political discussion intent in young Americans. Communication Quarterly, 59(2), 200-220. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2011.563441
Lazarsfeld, P.F. (1940). Radio and the printer page. New York: Harper.
Lee, C. S., & Ma, L. (2012). News sharing in social media: The effect of gratifications and prior experience. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(2), 331-339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2011.10.002
Leung, L. (2009). User-generated content on the Internet: An examination of gratifications, civic engagement and psychological empowerment. New Media & Society, 11(8), 1327-1347. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809341264
Leung, L., & Wei, R. (2000). More than just talk on the move: Uses and gratifications of the cellular phone. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 77(2), 308-320. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769900007700206
Nielsen, J. (2006). The 90-9-1 rule for participation inequality in social media and online communities. Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/
Jones, J. P. (2009). Entertaining politics: Satire television and political engagement. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Katz, E., Blumler, J.G., & Gurevitch, M. (1973). Uses and gratifications research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 37(4), 509–523. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2747854
Kees, J., Berry, C., Burton, S., & Sheehan, K. (2017). An analysis of data quality: Professional panels, student subject pools, and Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Journal of Advertising, 46(1), 141-155. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2016.1269304
Kim, Y. M., & Vishak, J. (2008). Just laugh! You don’t need to remember: The effects of entertainment media on political information acquisition and information processing in political judgment. Journal of communication, 58(2), 338-360. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.00388.x
Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). Online memes, affinities, and cultural production. In M. Knobel, & C. Lankshear (Eds.), A new literacies sampler (pp. 199-227). New York: Peter Lang.
Laineste, L., & Voolaid, P. (2016). Laughing across borders: Intertextuality of internet memes. European Journal of Humor Research, 4(4), 26-49. http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2016.4.4.laineste
Lu, M., & Fan, H. (2018). I Sang, therefore I am! Uses and gratifications of self-mocking memes and the effects on psychological well-being. International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology, & Learning, 8(2), 35-50. doi: 10.4018/IJCBPL.2018040103
McQuail, D., Blumler, J. G., & Brown, J. R. (1972). The television audience: A revised perspective. In P. Marris, S. Thornham & C. Bassett (Eds). Media studies: A reader (pp. 271-284). New York: NYU Press.
Milner, R. M. (2013). Pop polyvocality: Internet memes, public participation, and the Occupy Wall Street movement. International Journal of Communication, 7, 2357-2390.
Palmgreen, P., Wenner, L. A., & Rayburn, J. D., II. (1980). Relations between gratifications sought and obtained: A study of television news. Communication Research, 7(2), 161-192. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365028000700202
Papacharissi, Z., & Rubin, A. M. (2000). Predictors of Internet use. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 44(2), 175-196. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4402_2
Peifer, J. T. & Holbert, R. L. (2016). Appreciation of pro-attitudinal versus counter-attitudinal political humor: A cognitive consistency approach to the study of political entertainment. Communication Quarterly, 64(1), 16-35. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2015.1078828
Piata, A. (2016). When metaphor becomes a joke: Metaphor journeys from political ads to internet memes. Journal of Pragmatics, 106, 39-56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2016.10.003
Perrin, A. & Anderson, M. (2019, April 10th). Share of U.S. adults using social media, including Facebook, is mostly unchanged since 2018. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-s-adults-using-social-media-including-facebook-is-mostly-unchanged-since-2018/
Rentschler, C. A., & Thrift, S. C. (2015). Doing feminism in the network: Networked laughter and the ‘Binders Full of Women’ meme. Feminist Theory, 16(3), 329-359. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700115604136
Ruggiero, T. E. (2000). Uses and gratifications theory in the 21st century. Mass Communication & Society, 3(1), 3-37. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327825MCS0301_02
Rubin, A. M. (1983). Television uses and gratifications: The interactions of viewing patterns and motivations. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 27(1), 37-51. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838158309386471
Rubin, A. M. (2009). Uses, gratifications, and media effects research. In J. Bryant & M. B. Oliver (Eds), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (pp. 165-184). New York: Routledge.
Rubin, A. M., & Step, M. M. (2000). Impact of motivation, attraction, and parasocial interaction on talk radio listening. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 44(4), 635-654. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4404_7
Salon, O. (2013, June 20). Richard Dawkins on the internet’s hijacking of the word ‘meme’. Retrieved from http://www.wired.co.uk/article/richard-dawkins-memes
Segev, E., Nissenbaum, A., Stolero, N., & Shifman, L. (2015). Families and networks of internet memes: The relationship between cohesiveness, uniqueness, and quiddity concreteness. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 20(4), 417-433. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12120
Siegel, J. (2017, January 31). Is America prepared for meme warfare?. Retrieved from https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xyvwdk/meme-warfare
Shifman, L. (2013). Memes in a digital world: Reconciling with a conceptual troublemaker. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18(3), 362-377. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12013
Shifman, L. (2014). Memes in digital culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Staley, W. (2019, January 4). All the President’s memes. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/magazine/all-the-presidents-memes.html
Tenove, C. (2019, February 4). The meme-ification of politics: Politicians & their ‘lit’ memes. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/the-meme-ification-of-politics-politicians-and-their-lit-memes-110017
Valenzuela, S., Park, N., & Kee, K. F. (2009). Is there social capital in a social network site?: Facebook use and college students' life satisfaction, trust, and participation. Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, 14(4), 875-901. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01474.x
Velasquez, A., & Rojas, H. (2017). Political expression on social media: The role of communication competence and expected outcomes. Social Media & Society, 3(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117696521
Wiggins, B. E., & Bowers, G. B. (2015). Memes as genre: A structurational analysis of the memescape. New Media & Society, 17(11), 1886-1906. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814535194
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