Since the start of 2020 the coronavirus has spread across the world like wildfire. The pandemic has so far killed over one hundred thousand people in its global rampage, and has subsequently left many countries in economic and political ruins. Political opinion makers have used the crisis to highlight and concretize perceived societal flaws, and one source for this type of criticism is the social media platform Reddit, where memes are used in different forums about American politics. This study examines corona related political memes on the subreddit r/PoliticalHumor, and emphasizes and discusses what opinions, ideologies and discourses that take place on the self proclaimed politically neutral forum during the corona crisis. The theoretical framework firstly defines political memes thanks to various studies about the specific subject, supported by theories surrounding participatory culture by Henry Jenkins. We also use the theories of social constructivism, semiotics, internet social activism and a critical discourse analysis (CDA). The CDA is also the main method of the study, where we use Anabela Carvalho’s CDA model fitted for media texts. Johnny Saldaña’s thematic quantitative analysis model, and Roland Barthes semiotic analysis model about denotation and connotation further helps us to dissect and analyze the memes. The results show us that the political memes regarding corona on r/PoliticalHumor are predominantly critical towards the American power elite, and use the corona crisis to highlight the perceived flaws of the US hegemony rather than to support it. This political critique is presented in three major discourses; distrust of the power, othering of the political opponents and a collapse discourse. As a tool for opinion making in an international crisis, political memes might follow these three major discourses in other contexts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-172405 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Sedin, Erik, Berggren Wiklund, Manne |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper, Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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