Internet Memes as protest media: the anti-establishment digital protest of Mahsa Amini

Political memes have become the latest evolution of leaflet propaganda and a fundamental tool in the political arsenal of digital marketing (Nieubuurt, 2021). According to Martinez-Rolan and Pinero-Otero (2016), the communicative value of Internet memes has not been of paramount importance only for social and political movements, as also political parties and leaders have begun to introduce them in their political strategies of marketing.

Politicians and political organizations have been attempting to channel favorable memes while refusing and resisting negative ones, in order to portrait themselves as a relatable political candidate. This process has been framed by Anderson and Sheeler (2014) as the meta-memeing process, to identify the digital political strategy in which a meme is used to build a positive image of a specific political candidate.

This process has been identified as a part of the political campaign used by Hilary Clinton, an exponent of U.S. democratic party. Anderson & Sheeler (2014) examined the use of “Texts from Hillary” meme in Clinton’s digital campaign with the aim to disseminate positive messages and portrait Clinton as a strong and charismatic leader.

“Text form Hilary” meme was one of the most shared and reposted memes of the year 2012, and it was manipulated several times generating humor and sarcasm in the audience. The meme has then been sized by opponent political parties to mock and denigrate the candidate in the same way used to support her campaign. In the memes below, the image macro of Hilary Clinton was used to mock her and ironize her personality, delegitimizing her political position.

There are several examples of the diffusion of memes employed as a part of political propaganda, however, all started with 45th U.S. President Donald Trump retweeting Pepe the Frog. Pepe the Frog is a cartoon character created in 2005 by cartoonist Matt Furie, which then became one of the most famous Internet memes. The image of Pepe the Frog was manipulated and edited several times over the years, growing and evolving through user participation.

The character was originally a non-political cartoon, which then turned into a racist symbol adopted by the U.S. right-wing extremism, also known as the Alt-Right. In 2015, a bunch of Internet trolls produced a number of Pepe variants, associating the character with Nazi Germany, the Ku Klux Klan, or White power skinheads. The same year, Pepe the Frog was associated with the U.S. Republican candidate, Donald Trump.

Internet memes associating Trump and Pepe the Frog started proliferating more and more, until Donald Trump himself decided to retweet a meme of Pepe with Trump’s blonde hair, standing behind a podium with a logo of the seal of the President of the United States.

Trump’s retweet collected more than 8.000 retweets and 11.000 likes. The following year, in 2016, the Anti-Defamation League declared Pepe the Frog a hate and racism symbol. Months later, Hilary Clinton wrote an article about Pepe the Frog, considering it as a part of White Supremacists’ ideology. Even though the author of Pepe decided to end this controversy by publishing a meme of Pepe’s funeral, the latter has then been manipulated again and even used to support the recent Hong Kong protests, this time as a symbol of resistance.
The 2016 U.S. Presidential election, between Donald Trump, with the Republican flag, and Hilary Clinton, with the democratic one, is remembered for the Great War of memes.

The Great War of meme was the first Internet battle between Donald Trump’s and Hilary Clinton’s supporters on different digital platforms. The memes produced during this period have played an essential role in the winning of Donald Trump in the U.S. Presidential Election. During the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, many political memes were employed as a device for delegitimization. Ross and Rivers (2017) employed Van Leewen’s (2007) framework for examining the discourse of delegitimization in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Specifically, the authors analyzed the framework to understand how political memes are used to mock, criticize, and deride political candidates or parties.

According to Francesconi (1982), legitimacy in political rhetoric is achieved “through a successful communication able to align the action with social values”. In comparison, delegitimization is defined as the discrepancy between political actions and the predominant social values. Ross and Rivers studied the use of Van Leeuwen's framework of legitimization against Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump. The political memes produced to mock the former were focused on the Justice Department does not pursue any criminal charges against the Democratic candidate for using a private email server to transfer confidential documents.
For the latter, the mocking memes were focused on the Republican campaign of anti-immigration and Trump’s promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Based on Van Leeuwen's framework of legitimization (2007), Ross and Rivers (2017) define four strategies of delegitimization: through authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization, and mythopoesis.

Legitimization through authorization refers to the authority of traditions, laws, costumes, or personas in whom the institutional authority of some type is vested. As a consequence, legitimacy is established when an individual (politicians or a political organization) is judged to have employed its authority appropriately. Conversely, delegitimization through authorization occurs when the authority it is used inappropriately and, in this case, memes attempt to delegitimize an individual through protest and criticism.

The (de)legitimization strategy of moral evaluation refers to value systems and it is generally done indirectly through comparison or analogy. Legitimacy through moral evaluation is achieved by comparing a specific activity or situation with a similar one with positive values. Conversely, delegitimization is achieved by comparing a situation or a scenario with a similar one with negative values attached. In this case, the textual element of memes is used, deliberately or otherwise, as a channel to reveal ideological and political position.

The rationalization strategy of (de)legitimization is divided into instrumental and theoretical. Instrumental strategy relates to legitimacy as being established through a morally justifiable action. Theoretical strategy, instead, finds its foundation on “some kind of truth, on the way things are”. In these cases, memes used mockery through imitation reflecting the idea that humor and sarcasm are essential part of the overall architecture of delegitimization.

The last strategy of (de)legitimization is called mythopoesis, which it relates to legitimation conveyed through moral or cautionary tales. Moral tales led to legitimacy through acknowledging or rewarding those actions or situations perceived as legitimate social practices. On the other hand, cautionary tales outline what might happen if social norms are not adhered to. [...]