1st Edition

The Playful Politics of Memes

Edited By Mette Mortensen, Christina Neumayer Copyright 2023
188 Pages
by Routledge

188 Pages
by Routledge

188 Pages
by Routledge

Memes work as rhetorical weapons and discursive arguments in political conflicts. Across digital platforms, they confirm, contest and challenge political power and hierarchies. They simultaneously create social distortion, hostility, and a sense of community. Memes thus not only reflect norms but also work as a tool for negotiating them. At the same time, memes meld symbolic and cultural elements... Read more

1. The playful politics of memes

Mette Mortensen and Christina Neumayer

2. Messy on the inside: internet memes as mapping tools of everyday life

Sulafa Zidani

3. Memes, brands and the politics of post-terror togetherness: following the Manchester bee after the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing

Samuel Merrill and Simon Lindgren

4. Memetising the pandemic: memes, COVID-19 mundanity and political cultures

Maria Francesca Murru and Stefania Vicari

5. ‘Don’t panic people! Trump will tweet the virus away’: memes contesting and confirming populist political leaders during the COVID-19 crisis

Nete Nørgaard Kristensen and Mette Mortensen

6. ‘#OkBoomer, time to meet the Zoomers’: studying the memefication of intergenerational politics on TikTok

Jing Zeng and Crystal Abidin

7. Memetic commemorations: remixing far-right values in digital spheres

Tommaso Trillò and Limor Shifman

8. Sharing the hate? Memes and transnationality in the far right’s digital visual culture

Jordan McSwiney, Michael Vaughan, Annett Heft and Matthias Hoffmann

9. Murder fantasies in memes: fascist aesthetics of death threats and the banalization of white supremacist violence

Tina Askanius and Nadine Keller

Biography

Mette Mortensen is Professor and Deputy Head of Department for Research at the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Christina Neumayer is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.