Like it or not, memes now play a huge part in the way we communicate online, particularly for the younger generations, and a researcher from the Australian National University (ANU) has delved into the world of online memes to examine their role in the 2019 Federal Election.
ANU researcher Lucien Leon has written about the role of memes in Scott Morrison and the Liberal Partyโs โsurprise winโ in a new book, Morrisonโs Miracle.
Dr Leon says the potential for memes to be used as campaign tools โmaturedโ for the 2019 election, with political parties and their supporters able to exploit or โweaponiseโ memes to get their messaging across.
He likens memes to political cartoons, but with a couple of key differences: theyโre largely anonymous and can be produced and spread quickly. They are also not subject to the same requirements as other political messaging.
โItโs moved out of the amateur space and more into the political propaganda space,โ he says. โThatโs a bit of a concern because itโs very difficult for the audience to tell what the intent of the message is.โ
Editor and ANU Emeritus Professor Marian Sawer said while social media in politics was once regarded as the โforte of the leftโ, politicians such as Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer had some โbig winsโ in 2019 with the use of platforms like Facebook.
โThis reflected a global shift whereby radical right parties and organisations were more than matching the left in their use of digital technology.โ
Memes thrive in โecho chambersโ
Dr Leon says while itโs hard to say how effective memes are at shifting votes from one party to another, they do tend to have more currency or traction in the heat of an election campaign.
Dr Leon says social media platforms, particularly Twitter and closed groups on Facebook, have been structured to create โecho chambersโ. Memes circulating in these spaces tend to reinforce existing views rather than sway votersโ opinions, he says, referencing memes depicting Bill Shorten as a โflakeโ or as the grim reaper for the Laborโs โdeath taxโ (actually their franking credits policy).
โI just see them as now part and parcel of political messaging. They are not necessarily on their own able to shift votes, but what they are able to do is maintain particular messages,โ Dr Leon says.
โEven if they are circulating in echo chambers, they do, nonetheless, bleed out of those chambers and become part of the mosaic or pastiche of other political messaging.
โThe attitude is not so much the quality of the meme but the constant flow of the messaging.โ
Does politics make memes โuncoolโ?
Despite Scott Morrisonโs widely-criticised Star Wars โMay the 4thโ meme, Dr Leon says itโs not so much the messaging, or the image, but which platform a meme circulates on that could define its coolness factor.
โ[Morrisonโs meme] was really uncool but Scott Morrison kind of fosters this daggy dad image, so his use of those memes was really uncool but it was almost so uncool it was on brand.
โIt might actually come down more to platforms. Facebook is now seen as a bit more of a โboomer platformโ,โ he says, while Gen Z tend to be more active on platforms like Snapchat and TikTok.
โThey do target some of them in terms of the demographic. Some of the memes reference stuff that only the youth demographic could cotton on to.โ
