Memes of Resistance

  • Problem: Memes are increasingly becoming recognized as tools for social and political resistance, and increasing evidence suggests their efficacy as methods of protest. However, little is known about the potentially unique narrative constructions of these memes (e.g., the stories and experiences they communicate). Furthermore, available studies are severely limited in that they often utilize only image memes, ignoring other short-form video communications (also memes) whose narratives may be more comprehensive. Little is also known about the relationship between the original meme creators and the meme distributors of these memes.
  • Research Questions: Through data analysis, we may identify how the stories told in these memes differ in their content, themes, affective and linguistic approaches, and views of the “other”. What are the most effective methods of communication employed by these memes? What is the relationship between meme creators and distributors? How does the original distributor impact the chain of distribution (e.g., does someone with a greater follower count lead to more sharing)?
  • Data Sources: Data will be extracted from Reddit using an AWS API. These data will include: (1) meme images, videos, and associated text (including emoji and hashtags); (2) post titles and text; (2) associated metadata (depending on the platform, these will include any combination of access link, community name, likes, upvotes/downvotes, viewer count, etc.); and comments and their associated metadata. Memes will also be transcribed such that their written content (e.g., image text and video subtitles) is available for computational analysis. Annotation: Qualitative coding will be conducted on these memes to extract qualitative themes, while computational analysis may be used to extract additional textual themes at-scale. Automated annotation may be performed using LIWC, empath, or similar tools.
  • Audience: Our audience includes social scientists, politicians, and political activists.
  • Inspirations: Numerous recent studies evaluate the concept of resistance memes, but none appear to evaluate the narrative construction of these forms of discourse (Pavlović, 2016; Silvestri, 2018; Klein, 2020; Soh, 2020).
  • Skills needed: Web programming and website design; NLP; data visualization.