Discussion

Memeing the National Conversation

A national discourse around immigration can be complicated to capture and quantify because of the sheer magnitude of opinions involved. Part of this study’s purpose was to find out how an analysis of memes could be used to describe the general pulse of the national conversation. The author believes this study has succeeded in that attempt. Because of this, it is the belief of the author that analyzing memes might be a way of gain insight into conversation.

This claim is backed up by the study’s findings. Memes commonly use commonplace political messages. These messages follow many of the talking points that have been repeated in the news, by elites, and by everyday citizens. In memes, these talking points are sometimes pulled straight from the mouths of media figures and politicians as a way to increase credibility. In this way, memes seem to repackage the dominant beliefs of those that create them. This is exciting because finding out whether or not

Further supporting this belief is the fact that memes often integrate pop culture. In the 50 memes analyzed, there were references to Game of Thrones, The Matrix, a popular hip-hop song, Batman, the Geico Gecko, and more.

The author was surprised to find that ideological appeals were almost non existent in the sample set. In a county that increasingly seems to be labeled as either Democrat or Republican, it was strange not to see such things explicitly stated in at least a decent portion of the memes. This would seem to undermine the claim above but the author doesn’t believe this to be the case.

In general, memes are posted to their corresponding camp. This is to say that conservatives post conservative memes in conservative places and liberals put liberal memes in liberal places. In this way memes act as a form of validation for either side, reenforcing the group’s core messages and beliefs. Because of this, there is no need to point out who is the adversary and which side is which, because those things are already defined by the group’s collective understanding of the meme’s context. This is another reason why it’s really important to include context in any rhetorical analysis.

The Right’s Advantage: Big Money and a Big Army

Memes critical of immigration often employed a greater range of rhetorical elements in their memes compared to memes supportive of immigration and thus were more persuasive. While memes supportive of immigration tended to use one or two rhetorical elements in each meme, critical memes often employed a variety of elements. Part of the reason for this might lie in the conservative wing’s willingness to embrace onto memes early on as a way to further their platform. Reporter Stephanie Mencimer of MotherJones.com has written about the growing network of “well-funded conservative groups making a more organized push to train young internet-savvy right-wingers in the art of meme-making, enlisting a growing army in what they see as the coming meme war of 2020,” (Mencimer, 2019). The reason for this recruitment lies in the success that memes had in the 2016 Presidential election. Mencimer (2019) explains that memes were central in the spread of  disinformation about Hillary Clinton’s health and a fake pedophile ring operated by Democratic party officials.

One group who has been successful in creating conservative memes in Turning Point USA, a conservative organization with groups on university campuses around the United States. Two of Turning Point USA’s memes were part of this study. Communication sciences would benefit from researching the methods used in meme creation and distribution by groups like Turning Point USA.

The Challenges of Analyzing Memes

During coding, there were instances where the meaning of a meme was changed as a result of events occurring after the meme’s creation. An example of this was detailed in an analysis of Fig. 4. The author struggled with whether to include the newly-created rhetorical element in the coding as it wasn’t intended by the original creator. Ultimately the rhetorical method was included because not considering the method in this particular case would set a precedent that any meaning outside of the author’s intended meaning shouldn’t be considered. It is impossible to know the author’s intended meaning. Thus, going this route would undermine the study’s reliability.

Another challenge of not knowing the author’s intended meaning is that it makes consistent coding difficult. A disadvantage of a rhetorical analysis is the possibility for bias in coding. While the author made all possible attempts to be as unbiased as possible, it is impossible to account for all biases. Complicating matters further is the fact that memes often build off of one another and obtain new meaning in each reiteration. Without prior knowledge of an older meme’s history, it can be hard to identify what memes based off that older meme even mean.