Findings

Fig. 1 shows the total recorded instances of each measured rhetorical method found in the 50 memes analyzed. A meme could use many rhetorical methods in a single image.

The most popular rhetorical element used were comments about political actors with 25 recorded. Comments about notable political actors were broken into sub-categories. In summary the following notable people were mentioned:

  • Donald Trump was mentioned in 12 memes. Five of those instances mentioned him in a positive way. One mentioned him in a negative way. The other six mentioned him in either neutral ways or a way that could be dependent on your views of him.
  • Immigrations Customs Enforcement (ICE) was mentioned 10 times. The agency was often shown in the context of it looking to arrest or deport someone or someone calling the agency to have someone deported.
  • Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was mentioned twice. Both times in the context of attacking her intelligence.
  • President Barack Obama was mentioned once.
  • Representative Nancy Pelosi was mentioned once in the context of attacking her intelligence.
  • Mitt Romney was mentioned once in the context of calling him a hypocrite.

Political commonplace messages were the second most used element with 24 recorded instances. Fig. 2 breaks down these commonplace messages in more depth.

The third most used method were propositional/pragmatic appeals with 18 recorded uses. These appeals were broken into two themes that made themselves prevalent throughout the sample set. The first theme, hypocrisy had 14 recorded uses. The second theme, attacks on intelligence, had seven recorded uses.

Logos appeals measured both true and false facts. True facts were only used in only two instances. The rest were false facts.

Fig. 3 examines the use of rhetorical elements broken down by whether the meme was supportive of immigration or critical of immigration. In total there were 14 clearly supportive memes and 22 clearly critical memes. The memes didn’t have a clear message and could be interpreted as either supportive or critical depending on how the receiver interpreted the message.