Analysis of Political Meme Assignment Report

Running head: ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME1
Introduction
Memes, as popular as they’ve become in the past years due to their viral nature, have
begun constituting a new genre of political communication. A political meme is a strategically
and purposefully tailored humorous visual representation of a position that an individual or a
group adheres to with respect to political ideological standpoints. National level elections are the
primary sources for the influx of politically targeted humour in the form of social media posts,
and nothing serves the purpose better than memes. As Buchel defines, memes are culturally and
politically cohesive pieces of joke that gains massive influence and public approval primarily
through the internet. Keeping the current context in mind, the recent 2019 October Federal

ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME2
Elections have also produced an influx of such memes that can be analysed in depth to extract
the specific piece of political ideological conundrum that is at the root of every political meme.
The meme that I have chosen displays the Conservative Premier Leader of Ontario, Doug
Ford and his colleague Andrew Scheer who was running for Prime Minister at the time, prior to
his abrupt resignation recently. The significance of this meme is that is humorously
acknowledges the relationship between Ford and Scheer.
The origin of this meme is the famous social media portal Twitter and is directed not only
towards the politically active individuals on social media in general but also towards the specific
intended audience who share particular leanings towards particular political parties and
ideologies.
Meme as a media text.
Looking at a meme for entertainment is presumably the most primary aspect of
interpretation that one makes. However, like most media texts, memes play a significant role in
encoding and decoding strings of information. The popular meme templates like ‘the Salt Bae’
meme has been used for a multitude of personal as well as public purposes over the time, most
often targeting a person and a specific action associated with that person (for instance, targeting
Donald Trump and his anti – Mexican leanings by representing the ‘salt’ in the meme as bricks
building the wall) (Appendix 1, fig. 1). Similarly, another popular meme category that has
emerged, shows Vincent K. McMahon, the famous CEO of the global Wrestling Corporation
WWE and how his facial expression changes from reluctant disinterest to one of utter shock and
disbelief, and each increase in transition associated with an action or event that is increasingly
mundane in nature (Appendix 1, fig. 2).

ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME3
In understanding media texts, it is important to understand encoding and decoding within
the context. Encoding refers to the process of turning thoughts into a form of communication. An
encoder commonly uses a medium to send the message, either in the form of a phone class, an
email, a text message or any other communicative media (Martin & Tyner). Decoding on the
other hand is the reverse of encoding and refers to the process of turning communication into
interpretable thoughts (Martin & Tyner). Looking at the meme, the most dominant aspect of
media text understanding that we can gather is how Doug Ford’s arm is raised in the air which is
a signifying depiction of victory. At the same time, Andrew Scheer is holding his arm up
showing support. The recent resignation of Andrew Scheer from the office has also led Doug
Ford to with the Conservative leader good luck in a statement issued to the reporters.
Rhetoric.
In the most common terms, rhetoric is the art of persuasion which aims to study the
capacities of writers, orators and narrators in informing, persuading or motivating a particular
audience in particular scenarios (Corbett). It is heavily dependent on the context and extracts
reserves of situational understanding and acceptance from the audience. There are five common
canons of rhetoric, namely invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery (Huntington).
When looking at memes from a public discourse viewpoint, all of these canons become
significant in understanding what the meme is trying to communicate and what state of mind it is
originating from. In relation to the current meme, the style of the meme as a media text holds key
values. Portraying Andrew Scheer and Doug Ford holding hands up in the air and the ‘Best
Friends Forever’ tagline, can indicate one of two things to the unaware audience – firstly, they
are close friends and are actually in political support of each other, hence the meme is portraying
their friendship; and secondly, they are rivals in reality but due to some circumstantial