Political Meme Analysis: Rhetoric, Propaganda, Persuasion, and Impact

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of a political meme featuring Doug Ford and Andrew Scheer, examining it through the lenses of rhetoric, propaganda, and persuasion. The analysis begins with an introduction to political memes and their role in contemporary political communication, followed by an examination of the meme as a media text, exploring encoding and decoding processes. The essay then delves into the rhetorical strategies employed by the meme, considering its style and impact on the audience. The discussion further explores the meme's potential as a form of propaganda and persuasion, assessing its influence on public attitudes and political perceptions. The conclusion summarizes the findings, highlighting the meme's effectiveness as a rhetorical device and its limited role as overt propaganda, while acknowledging its persuasive potential in shaping public understanding of political relationships. The essay references relevant academic sources and includes visual aids to support its analysis.

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

1ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
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

2ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
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).

3ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
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

4ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
requirement, they have formed an alliance and the meme is a sarcastic reference to that. The style
of a rhetoric holds a key spot in helping the audience reach the crux of the context through a
generally witty metaphor or analogy drawn to a separate context. Political affiliation and
closeness being described in the youth terminology (Best Friends Forever shortens to form the
abbreviation BFFs, a commonly used terminology in SMS slang) is an effective way of reaching
the younger and more meme-acquainted audience.
Propaganda.
Propaganda is defined as the purposeful and systematic attempt at changing the
perceptions and ideas of a population and redirect the public attitudes in a direction that best suits
the objectives of the propagandist (Aro). In politics, propaganda is a widely used terminology,
mostly because political propaganda in itself is a widely implemented practice (Fenton). The
chief purpose of propaganda is to reshape the public attitudes, and in the political context, the
success or failure of a political campaign can heavily rely on the success or failure of the
propaganda.
Looking at the meme in context from a propagandist viewpoint, we can identify that it is
a mostly harmless media text and plays almost no significant role in reshaping public attitudes or
leanings. For instance, the meme that displays Donald Trump’s prior bankruptcy claims in
association with the precariousness of his political position (Appendix 1, fig 3.), can be
considered a propaganda in the sense that it is asking the audience whether or not a person who
had filed for bankruptcy in the past is fit to run a nation’s economy. It needs to be remembered
that a significant portion of the audience of a meme is formed by the people who are holding the
viewpoint that the propaganda is attempting to change (Aro). In that regard, meme as a political

5ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
propaganda plays vital cognitive role in reshaping the perception by turning one person’s beliefs
into humour.
Persuasion.
Persuasion in its sense is much like propaganda but is used in a more general context.
Like propaganda, persuasive communication is also directed towards changing public opinions
and perceptions, although, persuasion can happen on a smaller and personal scale as well.
Persuasive communication is any type of message that is intended to either shape, reassert or
modify the prior proclivity of an individual or a group. Hugh Rank’s model of persuasion
analysis identifies two target groups, names them as ‘Benefit Promisers’ (advertisers or
marketers) and ‘Benefit Seekers’ (consumers) and identifies an intricate relationship between
them (Wahl & Morris). He explains that benefit promisers tend to look at the specific aspects
within their communication that the benefit seekers find most appealing, intensifies them and
downplays the non-important aspects in order to present an attractive and desirable image of
their offering to the seekers. Rank, mentions that the intensify / downplay schema is utilised as
an important tool for public persuasion. According to this schema, if we analyse the current
meme, once again we find that the meme is not explicitly trying to persuade the audience of
anything specific. Alternately, it can be a resource for reinforcing the relationship between
Scheer and Ford, to a politically uninitiated individual who might research upon the topic further.
In that way, the meme is reinforcing a particular knowledge in the public schemata by
intensifying the aspect of political friendship, political position and public perception and
downplaying other aspects like references to potential scandals or controversies.

6ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
Conclusion.
Looking at the meme from the lenses of rhetoric, propaganda and persuasion, I have been
able to safely reach the conclusion that the meme that I have selected is a mix of rhetoric and
persuasion. Although the meme has political connections, it is not overtly propagandist in nature,
primarily because it does not address a particular political standpoint while downplaying another
one. It shows the alliance between two political leaders in a very generic context. Alternately, it
is a rhetoric because the style of the meme, as analysed above, ultimately directs to the political
and presumably personal bond between these persons. Politically, it might indicate to certain
specific events like Doug Ford’s absence from Scheer’s campaigning in the greater Toronto area,
but that aspect is not made relevant by the meme. It is also mildly persuasive because it allows
the audience who is uninitiated to Canadian National politics, especially youngsters, a context to
start building their schema upon.
In my opinion, this meme that is selected does not have an overly ambitious purpose. If
its main purpose is to parodically highlight interpersonal political relations, then I can safely
assert that the meme has successfully accomplished its purpose. From an ideological viewpoint, I
believe that my choice of meme is a representation of my conservative leaning.

7ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
References.
Aro, Jessikka. "The cyberspace war: propaganda and trolling as warfare tools." European
View 15.1 (2016): 121-132.
Buchel, Branislav. Internet memes as means of communication. Diss. Masarykova univerzita,
Fakulta sociálních studií, 2012.
Corbett, E. P. J. Classical rhetoric for the modern student. New York: Oxford University Press.
1990. P. 1
Fenton, Natalia L. We Want You: A Rhetorical Analysis of Propaganda from Government
Posters to Political Memes. Diss. Youngstown State University, 2014.
Huntington, Heidi E. "Subversive memes: Internet memes as a form of visual rhetoric." AoIR
Selected Papers of Internet Research 3 (2013).
Martín, Alfonso Gutiérrez, and Kathleen Tyner. "Media education, media literacy and digital
competence." Comunicar: Revista Científica de Comunicación y Educación 19.38 (2012): 31-39.
Wahl, Shawn T., and Eric Morris. "Persuasive Dimensions of Nonverbal
Communication." Persuasion in Your Life. Routledge, 2017. 191-217.

8ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
Appendix 1.
Fig. 1

9ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
Fig 2.

10ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL MEME
Fig. 3