Research Essay On Whether Mems Are Political
Introduction
Originating from the Greek word ‘mimema’, meme was firstly put forward in Richard Dawkins’ ambitious book The Selfish Gene in 1976, in which the definition of meme is divided into two stages. The first stage of memes is regarded as a unit of cultural imitation, like patterns of melody, ideological trends, fashionable terms, fashionable clothing, house-building and appliance manufacturing. Memes in the second-stage are considered as a unit of information that is copied and transmitter in the brain. Since then, not only researching about meme’s definition, dissemination and function have been increasingly popular among scholars, numerous memes also have appeared in the internet.
As the internet, especially social networks, moving forwards, memes are provided a further wider platform, where they are imitated, copied, recreated and transmitted. As a result, diverse sorts of memes engage in individual’s daily life. There has been a significant increase in memes related to politics in recent year. According to the survey operated by ME.ME website (https://me.me/), 50 memes with more than 10.000 mentions in January 2017 are recorded and compared, in which political memes are 28 in total, accounting for 56%. Among all memes, MAGA (Make a Great America) raises dramatically since 2016 American president election. In addition, memes are widely used by people for political purpose, which is illustrated in the cases of Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring and American Election. In the comparison with traditional political participation, memes lower the barriers of participation and provide a grassroots and playful way for people, especially young people, to engage in politics. It enables people to recreate and disseminate different forms of memes, like hashtags, stickers, videos, and pictures et al, to express personal political opinions and participate in voting or protest activities.
As memes conveys different meanings, whether memes are political or not depends on how individual takes part of it. The same meme could be political when people have the intention to participate in politics through it. Besides, the existence of political memes also relies on particular socio-cultural or political contexts. In that sense, the same meme has different performance in different culture. This essay will discuss whether memes are political through analyzing the cases of toad memes and Hilary and Trump singing Karaoke in presidential debates.
Definition of Meme
Meme is considered as a basic unit of culture, which defines the process of information spreading from person to person within a culture, which is originating from the Greek word ‘mimema’. The term ‘meme’ firstly appeared in Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene (1976), in which he defines meme as a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. Since then, how to define memes has been a controversial question. In Blackmore’s book The Meme Machine (1999), she follows Dawkins’ definition and proposes a much wider statement. She defines meme as any information that can be imitated and copied. Besides, Heylithen and Chielens (2009), from the perspective of memes versus virus, define meme as an information pattern stored in individuals’ memories, which is able to be copied, disseminated and stored in another individual’s brain. Based on former scholars’ research, Shifman (2014) creatively defines internet meme as “a group of digital items, sharing common characteristics, which were created with awareness of each other, and were circulated, imitated, and transformed via the internet by many users.” In this essay, following the definition of meme made by Blackmore and Shifman, I consider meme as any sort of information that is created with awareness, which can be copied and transmitted between at least two people through imitation. This essay selects the cases of China’s former president Jiang Zemin and Hilary and Trump singing romantic karaoke as research objects, which are consciously created, copied and widely spread by people.
Memes as Political participation
Political participation defines the behavior that citizens directly or indirectly engage in democratic activities and governments’ decision-making process. In the past when the internet is not ubiquitous in people’s daily life, political participation is generally through varies of measurable approaches, like participating in election, voting, town hall meeting and protest et al. in addition, Schumpeter (2013) argues that the electoral competition general takes place between elites. Although Marx (2010) states that the degree of citizens’ political participation is closely related to the regimes, as computer technology moving forwards and the internet becoming universal, many significant changes have occurred. Jenkins states that lower barrier is regarded as one vitally important feature of web participatory culture, which also can be seen in political participation. Internet broadens the accesses for citizens to acquire political information and transmit their feedbacks. Social media networks have provided a means of distributing ideas on quick and grand scale. Petitioning the White House is an example of it. People are able to call on USA government to take action on the issues that matter to you. The internet, especially social media network, plays vitally important roles in information spreading, members gathering and contacting in protest activities, which has been demonstrated in Occupy Wall Street and Arab Spring. Besides, the function of web to support for creating and sharing together with lower barriers enables the internet to provide a more appealing, playful, and grassroots approaches to participate in political activities, of which the usage of political memes to express personal opinions is a popular example in contemporary network era.
Former researches about political memes generally focused on the aspect of function. Political meme is considered that it provides a grassroots and playful way for people to participate in politics, which plays an important role in political expression and persuasion. Shifman (2014) argues that internet-based political memes provide a wider and more mundane way for people to participate in formal politics, which play vitally important roles in persuasion, public discussion and grassroots connection between politics and citizens. Besides, political memes enable individuals to participate in “a normative debate about how the world should look and the best way to get there”, whether the attitude people hold when they use political memes is humorous or serious. Empowerment is likened to the process of mechanism, which illustrates how citizens, communities and organizations obtain control of their lives. Shifman (2014) maintains that the analysis of memes as political action emphasizes the importance of their role in citizen empowerment.
However, the meme conveys different meanings, and whether it is political or not depends on how individual takes part of it. Although Shepherd and McKelvey (2009) states that the processes of an individual identifying and accepting a meme are not totally dominated by individuals and individuals are not able to completely control memes’ receiving, retaining, recreating and transmitting, individuals still have the capacity to determine which memes they prefer to share with others from specific intention. Instead of passively and unconsciously participating in the dissemination of memes, people are the main body of communication. The memes to spread are chosen and decided by people. And their social norms, personal values and preferences play important roles in the decision-making process. In that sense, the same meme could be political when people have the intention to participate in politics through this playful way, which could be demonstrated in the case of China former president Jiang.
Case of Toad Memes
In recent years, the memes, which is created based on sayings, photos and videos of China’s former president Jiang Zemin, are widely disseminated on the social network platforms of China. The transmission of Jiang’s memes is summarized as Toad culture. Differing from the meaning of toad itself, in Chinese, toad culture directly describes a subcultural group who worships China’s former president Jiang on account of Jiang’s appearance and his dressing preference for black-rimmed glasses and high-waist trousers resembling a toad. Toad memes originate from the case that Jiang Zemin angrily chastised Hong Kong journalist Sharon Cheung, which happened on October 27th, 2000 when Jiang was enraged by Hong Kong journalist’s aggressive question about whether the second term for Hong Kong’s former chief executive Tung Chee-Hwa was endorsed by China central government in a press conference. Jiang angrily criticized the journalist Sharon Cheung, “You are very familiar with Western ways, but you are too young. You go everywhere to follow the big news, but the questions you ask are too simple -- sometimes naive. Today, I am here as an elder to share some personal experience with you. American journalist Wallace who is better than all of you, and I still can make it.” This series of sayings, photos, videos and screenshots were widely transmitted on social network platforms, like Baidu Tieba, Zhihu, Weibo, and Bilibili et al.
Toad memes are quite popular among young people in China especially university students. However, the purpose of spreading toad memes varies from individuals to individuals. Three types of intention of people using different forms of toad memes are identified and analyzed in this essay. First of all, for individuals who is dissatisfied with former president Jiang, toad memes are a kind of sarcasm, and they disseminate them to demonstrate that Jiang is lack of leadership and they question Jiang’s capabilities for changing contemporary China. Deriving from Jiang’s arrogantly and rudely chastising towards Hong Kong journalist, this intention has been remarkably strengthened since many of Jiang’s scandals were revealed, within which the corruption of Jiang’s family is just one microcosm.
Besides, the phenomenon of a great number of individuals in China using toad memes and adoring Jiang also reflects the dissatisfactory with the current politics of China and the nostalgia of the relatively liberal society in Jiang’s era to some extent. In contemporary China, there is an increasingly serious conflict between citizen’ needs for freedom and the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics. For on hand, citizens’ freedom of speech and information, given by Constitution of the People's Republic of China, is eroded by a series of actions taken by China’s central government to establish an active censorship system and network surveillance in the era of Hu and Xi. For instance, it is forbidden to write, post or forward articles concluding negative comments about current politics in China especially about China’s party and president in WeChat. As a strict censorship system in WeChat, any public accounts who transmit relevant articles are closed, and the articles are deleted by the platform. A great number of key words are blocked in searching engine in China, like culture revolution in China and July 4th Protests, also named Tiananmen Square Protests.
In that sense, the dissemination of toad memes could be considered as one microcosm of people’s dissatisfactory with current politics. Toad memes is a roundabout action that people take to critique contemporary publics in China, for China’s president Xi Jinping has implemented a great number of measures to control Chinese cyberspace and it is dangerous to post negative comments about him. In other words, toad memes provide low barrier for people to express their political comments about president Xi. Uploading Jiang’s sayings, pictures and videos is one of the most common approaches to show adoration. Sayings, like “too young too simple sometimes naive”, “I am here as an elder”, “big news” and “excited” et al, are disseminated on social media platforms, and in order to avoid censorship, phonogram methods are frequently implemented in this process. Besides, celebrating Jiang’s birthday is the most popular activity among toad fans. In the case of celebration of Jiang’s 90th birthday in 2016, some toad fans used a headshot of China’s former president Jiang with the red number “90” as their profile photos. They wrote birthday wishes to Jiang with quoting some sayings of Jiang and post it on social media platforms. In addition, they also wrote “+1s” (one more second) in their weibo, which means that they hope to add one second to Jiang’s life.
Nevertheless, as increasingly strict censorship system and strong network surveillance have been established, toad memes are blocked in social media platforms without announcements. In May 2017, Weibo was found that all the stickers involving Chinese parties and presidents were deleted. Besides, in the case of Bilibili, since from July 2017, all the barrages, also named Danmaku, and comments in any video containing toad memes have been closed, and any user who uploads relevant video will lose his Bilibili account permanently. For instance, a series of activities to celebrate Jiang’s birthday was strictly censored, any relevant contents in Weibo were detected and deleted by system. However, numerous bans about toad memes taken by China’s current government do not eliminate toad memes, on the contrary, it increases people’s dissatisfactory.
Therefore, the memes, disseminated by people for the intention of either demonstrating Jiang’s lack of leadership or indirectly expressing dissatisfactory with current government, are political, as they engage in politics, convey their opinions and intent to achieve some political goals through a grassroots and playful way, differing from traditional participation.In addition to the above two types of intention, the third one is that people transmit toad memes especially Jiang’s stickers between peers for socializing and entertainment purpose. Differing from above two groups of people, people in the third group do not present significant political intention when they transmit toad memes to others.
The sticker form of toad memes is an example. As there are plenty of stickers in China’s social media platforms, people, especially young people, have been accustomed to using in when they chat with peers online. Resembling other stickers, the Sticker forms of toad memes are also utilized to socialize with peers online, for it is considered as a tool to present their characteristics, values, attitudes and preferences, which satisfy people’s demand for the development of personalities. For example, in the figure 4 and figure, the sticker is created by combining the screenshot of Jiang’s video and the Mandarin subtitles, which conveys the meaning of secret observation and “I’m not sure about what you said”. Besides, sticker in the figure 6 adds more Chinese traditional elements together with Jiang’s headshot and widespread sayings, which passes on the message that wish you happy new year. Although the elements of these stickers are partly political, like they all use the headshot of China’s former president Jiang, if people only take it for socializing and entertaining purpose, it is not political.
Case of 2016 US Presidential Election
As Marx mentioned that “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” (Marx, 2010). Although people’s purpose of using memes directly affects whether memes are political, the existence of political memes also depends on particular socio-cultural or political contexts, and the political function of memes declines or disappears when they deviate from cultural contexts which they are familiar with. In the researches of Shifman (2014) and Milner (2016), political memes are analyzed in detail in the case of Occupy Wall Street. The reason why these memes are political is that, one the one hand, these memes enable people to express their political opinions and dissatisfactory with current politics through a grassroots and playful way, which satisfy people’s demand of political participation. In addition, the existence of political memes in the case of Occupy Wall Street also rely on American cultural contexts and political environment.
Individuals who participate in transmitting political memes of Occupy Wall Street share numerous common features: they live in USA, they speak English, they have similar cultural backgrounds, and they are directly or indirectly affected by the policies implemented by American governments, which allow them to understand these political memes and engage in the process of recreating and spreading. Besides, the intention of using the same meme varies from different cultural contexts and political environments. Taiwan scholar Ke (2016) argues that the direction of memes spreading is influenced by the interaction between the memes and the environment, and the environmental fitness of memes plays a vitally important role in the process of message transmission. In the case of toad memes, three different purposes of using diverse forms of toad memes in China are identified. However, for people who are not Chinese, do not speak Mandarin, or not engage in Chinese politics, it is difficult for them to understand the hidden information that toad memes convey. As recreating and transmitting memes to achieve particular purposes is based on understanding the meaning of memes, deviating from own political environments, meme is not able to provide a low-barrier and playful way of political participation for people who do not identify it, which is also demonstrated in the case of 2016 US presidential election.
On October 10, 2016, the second presidential television debate of 2016 U.S. presidential election was hosted by CNN. This live debate totally attracted more than 23 million audiences to view, and a great many of global medias reported this activity from different perspectives. Apart from these, users on the social media platforms in China, like Bilibili and Weibo, creatively turned it into a new form of meme: Trump and Hilary singing Chinese romantic Karaoke. The videos, pictures and screenshots of the second presidential election were recreated by adding romantic songs and lyrics to produce a karaoke scenario. For example, in figure 7, Hilary says, “I know you are not the one, but it is still heartbreaking that I had to leave you.” Trump sings in response, “We get lost in blinded love.” The lyrics come from “Sorry You Are Not The One,” a song created and performed by Malaysian female singer Jingru Liang in 2005. In the meme, Hilary and Trump sing together, “You’ll never know how important you are for me”, which comes from Junjie Lin’s song Little Dimple.
In the case of the second US presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, the memes of two presidential candidates singing karaoke were firstly created by Chinese netizens on Oct 10, 2016. However, the new form of memes immediately appealed a great number of both American medias and audiences, who quickly turned the debate into renditions of popular songs, like “Dirty Dancing” and “You’re So Vain.” The harmonious debate is likened to singing romantic karaoke by American people. The new form of political memes provides a further broader platform for people in America to express their opinions. For one hand, it enables them to easily recreate the memes. They are able to add any lyrics they prefer to turn the memes into their personal expression. The figure 9 is an example of it. The editor of Guardians, @Tom Phillips post the screenshot of presidential debate with contents “Um ba ba be……Ee day da-That’s okay”, which comes from the lyric of Under Pressure, produced by David Bowie and Queen in 1982. Besides, the lyrics they quoted demonstrate their personal feelings and political opinions. Relating a serious presidential debate to a romantic duet karaoke, to some extent, illustrates that people are dissatisfied with the second debate, for the two president candidates barely debate with each other, which is also shown in Twitter users’ tweets. For instance, @Tom Phillips selected the lyric “That’s okay” from the song Under Pressure, which presents that he thought the performance of two candidates is OK, as they are under pressure. In @Khaled Beydoun’s tweet in figure 10, he described the second debate as nightmare karaoke, which conveys his disappointment with it.
Although the memes were originally created in China, majority of Chinese people seldom consider it as a way of political participation, instead, they take it for entertainment purpose. In the example of figure 11, the key opinion leader @Birtish Newsparer Sister, who are followed by more than 15 million fans and often post humorous news, uploaded the collection of karaoke memes which added the lyric of popular songs in the screenshots of video. This weibo acquired 35,310 likes, 12,800 comments, and 34,607 forwards in total, but it was rarely utilized for political expression, instead, it was humorous entertainment and also regarded as an evidence of keeping pace with the changing world. The significantly different performance of the same memes is arisen from the cultural and political difference between USA and China. Although changes occurring in one country may influence others as globalization moving forwards, in comparison with Chinese people, people in America are more directly affected by the changing in their politics. Therefore, political of memes is not only dominated by the intention of individuals, differences in languages, national values, culture, economy and politics also play important roles in the existence of political memes, within which the environmental fitness to cultural differences is emphasized.
Conclusion
It can be clearly seen that memes have been universal culture in the internet era, which appear with different forms. Although participating in politics through memes, which offer a grassroots and playful way, has been increasingly popular, whether memes are political is affected by the intention of individuals and political context. To sum up, as memes conveys different meanings, whether memes are political or not depends on how individual takes part of it. That is to say, the same meme could be political when people have the intention to participate in politics through it. On the contrary, when people transmit it between peers for entertainment or socializing purpose, the meme is non-political. In case of toad memes, the memes, disseminated by people for the intention of either demonstrating Jiang’s lack of leadership or indirectly expressing dissatisfactory with current government, are political, as they engage in politics, convey their opinions and intent to achieve some political goals through a grassroots and playful way, differing from traditional participation. Apart from these, different cultural contexts also play important roles in political memes. The existence of political memes also relies on particular socio-cultural or political contexts. Political function of memes is declining until disappeared when they deviate from their cultural contexts.
That is why the same meme has different performance in different culture, which is illustrated in the case of the memes of romantic Karaoke between Hilary and Trump. The difference between this meme in China and in USA is that the dissemination of it conveys different meanings and performs different function. For people in USA, their common language, cultural background and political environment enable them to understand that this meme not only presents the harmonious debate without charming points, but also it conveys individuals’ attitudes towards 2016 president election with diversities of lyrics inserted in. Nevertheless, for people in China, who firstly created this meme, it is an innovative form of entertainment and a socializing approach to show that they keep pace with the changing world. Therefore, memes are political when individuals utilize it for political participation a specific political environment. However, this essay just analyzes whether memes are political, questions like is there a measurable standard to count memes, how to make a distinction between political intention and non-political intention, and how to evaluate meme’s environmental fitness are not answered in this essay, which require more researching in this field in the near future.
