The Politics Of Social Media: Do Memes Shape Or Reinforce Public Opinion?

If you have a Facebook account or spend any time on the internet, then you likely have been faced with an influx of political posts and images in the last couple of months. If you haven’t, I’d be curious to know who you follow on social media, what you do with your spare time, and how you manage to do so from your home under a rock.

In all seriousness though, I like a good meme as much as the next person; they’re funny, topical and sharing them breaks up the day. But for every meme I see that supports left candidate A, there’s another for candidate B, and more for supporters of right candidate A and right candidate B and so on.

After scrolling through my newsfeed, I have to ask myself if anyone who shares these memes really thinks they are going to change a follower’s political opinion with them, or if they exist primarily to unite people with similar beliefs and attempt to alienate, anger, and annoy those with conflicting beliefs.

Source: Facebook

For how potentially influential they are, it is hard to find much written about memes, so I asked my Facebook friends for help.

Christa, a senior at the University of Scranton, told me she thinks memes just regenerate bias. For instance, she said that she finds herself agreeing with and liking memes that support her beliefs, but feels less positive about memes that go against them.

“But when it’s someone I like and it’s a caption that is negatively portraying that person, I get offended and defensive and I think these people who make memes don’t know anything,” Christa said.

This demonstrates a phenomenon I think a lot of people could benefit from hearing: belittling a candidate or a campaign is probably not going to make that person’s supporters change sides. There hasn’t been a study, but I’m skeptical that Trump supporters gave up on the wall and decided to Feel the Bern because of the “Orange is the New Black” meme above.

However, memes could potentially persuade undecided voters — but more on that later.

Memes are certainly a useful, simple, and easily sharable way of popularizing information. I’m thinking now of the “Binders Full of Women” meme that was generated during an Obama-Romney debate in 2012 after the GOP candidate said he had hired lots of women, that he had binders full of them. To further exemplify how influential this incident was, here’s a screenshot of the first couple results you get when you do a Google search on “Binders Full of Women”:

Source: Kimberly Golden, Google

Vincent Harris, a consultant for the Perry and Gingrich campaigns during the primaries of the previous election season, was interviewed on NPR about his thoughts on meme usage, and he had some interesting things to say. For instance, he mentioned the Republican National Committee response to “Binders Full of Women”: a photo of a binder filled with blank pages and the caption “Obama’s Second-Term Agenda.” While a solid burn by the RNC, it still failed to stop the original from being shared.

“These memes have a whole lot of resonance with voters, and they are very successful at branding the candidates, mostly in a negative way. And, they are virtually cost-free,” Harris said.

Harris was also quoted saying that the way memes are generated, shared, and go viral demonstrates a loss of control for campaigns. The above mentioned meme created by the RNC as an answer to Binders Full of Women hardly stands up in comparison — because memes don’t have to be, and often aren’t, created by the political machine. They’re created by people watching debates and paying attention to the candidates, waiting for the perfect situation to unfold.

So, getting back to the opinions of my Facebook friends, I noticed that no one came out to say they hate memes.

Brittany, a senior at Misericordia University, shared the meme from the beginning of this post with me, and wrote that she believes:

“Memes are awesome and cut right to the point.”

This is a fair analysis: paying attention to politics is time consuming, and generally a less fun hobby than re-watching Parks and Rec or sometimes literally anything else. If you don’t follow along, taking note of what is shared on your newsfeed can give you a general idea of how people that are watching closely feel towards certain candidates.

This creates a new sort of problem though that I equate to high school students voting for the cool kids to be class president — memes are often not that informative, but if you see enough of them you can think you have a solid based opinion, when really you just think it’s trendy to vote a certain way.

Tyler, another Facebook friend, noted this in his response:

“They’re kind of propaganda. And if people are ignorant enough, they can be SUPER effective.“

Source: Facebook

I was hoping someone would send me a good example of this meme, which has been circulating for weeks now in a variety of forms (shout-out to fellow Ithaca College senior Tim for this one). I’ll admit I’ve laughed at a number of these, which compare Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on “important issues,” this time wolves, usually coming to the conclusion that Bernie is really cool and Hillary is basically the political equivalent of Amy Poehler’s ‘cool mom’ character in Mean Girls. Using the above as an example, I’m confused on how Sanders’ thoughts on wolves will effect his policy decisions, but if the number of versions of this meme I’ve seen shared are any indication, the message is very popular.

Another shoutout to my aunt Gloria who commented on my Facebook post that she likes memes, but there’s just so many of them. Personally, I think this can’t be more true. Every time I scroll through my newsfeed lately (except, it would seem, when I’m working on a story about memes and trying to find good examples), I’m surprised by the new ways that unnamed masses of people on the internet have related candidates and pop culture. For instance, this gem I came across the other day:

Source: Facebook

One final takeaway I found from my research on memes is that they don’t need to be taken so seriously. My friend Megan shared a very funny Donald Trump meme with me that plays on the media attention that has been given to the size of Donald Trump’s penis in the last couple of weeks.

I’ll be honest here, I originally had this particular meme placed at this point of the post, stared at it for a minute, then decided I didn’t want to look at it anymore, so I took it out. Kudos to Megan for finding an example of a meme that you can’t stop looking at but also never want to see again.

“While highly offensive and degrading, I still find it hilarious,” she told me.

There are some simple solutions if you find memes to be distracting, disheartening or disturbing. You can always take a break from social media during election season, block friends that share them too often, or have thick skin and take comfort in the strength of your own ideology.

The title of this post questions whether memes shape or reinforce public opinion. Ever the optimist, I would hope that at least most of the people I see sharing memes on social media will go to the polls informed by more than just that annoying Facebook friend they went to high school with that posts 12 memes a day.

But I think it is also fair to assume that they will not go to the polls ignoring what they’ve seen online completely. Ideally, if these memes make anything seem more popular, it should be voting and getting involved in the political process, not just cyber bullying Hillary Clinton about her alleged disdain for wolves.

One last shoutout to everyone who answered my Facebook post: your input proved very insightful.