Memory, politics and emotions: internet memes and protests in Venezuela and Ukraine

ABSTRACT

The article discusses interactions between emotions, memory and user-generated digital content in the context of online protest campaigns. Using as a case study anti-government protest in Ukraine (2013–2014) and Venezuela (2019), it compares how pro- and anti-government communities use visuality and memoricity of internet memes to stir affect and promote their political agendas. It shows that despite differences in the use of visual content elements, Ukrainian and Venezuelan memes have similar political functionality. In both countries, pro-government memes usually rely on simple emotional messages for propaganda/polarization purposes, whereas anti-government memes produce more nuanced statements used as a form of creative criticism/coping mechanism. These political functions are often amplified by memoricity, which is used to stigmatize regime’s opponents by pro-government communities and to legitimize protesters’ demands by anti-government communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Internet memes
• memory
• emotions
• protests
• venezuela
• ukraine
• polarization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See, for Milner (2013, 2013a), Shifman (2014), Smit, Heinrich, and Broersma (2018), and Wutz (2018).

2. Venezuela currently occupies 148th place in the World Press Freedom Index (RWB 2019) because of multiple violations of media freedom by the authorities. In Ukraine, the state of media freedom has improved since 2013 – the country raised from 126th place (RWB 2013) to 102nd one (RWB 2019) – but it remains troubling, in particular considering the significant influence of oligarchs on the media agenda.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mykola Makhortykh

Mykola Makhortykh is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern, where he studies political information behaviour in online environments. Before moving to Bern, Mykola defended his PhD dissertation at the University of Amsterdam on the relationship between digital platforms and war remembrance in Eastern Europe and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Data Science at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research, where he investigated the effects of algorithmic biases on digital news consumption. His other interests involve interactions between cybersecurity and AI, digital war remembrance and critical algorithmic studies. Recently, Mykola published in Visual Communication on the use of digital greeting cards as a form of war (counter)memory, International Journal of Conflict Management on the role of algorithmic news personalization in conflict reporting and Holocaust Studies on user-generated content and Holocaust remembrance.

Juan Manuel González Aguilar

Juan Manuel González Aguilar is a research fellow at the Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (Spain), where his research is focused on the history of the television in Spain in the post-Franco period. Before starting his PhD, Juan studied communication science at the Universidad de las Americas Puebla (Mexico) and audiovisual heritage at the Complutense University of Madrid. His other research interests deal with populist communication in online environments, computational propaganda and tactical uses of media in the course of protest campaigns. Recently, he published in Historia y comunicación social on stereotypes in representation of Latin American characters in US TV series and sitcoms.