‘It’s So Hard Not to be Funny in This Situation’: Memes and Humor in U.S. Youth Online Political Expression

Abstract

In light of the promise of humorous political memes as popular routes to citizen empowerment as well as concerns over their potential dangers, it is necessary to examine how everyday citizens make sense of their role in political expression and how they engage with them—or not—in their everyday social media activities. This focus group study explores these questions by focusing on the digital practices of U.S. young adults. The findings suggest a range of benefits of posting political memes and humor online, including building solidarity with likeminded peers and reinforcing communal identity, as well as advancing accessible and influential political critiques. However, these positive assessments are complicated by concerns over the relationship between political meme humor and threats of trivialization and hyper-polarization, which limit some users from participating in its circulation and lead them to seek alternative modes of online engagement that are perceived as more civically valuable.

Keywords

social media political expression memes humor popular culture youth

Introduction

If the boundaries between popular culture and political expression have always been porous, in the era of social media they are increasingly difficult to discern. This is particularly the case when considering the growth of political memes (i.e., shareable digital packets of political commentary that combine image and text and are typically humorous and pop culture-oriented in nature) (Milner 2013a; Shifman 2014). Not only has meme humor become a highly prominent feature of today’s online political discourse, but according to a growing body of scholarship, it has the potential to influence citizens and shape political outcomes (Marwick and Lewis 2017; Penney 2017; Ross and Rivers 2017). Echoing this theme, popular press discourse in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. election suggested that memes and related forms of Internet humor have now become powerful, even decisive, forces in contemporary political life. Politico, for instance, dubbed the election “World War Meme” in a report on “how a group of anonymous internet commandos conquered the internet for Donald Trump” (Schreckinger 2017), while an op-ed in the New York Times warned that “if Democrats and other critics of the President want to fight back effectively on the internet, they need to figure out how to harness the meme to communicate ideas and build community” (Grygiel 2018). At the same time, however, the op-ed acknowledged that many may be reluctant to embrace political memes because of their controversial reputation as a seemingly dumbed-down, “low-brow” form of humor that can degrade political discourse and feed into polarization.

In light of both the widespread promise of political memes and Internet humor as routes to citizen empowerment, as well as widespread concerns over their potential dangers, it is necessary to examine how everyday citizens make sense of their role in political discourse and how they engage with them—or not—in their social media activities. The following study explores these questions by focusing specifically on the digital practices of young adults, who are widely seen as being at the forefront of contemporary meme culture on the Internet. As Khane and colleagues (2015) argue, studying youth online practices is crucial because young people are frequently early adopters of new media tools and act as “everyday innovators” who pioneer new forms of digital communication. Furthermore, youth in many countries such as the United States exhibit some of the lowest overall levels of engagement with political institutions, and scholars have thus been concerned with how accessible and popular forms of digital communication can provide new and non-traditional opportunities for youth civic engagement.

Prior research suggests that social media use in itself does not increase levels of online political participation among youth and that instead social media provides new outlets for young people who are already interested in politics to engage in new forms of political expression and interaction (Keating and Melis 2017). Following from this point, this study focuses on youth who actively share political content on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and who are also more likely to have high levels of political interest than their peers who do not engage in these digital political practices. The research is guided by an interest in how these young people understand the value of sharing humorous content within the broader field of their online political activities, and how their perceptions—both positive and negative—relate to their decisions to participate (or not) in its digital circulation. The study thus seeks to deepen scholarly understanding of the motivations that guide the intermixing of popular culture and political expression in participatory new media formats, as well as the potential concerns that may limit such practices in favor of alternative modes of online political participation.

Literature Review

In recent years, there has been much scholarly interest in the everyday political expressions of young people via digital technologies, due in no small part to the fact that social networking applications like Facebook and Instagram have become popular venues for youth to engage with political topics (Khane et al. 2015; Vromen et al. 2016). In fact, Bennett and colleagues (2011) argue that the very definition of citizenship has shifted as a consequence of young people’s widespread embrace of digital media to articulate their political identifications and express personal viewpoints. In contrast to the traditional “dutiful citizenship” model that centers on engagement with formal political institutions, the authors identify a newer “actualizing” citizenship style among youth that prioritizes individualized digital expression and peer-to-peer interaction in looser and more informal networks. As indicated by the term, this “actualizing” citizenship style, enacted through everyday forms of political expression and discussion, is understood to be a route for young people to experiment with and develop their own sense of political identity, as well as to forge (often temporary and fluid) connections to specific movements, causes, and issues of personal interest.

This overarching theme of political self-development through everyday digital media use is a common thread in the growing body of research on youth political practices online. Dahlgren (2009), for instance, argues that networked digital media can support “civic cultures” whereby youth foster civic skills through informal peer interaction and prepare themselves for future political participation, while Jenkins (2006) emphasizes the role of popular culture participation and creative digital practices in the process of youth civic development. More recently, Kligler-Vilenchik and Literat (2018) find that networked creativity in venues like games, fan fiction, and collaborative multimedia projects enable youth to gain a sense of agency toward the political sphere as well as comprehend and imagine it in new ways. In a similar vein, Vromen and colleagues (2016) identify an “everyday maker” citizenship style among digitally connected youth, which they characterize as “using humor and creativity with localized, personalized experiences to reflexively understand and communicate about politics.”

Vromen and colleagues’ (2016) focus on humor as a key feature of youth political expression on social media platforms is important to emphasize. Likewise, Vraga and colleagues (2015) find that humor is a frequent way for young people to engage with political topics on platforms like Facebook and that its light and informal tone provides opportunities for political expression for those who would otherwise be wary of sharing their views. Indeed, one of the most popular and recognizable genres of digital youth culture, the Internet meme, is often humor-oriented in nature and has been adopted as a means of discursive political participation in a wide range of contexts (Shifman 2014). Defined as “a piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through online transmission” (Davison 2012), the Internet meme has emerged as a focal point for scholarship examining the relationship between informal popular culture-oriented discourse and the formal political sphere. For instance, Penney (2017) discusses how the “Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash” page on Facebook was joined by many thousands of largely youthful supporters of the 2016 Democratic primary candidate as a means of irreverently expressing their views in the language of Internet-style humor and pop culture references. As Penney (2017) argues, this meme page enabled supporters to not only define themselves as such and help form a communal identity, but also to actively promote the campaign on the candidate’s behalf and even influence the voting behavior of peers. In a similar vein, Rentschler and Thrift (2015) argue that memes like “Binders Full of Women,” which derisively targeted Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, served as powerful tools of both community building and consciousness raising and helped to advance feminist critiques in the broader digital sphere.

Indeed, the potential for memes—as well as humorous online expressions more broadly—to serve as instrumental political advocacy and peer persuasion is suggested by a growing body of scholarship that takes them seriously as tools of digital rhetoric. For instance, Ross and Rivers (2017) conclude in their analysis of the 2016 U.S. election that humorous memes have the power to effectively delegitimize candidates in the eyes of the public through mockery and ridicule. Outside of electoral contexts, Milner (2013a) argues that humor-oriented memes are valuable for giving voice to protest movements like Occupy Wall Street and articulating polyvocal critiques of capitalism, while Sreekumar and Vadrevu (2013) contend that memes are effective in inculcating critical views toward authoritarian regimes in non-western contexts (see also Al Zidjaly 2017). More generally, Huntington (2013) identifies meme humor as a subversive form of digital rhetoric that allows political prosumers to playfully challenge dominant media narratives and elite institutions. As Ross and Rivers (2017, 3) point out, this transgressive dynamic is further reinforced by the anonymity of meme creation, which “offers protection for the dissemination of controversial, unpopular, and even offensive messages, with no concern for negative consequences or fear of being held accountable.” The authors further note that the non-attribution and resulting non-accountability of political memes heightens their potential for circulating false claims.

Indeed, as meme humor has become more prominent in online political discourse, it has become the subject of criticism as well as a source of optimism for civic empowerment. A key theme of Marwick and Lewis’s (2017) report on far-right online activism, for instance, is the relationship between the youth subcultural production of memes on platforms like Reddit and 4Chan and problematic trolling and harassment behaviors, particularly involving the targeting of minority groups with racist and anti-Semitic jokes as well as the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation. Similarly, Milner’s (2013b) study of the “logic of lulz” on these two youth-oriented platforms finds that meme humor is frequently used to express antagonistic views about race and gender, and while misogynistic discourse is often challenged in these spaces, racist discourse remains dominant and often unopposed.

In addition to concerns over hostility, incivility, and hyper-polarization in the culture of Internet memes, scholars have also questioned their value in larger projects of political activism. Although many view meme humor as a legitimate and potentially powerful form of political expression, Hristova (2014) offers an opposing view that humorous memes neutralize political messages rather than push them forward. In her analysis of memes in Occupy Wall Street, Hristova argues that they were largely ineffective in supporting the political and ideological goals of the movement because they reduced radical critiques of capitalism to superficial jokes that could more easily be countenanced by the dominant culture.

In light of these concerns about memes and Internet humor, as well as more optimistic assessments that frame them as positively contributing to youth civic development and even empowerment, it is important to investigate how young people evaluate and make sense of them in their everyday lives. To date, there is relatively little existing research that focuses specifically on young people’s attitudes toward online political humor and their experiences with participating in related digital practices. Often, humor is treated as a secondary theme in empirical analyses of youth online political expression (e.g., Vraga et al. 2015; Vromen et al. 2016), although one exception in Sreekumar and Vadrevu (2013), who find that young people in Singapore tend to discount memes as serious forms of political discourse and are ambivalent about their possible political function. The following study seeks to fill the gaps in existing scholarship by exploring how young people who are actively engaged in online political discourse understand the function of political memes and Internet humor, as well as how these conceptualizations relate to their everyday digital practices around political topics. In particular, the research is guided by the following questions:

Research Question 1: What specific attitudes (either positive or negative) do politically engaged youth hold toward the use of political memes and Internet humor?

Research Question 2: How do these attitudes impact these young people’s approaches to political expression and interaction on social media platforms?

Method

The data presented in this study is drawn from a larger empirical project conducted in Fall 2017 that used focus groups to explore emergent practices of young people’s political expression on social media platforms (including, but not necessarily limited to, popular applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) as well as their attitudes toward and evaluations of these practices. Rather than focus on a single platform, the investigation was guided by Trere’s (2012) “information ecology” approach that emphasizes the simultaneous and interrelated use of multiple Internet applications and technologies for various forms of activism and political discourse. In keeping with the exploratory goals of the research, the qualitative focus group method was chosen for its capacity to stimulate new ideas through interaction across participants and produce rich qualitative data on issues and themes that are of common interest and emerge through group conversation (Onwuegbuzie et al. 2009). Furthermore, qualitative focus groups are valuable for exploring patterns of social practice that arise in the context of rapidly changing on-the-ground conditions and are therefore not as well established in the scholarly literature. In this case, the research was particularly attentive to the shifting political context of the current Trump administration and how U.S. youth social media practices may be developing or adapting in new ways in response.

Recruitment efforts thus cast a wide net in terms of criteria for participation, although potentially interested volunteers had to meet the following conditions: young adults of U.S. voting age (defined here as between the ages of 18 and 26) who have posted about political topics on any social media platform at least once in the previous year. For practical reasons, participant recruitment was limited to the convenience sample of undergraduates currently enrolled at a large public university in the northeastern United States where the focus groups were conducted. Upon receiving institutional review board (IRB) approval, the researchers circulated e-mail and flyer recruitment messages to potential volunteers on the university campus. A total of eighteen qualified participants completed an informed consent process and were placed into four focus groups of four to five each. In terms of demographics, the participants were nearly evenly split by gender, with ten females and eight males, and represented limited diversity in terms of race/ethnicity, with four Latino/a, one African-American, and thirteen white American participants. In terms of political affiliation, the vast majority of participants (fifteen) self-identified as not supportive of the Trump administration, although two self-identified as Trump supporters and one self-identified as neutral.

Given these breakdowns as well as the small sample size and college campus recruitment focus, it is important to acknowledge that the study has clear limits to generalizability. As a whole, the participants tended to be more white, more liberal/left in their political orientation, and were more educated (i.e., some college) than the broader population of U.S. citizens between the ages of 18 and 26. Moreover, due to the purposive sampling strategy targeting youth who have actively posted about politics on social media, the resulting data is only intended to offer a slice into the subset of U.S. youth that are already actively engaged in posting political content online, which, according to prior research, may comprise approximately 40 percent of the broader population of young U.S. social media users of voting age (Vromen et al. 2016).

The focus groups were moderated by the principal researcher and used a loose question outline that prompted participants to discuss what they had posted on various social media platforms regarding political topics (including reposts or shares), why they feel they decided to make these posts, and what their attitudes are toward the activities they described. The question outline was left deliberately open-ended and broad, with the goal of allowing conversations to develop organically and head in unique and unforeseen directions. The focus groups lasted approximately one hour each and resulted in roughly fifty single-spaced pages of transcripts (audio recordings were made and then erased after transcription in accordance with IRB guidelines). Pseudonyms were assigned to each participant to ensure confidentiality.

Using the approach of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 2009), data analysis focused on identifying themes that emerged organically from the data through a systematic coding procedure that grouped related data points by category in a constant comparative method. The focus group conversations went in many directions simultaneously, resulting in several larger themes that the researcher plans to develop over several additional studies: namely, the importance of sharing accurate political information on social media to combat the problem of online misinformation; the importance of using social media to spread influential political rhetoric, particularly in terms of defending minority groups like Latin Americans and members of the LGBT community from attack; and the value of social media for self-reflexively articulating one’s political identity to one’s peer group. During the coding process, the use of Internet humor, and humorous memes specifically, emerged as another significant meta-theme that encompassed several smaller conceptual categories spanning data from all four focus groups. Due to the prominence of the humor meta-theme in the focus group conversations, as well as the nuance and complexity with which it was discussed by participants (as detailed below), it was necessary to provide an extensive treatment in the form of a standalone study. Upon identifying humor as the primary focus of thematic analysis for this study, further rounds of coding were used to break down the relevant data into positive and negative assessments of political Internet humor, as well as to develop sub-categories that identified more specific characteristics of these attitudes.

Findings and Discussion

The findings of the focus group study, outlined in detail below, suggest a range of perceived benefits of sharing political memes and humor online; these include building solidarity with likeminded peers, reinforcing communal identity, and helping one another to cope with negative affect, as well as advancing accessible and potentially influential political critiques in digital public discourse. However, these positive assessments were complicated by more critical concerns over the relationship between political meme humor and threats of trivialization, hyper-polarization, and interpersonal conflict, which limited some users from participating in its circulation and led them to seek alternative modes of online engagement that were viewed by contrast as more substantive and thus more civically valuable.

Embracing Political Memes and Internet Humor: Bonding, Coping, and Advocating

When participants discussed having positive experiences with posting and sharing humorous political content on social media, they frequently highlighted the social role that it played within their group of peers. These peer groups tended to be likeminded in terms of their political viewpoints, and humorous posts such as memes served as a source of mutual enjoyment as well as a validation of shared sentiments. For instance, Carla, who identified as anti-Trump, recounted a story of when her friend posted a picture of him throwing a drink at a truck painted with Trump’s face and the slogan “Make America Great Again”:

He got a lot of likes, and he got a lot of comments, like “yeah, I totally agree with you,” like “F Trump,” this, this and that . . . I told him that was funny as hell, and then I favorited it. And so it’s kind of like you post because you feel like people will back you up on it if you have followers, and that, you know, have the same morals as you.

Carla’s point about taking pleasure in being “back[ed] up” by likeminded friends when sharing a laugh together recalls some key themes in the study of political humor as well as youth online political expression. As Branagan (2007) argues, humor plays an important role in bonding political communities together and helping to build solidarity, due in so small part to its affective dimensions. Not only does political humor express a point of view, but it also signals a feeling toward political subject matter that, as Carla implied, cuts to the core of one’s sense of moral judgment. In her case, the anger and frustration that her friend expressed in his derisive anti-Trump post clearly resonated with her, providing a sense that her moral judgments were shared by a community of friends and were not hers alone.

Thus, we can recognize how the social bonding dynamics of political Internet humor can take on a kind of political function or significance, even if they are not intended to work as public advocacy or peer persuasion (although sometimes they are meant to serve this purpose, as will be explored below). As a range of scholars have argued, the development of political identity and communal belonging through informal online interaction with peers is an important process for young people in terms of building a sense of citizenship and political efficacy and even inspiring future political participation (Dahlgren 2009; Vromen et al. 2016).

In addition to themes of developing political identity and solidarity through shared experiences with political Internet humor, some participants discussed how it served a further positive role as a coping mechanism that provided relief from the more upsetting or angering aspects of politics. In particular, some who expressed strong negative feelings toward President Trump noted how circulating jokes regarding the latest news about him helped to offset these feelings and make everyday survival under his administration more manageable. Rebecca, for instance, explained that

I feel like it’s so hard not to be funny in this situation because it’s almost like it’s not real . . . There’s a new headline every day, and it’s always something ridiculous that you’re like, there’s no way like this is really, like, just another day . . . So I feel like just recognizing the fact that things that are going on are so crazy that it’s almost like they’re not real . . . that you can poke fun at them.

Here, Rebecca pointed to the role of humor in making rational sense of a political world that is experienced as irrational, absurd, and chaotic, which is an established theme in scholarship on political comedy and satire more broadly. Gray’s (2006) research on The Simpsons, for instance, emphasizes how audiences of the program find that it helps them cope with the difficulties of politics and provide perspective, while Jones (2005, 120) argues that political satirists like The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart offer a comfortingly rational response to the “ideological fanaticism of contemporary politics.” In the context of social media, this coping process involves not only the consumption but also the production and circulation of satirical political humor, as the active mocking of leaders like Trump enables, as Nate put it, a “cathartic” release of affect.

In addition to noting the personal and intrapersonal benefits of political Internet humor such as coping and bonding, some participants also expressed an optimistic belief in its power to advance sincere political statements and even influence peers. In these instances, they were often careful to point out how the jokes and memes that they chose to share were not merely humorous, but also spoke to the realities of the political world in ways that could compel serious thought and conversation. Lauren, for example, explained that she enthusiastically posts political memes and other humorous content because of the “deeper meaning behind the funny post . . . I would hope some of my followers would agree with my viewpoint.” She went on to recount how she retweeted a meme that read “Imagine if Trump put as much effort into being President as he does into avoiding denouncing Nazis,” explaining that “[it gets people] to laugh, but also think. Like both actually. Because I feel like at first it’s funny, but then when you really think about it, it’s like ‘oof, we might have an issue here,’ you know?”

Lauren thus appealed the notion of humor as having the capacity to make salient political critiques, which is a common theme in scholarly analysis of both professional political satire (e.g., Bennett 2007; Jones 2005) and amateur political Internet memes (e.g., Milner 2013a; Rentschler and Thrift 2015; Ross and Rivers 2017). Echoing Lauren’s comments, Rebecca described posting a meme showing “a cute couples costume idea or something, and then it was like Putin and Trump” and noted that she shared it because “there’s still a bit of truth and still a bit of, you know, something that I believe in there.” Like Lauren, Rebecca justified her use of political meme humor by claiming that her posts communicate factual information as well as earnestly held political viewpoints. In both cases, the participants suggested that the memes they shared were legitimate and worthwhile forms of political expression because they met these specific criteria. However, it was unclear from their remarks exactly how they evaluated the accuracy of these posts (e.g., by fact-checking or cross-referencing with other news sources), even though, as noted above, concerns over being truthful on social media and avoiding misinformation emerged as a prominent theme in the focus groups more generally.

Omar was more skeptical about the value of memes in political discourse, yet he similarly highlighted instances where he felt they were an appropriate means for advancing political critiques, commenting that “introducing that humor into these things can make it easier to deal with. And at the same time you’re still bringing some level of awareness to what is going on.” Here, Omar touched upon an important concept in the study of political humor and pop culture-oriented discourse more broadly—namely, that these entertaining formats can be more appealing and accessible for audiences than traditional, typically drier, forms of political communication and therefore have particular value as tools of public advocacy. For instance, in their discussion of humorous Occupy memes as an example of “participatory politics,” Khane and colleagues (2015, 44) argue that “by using playful imagery and creative expression, these activities reached many people who would not normally be drawn to political commentary or speeches.” In keeping with this logic, Omar underscored the idea that humor is an approachable way to make political points in everyday digital spaces and spark thought and discussion of concrete issues.

However, the palpable sense of skepticism in Omar’s testimony, like that of many of his peers, suggests a certain distance between optimistic theoretical accounts of memes as routes to citizen empowerment and the more uncertain and ambivalent experiences of everyday social media users. The following section explores the multiple concerns that these young citizens have about memes and Internet humor and their role in online political discourse, which in some cases limits their active use despite the range of positive benefits—personal, intra-communal, and public—that they are perceived to offer.

Criticizing Political Memes and Internet Humor: Trivialization and Polarization

Like a number of her fellow participants, Pamela qualified her positive remarks about the value of sharing political Internet humor with more critical viewpoints that call this very value into question. Specifically, she voiced concerns about including too much lightness and frivolity in her online political activities, which she feared could undercut what she felt to be the dire urgency of the current political context under President Trump:

I think actually I share mostly articles that I feel are verifiable. Because when you share the meme . . . like it almost makes it comical. And to me, like, [Trump’s] presidency is not a comical thing . . . to be an American citizen and to live in a world with him as president, I think it’s really a profound moment in history that I still struggle with every day.

Pamela’s concern over the threat of political trivialization is, of course, not hers alone. Rather, it is a long-standing critique in the study of media and popular culture discourse around politics, humor included. For instance, the tension that Pamela raised between the ostensibly serious business of political journalism and the seeming insubstantiality of political entertainment is key to Postman’s (1985) classic critique of television news as pacifying the public and weakening democratic citizenship with endless empty amusement. Furthermore, the binary between “comical thing[s]” and “real thing[s]” in Pamela’s reasoning is reflected in Hristova’s (2014, 265) more recent critical analysis of humorous pop culture-oriented memes in the Occupy Wall Street movement, which frames them as “neutralizers of political dissent” because they ostensibly shift attention away from the realities of on-the-ground activism toward the more easily countenanced banalities of digital expression. In each of these lines of argument, entertaining forms of political discourse are seen as not only superficial or trite, but also potentially dangerous in terms of distracting citizens from sincere political engagement and paving the way for elite manipulation and control.

In the context of the Trump administration, this set of concerns was particularly salient for participants who identified as opposing the President. Trump, who first rose to global fame as a reality television star, may be especially susceptible to accusations of political trivialization, and this surrounding context appeared to loom over many participants’ evaluations of entertaining Internet humor in the broader political discourse of the moment. For instance, Brooke commented that

I see how memes can be funny . . . but at the end of the day, like, policies right now are things that are affecting people, and it’s something that we need to eventually get to the bottom of . . . like, yeah, it can be fun and games for now, but as days pass, all these things are affecting people in their daily lives.

In Brooke’s comments, the “fun and games” of memes as entertaining political expressions are framed as separate from the real-world issues of Trump administration policies. As she implied, there is a possible risk that the public could become more accepting of these policies if they remain uninformed about them and instead focus on laughing at Trump as just an amusing joke. Echoing this sentiment, Travis commented that he chooses to avoid humorous posts about Trump because “after a certain point I can’t really like laugh about him anymore.”

This concern that political leaders like Trump may ultimately be empowered by the seemingly trivial humor directed at them echoes the familiar critique of cynicism as leading publics to doubt the sincerity of the political process and thus devaluing their engagement. In a defense of cynicism in political humor, Bennett (2007, 282) pushes back against such critiques, arguing that cynical comedy like that of The Daily Show is “part of a contemporary civic tool kit that tends to be used along with other tools, such as the daily news, to produce healthy levels of knowledgeable engagement with the political process.” Notably, Bennett stresses the journalistic component of political satire as crucial for its value as democratic discourse, working alongside sardonic jokes to foster critical thinking about substantive issues. In light of Bennett’s argument, the concerns over trivialization voiced by participants come into sharper focus—that is, what happens if cynical Internet humor becomes wholly divorced from, as Pamela put it, “information and staying informed?”

For participants who expressed reservations about posting political memes and other humor on social media, the notion that jokes and facts work at cross purposes rather than in tandem was a common pattern. For example, Stephanie remarked that she preferred to share purely informational posts over memes because she felt that this better aligned with her activist goals:

I tend to focus more on the articles, like informative things, and not really like the memes. If it is more like funny, it’s like poking fun at something [Trump] wrote on Twitter, but there’s usually some like factual analysis afterwards. So usually I try to be more informative . . . I try to focus more on, like, not the funny stuff.

Stephanie thus felt a responsibility to limit her humorous posts in the service of fulfilling an informational and activist role on social media. Moreover, whenever she did include humor, she made a point of amending it with “factual analysis” in order to tether it back to political realities, underscoring her view that memes and humor alone are not sufficient for substantive political engagement online.

In addition to the issue of trivialization, some participants described how they avoided or limited their use of political Internet humor over concerns about how it may feed into the contentious, negative, and highly polarized aspects of political social media that are seen as destructive toward democratic discourse. For instance, although Omar noted using memes occasionally to make a political point (as discussed above), he took an overall negative stance toward them for this reason:

Memes are very manipulative, and they really immediately pit people against each other . . . [I post] mostly news. I don’t like to post memes or quick little facts that pit people against each other because that’s not what the goal is. The goal is to get people to read something and have thought about it, or you know maybe even adjust their way of thinking about things.

Like many of his fellow participants, Omar drew a direct contrast between memes and informational digital content, viewing the latter as more conducive to “good” democratic discourse and thus preferable to the former. In this case, however, the ostensible lack of substantive information in memes is seen as leading not to cynicism and dejection per se, but rather to a hardening of partisan positions that foster division and endless arguments.

Furthermore, concerns over the potential for humorous political posts to cause offense, hurt, and unwanted negative responses factored into some participants’ decisions about how and when to share them. For instance, with regard to his use of political humor on social media, Nate commented that “I try not to offend people. I want people to enjoy what I’m doing, so I don’t want to alienate somebody by hurting them. It’s not that I post less. I think I’m just more careful.” By noting how he reserved certain forms of political humor for private interactions with trusted friends rather than the far more public domain of social media, Nate pointed to the broader trend of how many young people choose to limit their audience for political posts on social media in order to avoid sparking unwanted reactions and arguments from peers (see Thorson 2014). In this particular context, the potential for contentious political humor to cause personal offense forms a rationale for disconnective practices that shield users from possible conflict. Thus, like the threat of trivialization, fears over interpersonal hostility in a hyper-polarized social media environment constitute a meaningful context for shaping how young social media users think through and approach the world of memes and Internet humor that have become the source of much controversy (Marwick and Lewis 2017; Milner 2013b).

Conclusion

In the focus groups, participants shared nuanced observations about the role of political memes and humor in everyday online interaction that highlight both their multifaceted appeal for young people and the potential limits of this appeal. While previous research has noted how humorous discourse can open up accessible opportunities for youth to express their political views on social media (Vraga et al. 2015), this study points to a more complex tension that exists between the perceived benefits of joking about politics online and the perceived drawbacks of this practice, resulting in a range of responses from enthusiastic embrace to the measured negotiation to outright avoidance. The research thus advances the understanding of young people’s civic communicative practices in digital spaces by foregrounding how varying perceptions of the value of popular culture-oriented Internet humor may impact patterns of participation in its circulation.

For those who hold more positive views toward political memes and Internet humor and who more readily engage in their circulation, themes of using comedy to bond with likeminded peers and strengthen communal identifications (Branagan 2007) were particularly salient. In addition, participants highlighted the value of humorous online discourse in helping likeminded communities cope together with the day-to-day challenges of the political world (see also Gray 2006). In the context of theorizing youth civic engagement on social media, we can connect these findings to the body of research that understands informal peer interaction via digital platforms as contributing to the process of youth developing a sense of belonging to the political world and figuring out where they fit within it (Bennett et al. 2011; Vromen et al. 2016). By using humor to express feelings such as outrage and disbelief toward the political news of the day, and by receiving validation from peers through mutual laughter, participants appeared to reinforce their identifications with political communities in ways that were both pleasurable and readily accessible. Furthermore, the everyday accessibility of political Internet humor as part of a broader field of politically themed entertainment and popular culture provides some young people with an optimistic sense that it can be an effective vehicle for capturing the attention of digital publics and serving as instrumental public advocacy and persuasion (see also Khane et al. 2015). However, in the course of explaining their decision-making around circulating political memes and Internet humor for the purpose of persuasion, they often stressed how such humor would only be affective if it retained meaningful connections to real-world political truths.

By contrast, those who held more skeptical or pessimistic views regarding the value of political Internet humor often framed it in binary opposition to informational content, viewing the latter as preferable for their online political posting practices because of its ostensibly superior levels of seriousness and substantiality. These participants appeared to draw on the critique of meme humor as worrisome trivialization of political issues (see Hristova 2014) as a way of understanding how to conversely be a “good” citizen online and make positive contributions to digital political discourse, particularly via the exchange of factual knowledge. In addition, the perception that political meme humor contributes to a hostile and hyper-polarized environment on social media (see Marwick and Lewis 2017; Milner 2013b) also led some youth to avoid participating in its circulation and opting for other forms of online political expression and interaction that were seen as less contentious.

This exploratory qualitative study, although limited in its generalizability, nevertheless suggests patterns that complicate the scholarly understanding of memes and political humor in youth-oriented contemporary digital discourse and pose key questions for future research. Due to the limited sample size (as well as its U.S. focus), it is unclear from the focus group data what proportion of politically engaged youth are alternately embracing or avoiding memes and humor in their social media activities, or how these diverging approaches may correlate with other forms of online political expression and interaction and with styles of citizenship more generally. Furthermore, since the study focuses only on those youth who actively post political content, it cannot address how those who are not politically engaged online (up to 60 percent of youth, according to Vromen et al. 2016) receive and make sense of the political meme humor that they may encounter on social media, even without seeking it out deliberately—this is a crucial issue to consider given that memes have the rhetorical capacity for political influence (Ross and Rivers 2017) as well as entertainment value that may appeal even to those who do not follow politics regularly (Khane et al. 2015). Although these important empirical questions can be fruitfully explored by future research that employs large-scale methods, the strength of this study is to provide a rich and textured account of the motivations and normative frameworks that underlie both the active use—and active non-use—of memes and political humor in young people’s online political expression. Regarding non-use and avoidance, it is clear from the participants’ accounts that broader debates around the seemingly growing dangers of trivialization and hyper-polarization in the contemporary political landscape are informing emergent youth digital practices and, to a certain extent, challenging the hybridization of irreverent popular culture expression and political communication in participatory new media. Such trends may be specific to the U.S. context and contingent upon the historic moment of the Trump presidency. However, researchers who are concerned with the ongoing development of youth civic engagement and online political participation across the globe would benefit from interrogating the complex role of memes and political humor beyond simplified narratives of citizen empowerment and resistance and with attention to the factors that may limit as well as foster their popular uptake.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Joel Penney

Author Biography

Joel Penney is an associate professor of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University, and the author of The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age, published by Oxford University Press.

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