Overview

“This landmark book is the first to fully explain how memes have become a critical part of UK politics. Through rich and convincing empirical analysis, Southern reveals how digital humour is transforming citizen participation, elite communication, and the very nature of political discourse. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand the evolution of digital political culture and its profound impact on democracy.”   –     James Dennis, Researcher at Lusófona University, Portugal     “From ‘shitposts’ to ‘Karen memes’, political communication is changing and Rosalynd Southern is a lively guide to the pithy world of memes.  A cutting-edge study that deserves to be read.   — Stephen Coleman, Emeritus Professor of Political Communication, University of Leeds, UK   In 2015, a story emerged alleging that then-Prime Minister David Cameron had placed ‘a private part of his anatomy’ into the mouth of a dead pig’s head during an initiation ceremony at the University of Oxford. Upon this allegation breaking, social media erupted with a plethora of memes and jokes about the incident, which became known as ‘Piggate’. Although there had been a move towards jovial talk of politics on social media prior to this, the episode seemed to distil the practice and precipitate a new era of near-constant humorous online reaction to political events. Considering this context, this book assesses how memetic practices have shaped political communication and culture in the past decade-plus, and the consequences thereof. It does so from four perspectives, encompassing a focus on ordinary citizens, a group of online activists, a key social media satirist and, finally, focusing on how elites have deployed these practices.  

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9783032120946

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Rosalynd Southern is a Senior Lecturer in Political Communication at the University of Liverpool. Her work focuses on how digital and social media are used for political communication by politicians, parties and ordinary citizens. She has published work on the use of social media by parties and / or candidates at the last four UK general elections and the Brexit referendum. More recently her work has focused on uncivil and intolerant online speech – particularly that directed at women politicians. She is also an expert on ‘new’ forms of digital political communication, particularly via visual and alternative forms such as memetic content and online satire. Her work has been funded by the British Academy and Research England and published in Electoral Studies, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, and Social Science Computer Review, and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

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