Populism and Internet Memes

Richard Dawkins, who coined the word “meme” long before the idea of internet memes, defined the word as a small cultural unit which can regenerate itself from one brain to another like genes do, to survive. The popular meaning of the word underwent a massive transformation after the advent of the interactive platform of Web 2.0. Among the “netizens” a meme can mean any image, video, or text, often categorized as humorous, which is created and circulated by many through an ever-changing process of mimicking, remaking, and remixing. Though the primary motif of a meme is communicative, it can be used and utilized in different forms to satisfy diverse purposes ranging from marketing campaigns to political activism. Populism as a political ideology banking on popular values and ideologies often uses internet memes as a tool to mobilize the masses in order to gain support from the people. Internet memes may turn out as an effective medium through which populist leaders, both left-wing and right-wing, can propagate their political stance and use the weapon of humor to promote anti-establishment agendas. However, the intertextual and participatory nature of memes also poses the potential to undermine the populist ideology, which according to Kaltwasser and Mudde is a “thin-centered ideology” soon to be assimilated into a broader political worldview. Internet memes may reflect and conform to the dominant cultural values on the one hand and contradict and subvert them on the other. This entry proposes a definition of internet memes and traces the journey of the word. It aims to probe into the nuanced relationship between internet memes and populist ideologies and how the former can be used to spread the latter. It also explores the subversive potential and the non-conformist nature of memes.