Americans Are at It Again Meme
Does looking at memes make y'all a white supremacist?
Non necessarily, but Heather Forest, assistant professor of advice studies, said memes have the potential to make extremist ideals seem normal in the political landscape.
To explore this question further, Forest wrote a book, "Make America Meme Again: The Rhetoric of the Alt-Correct," with co-author Leslie Hahner, acquaintance professor of advice studies at Baylor University. The book was published in December 2018.
"Make America Meme Again" discusses the impact that memes tin have on public discourse and perceptions of political ethics, specifically in the context of the 2022 presidential election.
Woods and Hahner contend that memes capture attention and can be used to straight the public to politicians' agendas, often promoting the radicalization of ideas.
"Things that used to stick sort of on the exterior fringes are now becoming more mainstream," Forest said.
Wood said she wanted to figure out why and how memes in favor of certain candidates gained more traction than others during the 2022 election. She noticed the quicker a political grouping was to utilize memes, the more than political traction they gained over opponents online.
"There were discussions nearly the vision for the nation occurring in these meme formats," Woods said.
Woods said memes have evolved from simple pictures of cats with bold text around them to an increasingly important advice tool, one that is important enough to write a whole volume about.
"Memes create communities," Forest said. "If y'all empathise a meme, you're a office of a community."
Hahner was one of Woods' advisors for her graduate research at Baylor. Now, the 2 are co-authors.
"Individually, nosotros had started to see patterns of memes showing up in places that we hadn't seen earlier," Hahner said. "We were trying to trace how images got created and how they traveled beyond unlike social media sites."
The pair had been texting nearly memes and their effects on advice sheerly out of fascination, but Hahner said they eventually realized but how of import their observations could be.
"I texted Heather and was like, 'Nosotros have to write this,'" Hahner said.
The internet moves fast, merely both Woods and Hahner said their goal was to write a volume with ideas that could stand up the test of time.
"Nosotros wrote it apace on purpose because nosotros knew that meme formats shift then quickly that the memes that we wrote about may not accept the same traction a year afterward," Woods said.
Even with its challenges, Woods said co-authoring a book was a wonderful experience.
"It'southward hard work, because you accept to wrestle with two sets of ideas and kind of compete with one some other, but I institute that our enquiry expertise really complemented 1 another," Woods said.
No i knows memes like college students, and Woods said she had discussed her research with her students to sympathize how various groups of people are affected past the media they consume.
"[The volume] has academic structure, but we wrote information technology to be accessible to most people," Woods said. "We want it to speak to unlike audiences."
Woods said it matters that students and people in full general be able to recognize the persuasive nature of memes, "even if they seem empty-headed."
Tom McClain, inferior in economics, said that while some memes are clearly meant to be political, he never considered that some could be sending more subtle letters.
"I think they are designed to oversimplify and accept data out of context," McClain said.
Wood and Hahner said it'due south important to claiming the thought that nosotros're too smart for our opinions to be altered as a result of social media.
"People need to understand that even if they think they're beyond being influenced by propaganda or are besides smart for information technology, we are affected in subtle ways that we may not fully understand yet," Hahner said.
Woods said anyone who enjoys politics or engages in social or digital media may be interested in reading "Make America Meme Once again." Both she and Hahner said they hope to print upon people that memes are a form of communication that should exist taken seriously, even if they appear innocent.
"They matter, and they influence," Woods said.
Source: https://www.kstatecollegian.com/2019/02/19/make-america-meme-again-professor-breaks-down-political-memes-in-new-book/
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