Memefying the 2019 Philippine midterm electoral campaign experience: a study on the delegitimizing capacity of memes.

Abstract

Memes have become a popular internet phenomenon. In the recent years, political memes have also become effective in delivering political information and realities to the public because of its humor and visual appeal to the audience. This proposed study focuses on how memes gain its political value. Adopting Ross and Rivers’ (2017) Delegitimization theory and Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1984) Carnivalesque theory, this study argues that political memes simultaneously provide humor and entertainment while seeking to inform and to protest by observing the delegitimizing components of a meme. With the use of semiotic content analysis, photo-elicitation, and semi-structured interviews as methods, this proposed research focuses on assessing the delegitimizing components of a meme, its effects to political meme users, and measures of delegitimization.