Political Satire through Memes: Content Analysis of Facebook Pages

Abstract

In recent years, memes have become the most crucial activity all over social media. Memes have become a new trend among youth. In communication and satire internet memes have grasped a lot of attention. Satire has become an essential tool in terms of controlling public opinions. Aim of this study is to analyze the memes on three populous political leaders (Imran Khan, Donald Trump and Narindar Modi) on Facebook pages. Four memes are selected of each politician using purposive sampling based on the likes and profile pictures that seem attractive. The reason to choose these politicians is the populous regime in three different countries. The results revealed that satire and taunts used in the memes against the elected politicians; the satire and the humor are used in a creative way to represent the situation and the circumstances politicians have created. These memes are creating new ways of political communication on social media and creating new political discourse.